Smark Out Moment

Welcome to another edition of Battle of the Brands from Smark Out Moment, where we compare this week's episodes of Raw and SmackDown and determine which one of the two was the better show.

BATTLE OF THE BRANDS:

RAW vs. SMACKDOWN

FACTOR 1: CROWD

From my memory, the Raw crowd was hotter, but it really seemed about the same to me.

WINNER: Raw

FACTOR 2: COMMENTARY

Very slight advantage to the Raw team for simply pulling an extra hour of duty, while the SmackDown crew did just as little to wow me, but didn't have to do as much work.

WINNER: Raw

FACTOR 3: MATCHES

The blue brand takes this for me due to the women's Triple Threat main event and The Usos vs. The Bar.

WINNER: SmackDown

FACTOR 4: PROMOS

I really kind of can't stand most promos anymore on either show in a lot of ways, but let's just give this one to SmackDown for what Bryan did at the beginning.

WINNER: SmackDown

FACTOR 5: STORYLINES

With Raw, I feel like they thought having one fight go throughout the whole thing was good enough, and I wasn't all that intrigued by it, so that and the Strowman/Lesnar thing just zapped their points away.

WINNER: SmackDown

FACTOR 6: SCHEDULING / PACING

There's a lull patch of Raw in the second hour that prevents me from giving them the point. That whole thing with Strowman and Lesnar, followed by the Jinder Mahal promo, followed by A Moment of Bliss...nope.

WINNER: SmackDown

FACTOR 7: VISUAL PRESENTATION

They're the same, aren't they? I think we need to retool this segment a bit and possibly get rid of this element and replace it with something else.

WINNER: Raw / SmackDown (tie)

EXTRA CREDIT BONUS ROUND!!!

Raw loses a point for the handling of EC3 and Lacey Evans, another point for The Revival not winning the titles and them just dragging out a crappy storyline like that, and for the Lesnar lack of anything. Raw gains a point for actually having a Falls Count Anywhere match instead of a Street Fight or Extreme Rules gimmick.

SmackDown stays the same. No extra or negative points.

POINT ADJUSTMENTS: Raw (+1 / -3) / SmackDown (+0 / -0)


These shows are so similar all the time that it's really hard nowadays to determine which is better, because it's homogenized and it almost comes off more like 5 hours of the same show, instead of 3 hours of one and 2 of another. But with SmackDown being the tighter show, they tend to get the point across more efficiently to me.