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WWE SmackDown found himself once again in the Extreme Rules when Randy Orton returned after an absence of two months and made the move to the dark side.
Credit: WWE.com
"The Viper" has long been letting know that he prefers to be a stub, and he got his wish when he turned on Jeff Hardy at Sunday's pay-per-view, and then attacked Hardy in a vicious way Now Orton joins Shinsuke Nakamura, The Miz, Samoa Joe and Rusev on a Stacked Heel of SmackDown, and it's certainly not a bad thing for the Blue Mark to load his list with However, SmackDown inadvertently created a major problem: it does not have enough high-level babyfaces.
Jeff Hardy has recently been dealing with a series of injuries, including a lumbar who even prevented him from using the Swanton bomb and a nerve injury. which caused numbness in his fingers, SmackDown is es AJS and Daniel Bryan, who have recently been positioned in the tag team division, have been up to now two healthy babyfaces.
Ironically, SmackDown's lack of viable babyfaces is exactly the opposite of Raw's problem.
The red mark has recently suffered from an obvious lack of high heels. Sami Zayn's injury, Brock Lesnar's frequent absences and a poorly constructed post-Superstar Shakeup training led WWE to heavily rely on Kevin Owens, Dolph Ziggler and Baron Corbin as his best villains, Did not really work. as well as the three stars have undoubtedly left Extreme Rules look worse than when they entered. Conversely, Raw's babyface list is absolutely stacked. There are many of the company's most popular stars and best-selling merchants, including Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Finn Balor and Braun Strowman, creating an imbalance between babyfaces and heels on Mondays evenings
Merciless Talent Again, SmackDown also finds itself with an unbalanced list that has too many heels and not enough quality babyfaces in the singles division
Of course, the entire focal point of professional wrestling should be the battle of the Well vs The Evil, and one of the possible explanations for the recent drop in the WWE TV audience is the lack of really fascinating quarrels between the heels and the babyfaces. Raw is not far from reaching its lowest audience of all time and SmackDown has just generated its second worst number of viewers since it moved to Tuesday in 2016, which may be due to a lack of interest in stories
But WWE managed to dig a deeper hole at Extreme Rules.
Perhaps because Orton is working a reduced schedule this year, is firmly anchored in the role The WWE seems to be comfortable with decorating Orton in a heel-like role if this further aggravates the ongoing problems created by already unbalanced alignments. This problem has hit Raw in recent months as Reigns, Strowman, Rollins and Balor have struggled to find the best way to compete with them.
Although the heel / babyface imbalance has not been solved as seen on SmackDown, at least in part because the show is only two hours away, the problem only makes it worse. to worsen to go from the front. Although some reports indicate that Daniel Bryan re-signed with WWE there is no definitive word yet to say if this is true, which has already placed WWE in an uncomfortable position with his creative direction. Bryan, that the company may not want to book if it does not stay permanently in the company.
The Bryan couple's uncertain future with Orton's heel and the litany of Hardy's wounds, and SmackDown, although it has enormous potential. The list on paper, will have to make some serious changes to its reservation and its characters to update the current construction of its list. A couple of steps that might be able to help in this regard would be to give a more serious push to Andrade "Cien" Almas and potentially turn off Rogue babyface, the latter is an obvious decision anyway given the capabilities of Rusev as a merchandise mover and his undeniable popularity.
If WWE does not decide to make at least one or two major changes to fix its babyface / heel alignment, WWE can only see that SmackDown is suffering the same fate as Raw: a list that is Even though WWE can not Go back in time and erase Orton's apparent stub at Extreme Rules (which should not be because Orton is a phenomenal villain), Rusev turns around, pushing Almas. and potentially pushing the members of The New Day as individual singles individuals could do a lot to remedy what could become a major problem for SmackDown if no other changes are made.
Blake Oestriecher is a primary school teacher by day and a sports writer by night. He is a contributor to @ForbesSports where he mainly covers the WWE. You can follow him on Twitter @BOestriecher .
