Credit: WWE.comCredit: WWE.com
The ongoing feud between the SmackDown Commissioner and the show's General Manager has dominated the blue brand in recent months, with no signs of that changing anytime soon. Take, for example, last week's edition of SmackDown, which featured a nearly 15-minute opening promo exchange involving Shane, Bryan and AJ Styles that could have been done in two minutes and also led to those three stars, plus Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn, taking up the entire last half hour of a two-hour show. Or how about this week's episode? Once again, it was more of the same.
It looks like this feud between Bryan and Shane will ultimately extend all the way to WrestleMania 34 as reports indicate that Shane will team up with another star to take on Owens and Zayn at the biggest pay-per-view of the year. Of course, the feud that is consuming virtually the entire SmackDown brand has now taken over the WWE Championship picture as well, with Styles becoming an afterthought in a lazily booked storyline that really can't have a long-term payoff.
If this monotonous feud was leading to the in-ring return of Daniel Bryan, that would make sense as the end goal of this rivalry, but with Bryan still not cleared to wrestle, all this feud has done is highlight WWE's glaring age problem and its obsession with paying Shane big bucks at the expense of pushing rising stars who badly need the TV time that he's dominating.
Now, Styles is going down with him.
For four straight weeks after Styles won the WWE Championship last November, SmackDown's TV viewership increased, marking just the second time that happened in 2017, with the only other time coming during WrestleMania season. When WWE finally transitioned the title off of Jinder Mahal and onto Styles, who is clearly the most popular star on SmackDown, there was a definite buzz and excitement in the air about the future of SmackDown.
That stemmed from fan desire to Styles where he belongs, which is at the top of the card. According to the January 1st edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Styles main evented the fifth most shows that attracted at least 10,000 fans in 2017, while his strong YouTube viewership last year demonstrated why SmackDown really is the house that AJ Styles built.
In other words, Styles should be the centerpiece of SmackDown, rather than a bit player in Shane vs. Bryan.
">WWE SmackDown might as well be called "The Daniel Bryan and Shane McMahon" show because that's exactly what it has become.
Credit: WWE.comCredit: WWE.com
The ongoing feud between the SmackDown Commissioner and the show's General Manager has dominated the blue brand in recent months, with no signs of that changing anytime soon. Take, for example, last week's edition of SmackDown, which featured a nearly 15-minute opening promo exchange involving Shane, Bryan and AJ Styles that could have been done in two minutes and also led to those three stars, plus Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn, taking up the entire last half hour of a two-hour show. Or how about this week's episode? Once again, it was more of the same.
It looks like this feud between Bryan and Shane will ultimately extend all the way to WrestleMania 34 as reports indicate that Shane will team up with another star to take on Owens and Zayn at the biggest pay-per-view of the year. Of course, the feud that is consuming virtually the entire SmackDown brand has now taken over the WWE Championship picture as well, with Styles becoming an afterthought in a lazily booked storyline that really can't have a long-term payoff.
If this monotonous feud was leading to the in-ring return of Daniel Bryan, that would make sense as the end goal of this rivalry, but with Bryan still not cleared to wrestle, all this feud has done is highlight WWE's glaring age problem and its obsession with paying Shane big bucks at the expense of pushing rising stars who badly need the TV time that he's dominating.
Now, Styles is going down with him.
For four straight weeks after Styles won the WWE Championship last November, SmackDown's TV viewership increased, marking just the second time that happened in 2017, with the only other time coming during WrestleMania season. When WWE finally transitioned the title off of Jinder Mahal and onto Styles, who is clearly the most popular star on SmackDown, there was a definite buzz and excitement in the air about the future of SmackDown.
That stemmed from fan desire to Styles where he belongs, which is at the top of the card. According to the January 1st edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Styles main evented the fifth most shows that attracted at least 10,000 fans in 2017, while his strong YouTube viewership last year demonstrated why SmackDown really is the house that AJ Styles built.
In other words, Styles should be the centerpiece of SmackDown, rather than a bit player in Shane vs. Bryan.
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