Welcome to another eWrestlingNews Question of the Day!
As reported, WrestleVotes Radio indicated starting January 3, 2025, Friday Night SmackDown will become a three-hour program. While Monday Night Raw will temporarily be two hours up until January 1st, it will also go back to its three-hour format once the Netflix deal kicks in. This means WWE will upgrade to now eight hours of main programming per week, with extra time if you count WWE Main Event and NXT Level Up, assuming those will continue as-is.
My question for you today is “What do you think about this idea of expanding SmackDown to 3 hours? Are you for it, against it, indifferent to it?”
Remember to answer with your response in the comments below.
Ugh. There’s something to be said about too much of a good thing. Oversaturation does happen, and I’m already packed with pro wrestling every week without even watching some of these shows.
For reference, I watch Raw, NXT, SmackDown, and Dynamite, no matter what. I’ll catch Collision and Rampage here and there, but not enough happens on those shows to justify it most of the time. Ring of Honor, Level Up, and Main Event? Forget about it. That goes double for TNA Impact, New Japan, MLW Fusion, NWA Powerrr, and so on. I just do not have enough time in a week, nor the patience, nor the obsession. Pro wrestling takes over so much of my day every day of the week that I also just need a break from it to explore other things I’m interested in.
Adding a third hour to SmackDown is going to make it even harder for me to get that sense of a break, and I’m going to find myself wanting to start recording SmackDown and watching it at 9 o’clock or so just to skip through some of the filler content like I’ve done before. Or I’ll apply that to Raw and/or Dynamite.
I’m hoping this isn’t actually true, as I think it would be even better if Raw went to 2 hours, rather than for SmackDown to gain an extra one.
But let’s say it does happen, and let’s look on the glass half full side of it, rather than glass half empty. The positive would be more screen time for more talent, as that’s always the case.
That means it is likely we’ll see more people called up from the NXT roster, which then means we’ll see more signings as well, as WWE will inevitably reach a point where they realize they need to have a more steady influx of talent to replace the ones who are injured and the ones who graduate to the main roster.
I’m sure I’ll revisit this idea in the coming months if and when this gets confirmed to talk about potential names who could go from NXT to SmackDown, as much could change in the next few months with people’s placements on the card and their progression in their careers. Guys like Gallus, for example, have been in NXT long enough that they might as well just go to the main roster already, though I’d pair them with Drew McIntyre on Raw and probably shuffle some other cards in the deck instead of putting them on the blue brand. Guys like Trick Williams, Ethan Page, Oba Femi, even Lexis King would do fine on the main roster, but it’s a balancing act where NXT can’t lose all of the big time players, especially if Williams wins back the NXT Championship. One person I could absolutely see thriving once leaving NXT would be Tony D’Angelo, but I don’t know if I’d trust Adriana Rizzo, Stacks and Luca Crusifino to join him, nor do I think it’d be a good idea to bring him up without them, so that’s tough.
Even more so, though, I think if we get an extra hour of television added to the weekly lineup, WWE needs to also create women’s midcard titles and absolutely has to establish better feuds for the women’s division as a whole. There will be even less of an excuse not to utilize more female Superstars, and if that doesn’t happen, it’ll be a tell tale sign there’s a bias afoot and not a matter of allocating time.
Overall, I don’t want a third hour on SmackDown. I want Raw to go back to 2 and stay there. But if a third hour does get added to SmackDown, I at least want WWE to find ways to make it easy to watch, rather than to just drag stuff out insufferably for 60 minutes more of filler and commercials and recaps.
What do you think? Drop your thoughts below!