WWE Separating Announce Teams On PPVs; Big Crossover RAW Episodes Planned
World Wrestling Entertainment will be going back to having two English speaking announce teams for pay-per-views events; one for SmackDown and one for Raw. This means that there will be one announce team for SmackDown calling SmackDown’s matches and the other announce team will be for Raw calling Raw matches. This used to be the case when WWE’s previous brand split was in effect, and now that the brand split is returning WWE will be bringing back the dual brand announce teams for pay-per-events. This is according to yesterday’s edition of Wrestling Observer Live.
Another interesting piece of information that was made known during Wrestling Observer Live is that WWE is planning on crossing over the brands only for special nights and that they are already planning to have a big dual-brand Raw episode the night after this year’s SummerSlam as well as the night after next year’s WrestleMania.
Mark’s reaction: Having two separate announce teams makes a lot of sense and I figured it was going to happen once they announced the brand split. They did it in the past and it helps each brand feel like it has it’s own identity. Smackdown or Raw just need to get rid of Byron Saxton and replace him with someone else, so we have a different three person announce team for each brand.
As far as the two big crossover episodes of Raw that are being planned, I don’t mind it at all. I’m sure some people would rather have WWE just stick exclusively to the rosters of each brand, but it’s only twice a year and it’s the Raw’s after the two biggest pay-per-view events of the year. Those episodes should make for some cool moments too when we have wrestlers from different brands cross paths with each other and tease something down the road. I also don’t think it really lessens the value of Smackdown at all by having the crossover episode on Raw only because Raw is an extra hour, therefore they’ve got more time to share. Also, since Raw is on Monday’s it’s the first WWE show we get after a PPV. It would be a little strange in my eyes to wait a day for Smackdown and then have everyone crossover.