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SmackDown for a long time used to be considered the brand in WWE where some of the best action happen, but recently the product SmackDown has put out each week has gotten bad.
The quality has just gotten stale with the same things getting dished out again and again and again, and even the SmackDown brand's competitiveness has taken a massive hit. It got mauled by Raw on Survivor Series, and to be honest, even this week's Monday Night Raw was a much better edition than the same stale (even boring) content SmackDown dished out.
Slowly but steadily, it does look like WWE is putting in considerably lesser time on the content for SmackDown as compared to Raw, and it won't be a far-off call to say that SmackDown as a brand is actually dying. Here are a few reasons why.
#1 No mention of the "6-0" whitewash by Raw on Survivor Series
This was built up on Sunday night by Shane McMahon when he tweeted after the Survivor Series PPV that "actions need to taken", in reference to the mauling SmackDown got at the hands of Raw.
The same thing was highlighted by the official WWE account that Shane McMahon will come on Miz TV to address the 6-0 defeat for the SmackDown roster at Survivor Series.
Shane did come on Miz TV on SmackDown, but did he address the 6-0 defeat? No. Did he talk about actions that need to be taken? No. In fact, that score and storyline were completely forgotten, and we had Miz trying to woo Shane to become his tag team partner.
It could be a good storyline to develop for WWE, but a viewer would question why there were no repercussions following such an embarrassing outcome? Does SmackDown not take itself that seriously either?
#2 Stars like Shinsuke Nakamura and Samoa Joe wasted
Which was the last meaningful feud for Shinsuke Nakamura on SmackDown? What was the last meaningful thing Samoa Joe did on SmackDown other than acting as a replacement for Daniel Bryan and losing again to AJ Styles?
If you talk about the SmackDown roster, then Nakamura and Samoa Joe would have to be among the top wrestlers present in that roster. But then if you compare that with the amount of time both of them are getting on the main show, it just doesn't correlate.
Nakamura has been neglected to such an extent that the US Championship belt he carries has just become a joke, as no one wants anything to do with it. Samoa Joe on the other hand hardly features. The last time he was on TV, he got pinned by Drew Mcintyre in no time.
When two their biggest stars do nothing but warm the bench, we need to ask what they are really doing with the show.
#3 The tag team division is in the dumps
The tag team division these days consists of The New Day and The Bar. That's it. There's no one else there because all we have seen for the last one month is so many different variations of "The New Day vs The Bar" that putting the whole thing down as boring would be the easy way out.
Sometimes it's one of them fighting the other. Sometimes it's two on two, sometimes three on three. This week's edition was a Thanksgiving Special by the way. It's a feud that has lost significance just a bit too long ago.
The fact that there are actually tag teams like "Sanity" and "The Good Brothers" on the roster and they're still not doing anything with them rather than just going back and forth with the same combo, shows how unimaginative and stale the writing has become.
#4 The WWE Championship lacks credibility now
Survivor Series 2017, Brock Lesnar beats AJ Styles in what was a pretty one-sided match where AJ Styles was thrown around the ring, he put in some offense, but ultimately a Brock Lesnar F-5 put an end to it.
Survivor Series 2018, Brock Lesnar beats Daniel Bryan in what was a pretty similar match-up to the one that played out with AJ Styles, as once again Brock just toyed with the WWE Champion throughout the match, then put an end to it.
On a consistent basis if the WWE Champion gets toyed with by the Universal Champion, it does undermine the value of the main prize on SmackDown. To add to it, you compare the stars fighting for the WWE Championship, and compare it with the stars fighting for the Universal Championship, you see what a huge gulf there is between the two.
