5 reasons WWE has already done a good job with Survivor Series 2017

#2 It's made SmackDown worth watching

Shane McMahon's declaration of war.

With Jinder Mahal's depressing title reign, a mid-card scene that just wasn't very interesting (even with AJ Styles as US champion for a few months), and a women's division that had long been a directionless cluster, I had tuned out of SmackDown for months. The only highlight of the summer was the tag team division, but that alone wasn't worth spending two hours to watch SmackDown when I could just see what was happening online. The Kevin Owens vs. Shane McMahon feud added some much-needed depth to the show, but it still wasn't enough for me to watch the show every week.

The invasion of RAW changed that. Now there was a compelling reason to watch SmackDown in order to see whether the red show would retaliate and how the blue show would prepare for Survivor Series. So far, things have been quiet, but SmackDown has done a good job by hyping up RAW's counterattack, which will surely happen on next week's go-home show. As Daniel Bryan himself said, "they didn't come...tonight, but they will."

The proof is in the pudding, as the build has led to improved SmackDown ratings for the past few weeks.

It's being beaten to death that "Survivor Series is the only time of the year where RAW and SmackDown meet in head to head competition." So to do that, SmackDown has actually been elevated into an equal adversary for RAW. Now that trend needs to continue beyond Survivor Series, albeit without the constant threat of RAW looming.