WWE: It took 20 years, but Smackdown is the flagship show

The upcoming week for the WWE is one of the most important ones in the history of the company. Smackdown is moving to FOX starting Friday, NXT is going full two hours on USA, and there will be new announcers for Raw and Smackdown. It was announced a few days ago that the new announcing team for Raw is Vic Joseph ( 205 Live), Dio Maddin (205 Live) and WWE Hall of Famer Jerry “The King” Lawler. On the flip side, Smackdown’s new team will be Michael Cole, Corey Graves, and Renee Young. It seems that Tom Phillips was the odd man out. It will be interesting to see where he ends up. NXT will have the same announcers.

For most of the history of Smackdown, they have always been looked at as the second show. In one week, I am becoming a firm believer that Smackdown will be looked at as the top show when it comes to the main roster. There are fans who have made the argument that NXT is the top brand in all of the WWE. For the sake of my argument, I am looking at the main roster. Let’s look at the fact that FOX is putting a lot of money into this show. While the executives of FOX may not be avid wrestling fans, they aren’t going to spend money on something that has no potential.

For starters, I am looking at Smackdown differently after reading that Brock Lesnar will more than likely be the one to defeat Kofi Kingston when they debut on FOX this Friday. But there’s been so much put into this show that it would be tough for fans to look at RAW as the top show. It’s been known that Smackdown has always been the wrestler’s show.

I guess it took for a major mainstream network to get behind Smackdown to have it not be the shadow of Raw.