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WWE SmackDown was again found a new heel at Extreme Rules when Randy Orton returned after an absence of two months and made the trip to the" The Viper "long let it be known that He prefers to be a heel, and he got his wish when he turned on Jeff Hardy at Sunday's pay-per-view, and then attacked Hardy viciously on this week's SmackDown Now, Orton joins Shinsuke Nakamura , The Miz, Samoa Joe and Rusev on a stacked stub of SmackDown, and it's certainly not a bad thing for the blue brand to load its list with quality baddies. SmackDown's is inadvertently created a major problem: it's not enough good parts of baby.
Jeff Hardy has recently been the victim of a series of injuries, including a lower back injury that has him even prevented from using the Swanton bomb, a nerve injury that caused numbness in his fingers, SmackDo Wn is essentially reduced to only two healthy babyfaces in AJ Styles and Daniel Bryan, the latter was recently positioned in the tag team division
Ironically, the lack of viable babyfaces SmackDown is exactly the same. same problem as Raw.
The red mark has recently been plagued by an obvious lack of high heels. Sami Zayn's injury, Brock Lesnar's frequent absences and a poorly constructed post-Superstar Shakeup training led WWE to heavily rely on Kevin Owens, Dolph Ziggler and Baron Corbin as his best villains, Did not really work. as well as the three stars have undoubtedly left Extreme Rules look worse than when they entered. Conversely, Raw's babyface list is absolutely stacked. There are many of the company's most popular stars and best-selling merchants, including Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Finn Balor and Braun Strowman, creating an imbalance between babyfaces and heels on Mondays evenings
Ruthless heel, SmackDown is left with an unbalanced alignment with too many heels and not enough quality babyfaces in the singles division
Of course, the whole focal point of professional wrestling should be the battle of good vs. evil, and one of the possible explanations for the recent drop in the WWE TV audience is the lack of really fascinating quarrels between heels and babyfaces. Raw is not far from reaching its lowest audience of all time and SmackDown has just generated its second worst number of viewers since it moved to Tuesday in 2016, which may be due to a lack of interest in stories
But WWE managed to dig a deeper hole at Extreme Rules.
Perhaps because Orton is working a reduced schedule this year, is firmly anchored in the role The WWE seems to be comfortable with decorating Orton in a heel-like role if this further aggravates the ongoing problems created by already unbalanced alignments. This problem has hit Raw in recent months as Reigns, Strowman, Rollins and Balor have struggled to find the best way to compete with them.
Although the heel / babyface imbalance has not been solved as seen on SmackDown, at least in part because the show is only two hours away, the problem only makes it worse. to worsen to go from the front. Although some reports indicate that Daniel Bryan re-signed with WWE there is no definitive word yet to say if this is true, which has already placed WWE in an uncomfortable position with his creative direction. Bryan, that the company may not want to book if it does not stay permanently in the company.
The Bryan couple's uncertain future with Orton's heel and the litany of Hardy's wounds, and SmackDown, although it has enormous potential. The list on paper, will have to make some serious changes to its reservation and its characters to update the current construction of its list. A couple of steps that might be able to help in this regard would be to give a more serious push to Andrade "Cien" Almas and potentially turn off Rogue babyface, the latter is an obvious decision anyway given the capabilities of Rusev as a merchandise mover and his undeniable popularity.
If WWE does not decide to make at least one or two major changes to fix its babyface / heel alignment, WWE can only see that SmackDown is suffering the same fate as Raw: a list that is Even though WWE can not Go back in time and erase Orton's apparent stub at Extreme Rules (which should not be because Orton is a phenomenal villain), Rusev turns around, pushing Almas. and potentially pushing the members of The New Day as individual singles individuals could do a lot to remedy what could become a major problem for SmackDown if no other changes are made.
Blake Oestriecher is a primary school teacher by day and a sports writer by night. He is a contributor to @ForbesSports where he mainly covers the WWE. You can follow him on Twitter @BOestriecher .
