WWE Wary Of SmackDown Becoming “B Show” After Raw Netflix Debut
WWE is looking for balance.
After months of build-up, incredible speculation, and hype, Monday Night Raw will finally debut on Netflix on January 6th.
Talk around the show has dominated WWE conversation for weeks, and it’s easy to see why. The show is set to feature the likes of The Rock and John Cena, Roman Reigns, Solo Sikoa, CM Punk, Drew McIntyre, Seth Rollins, Rhea Ripley, Liv Morgan, and more will all be in action.
However, while much of the attention has been aimed at Raw on January 6th, that’s only one aspect of the company’s programming. The end of 2024 was packed with Survivor Series and Saturday Night’s Main Event, while SmackDown has recently expanded to three hours.
According to Triple H, keeping storylines running across a variety of shows, and making sure everything feels important, and not just Raw, is a significant challenge.
Triple H Determined To Make All WWE Content Matter
During a new interview with The Press Box, Triple H was asked about the difficulties of booking so many big shows close together and his approach to putting storylines together. The Game explained that it’s important to spread everything out and not overload particular shows such as Raw on January 6th, describing mapping everything out as putting puzzles together.
“We’ve sort of been working through this for a long time. Look, is there worry? There’s worry about everything for me on where this goes and what it does. But I can not recall a time in the business, least on my end, where we sort of, if you look at the last few months, you did Survivor Series, you came right off of that with Saturday Night’s Main Event, you did the holidays.
Once you got on the other side of the holidays, well, you have Netflix on the sixth. Great, but you also don’t want SmackDown to feel like less than, so I wanted that first episode of SmackDown of the new year to feel big as well. So you’ve got [Netflix on] the sixth. Well, yeah, but I still have another show on Friday this week.
Then when talent are talking about it, or the writers are talking about it, it’s like, well, geez, I really should be on the episode, I should be on that first episode on the sixth. Well, we have an episode on the 13th too. You’re going to be on the second episode, and you’re going to main event the second episode instead of being a piece of the first episode. So it’s trying to space that stuff all out, and how do you get ahead of the storytelling to try to make sure that there’s enough storytelling to blend across things.
When fans look at it, and they’re like, ‘I don’t understand why this match, it’s right there, why didn’t they put that on that card? It’s ridiculous.’ Yeah, it’s also a three-hour show, and there’s one seven days later. So just that one we’ll hold a week, and you’ll get to this one. I think it’s also okay like we’re doing things now. You see us promoting Cody Rhodes and Kevin Owens for the Rumble, and we’re not even past January 6th yet.
We also have all the episodes in between and another Saturday Night’s Main Event before we even get to the Rumble. Those are the puzzles to try to put together. So when you start thinking about that, all these episodes leading up to, or leading up to and beyond Netflix, all the SmackDown episodes, it can’t feel like it becomes the B show with all the buzz around Netflix,”
It’s been reported that Triple H will open Raw when it debuts on Netflix, hyping the live crowd after a video showcases WWE’s lengthy history.
H/t to Fightful