Raw drew 3.153 million viewers as Smackdown drew 2.479 million viewers.
Smackdown has had a heavy focus over the last few months on James Ellsworth and of course that remains the case, even if Ellsworth has changed a little himself recently. I’ve been a fan of Ellsworth’s presence on the show as of late, although I am slightly worried about how Ellsworth was coming off this week. I’d thought after TLC that Ellsworth was going to be more of a villain however on Smackdown this week Ellsworth more so just came off as naïve and delusional. To me he just hadn’t seemed to of changed very much and if we are basically just going to get the same James Ellsworth I’m afraid I might become bored of it. I keep thinking that Ellsworth would be fun if he was showing a similar character to that of Bo Dallas when Bo was in NXT. He thinks he is really great and thinks that fans love him, yet he still does villainous things to actually give fans a reason to boo him.
On Raw it was announced that Sasha Banks would defend her Women’s Championship against Charlotte in an iron man match at Roadblock. Now these two certainly do have their work cut out for them in order to outdo the previous womens iron man match, which of course was Bayley Vs Sasha Banks, however I believe they can do it. Now of course it will be impossible for some people to be convinced that this match was better, the nostalgia of the first match plus the fact it was in NXT and was a first time ever at the time will mean it will forever be held out of reach by some but as someone who has probably enjoyed the feud between the two more than others, I think they can have an awesome match. I’ve been confused as to why people are frustrated with this feud going so long as it seemed all people wanted a few years back were longer feuds. Nonetheless, I can see how people have felt it has been awfully predictable that Sasha wins on Raw and Charlotte on pay per views but I’ve enjoyed the feud. I would agree that this should be the last match between the two, simply because Bayley is doing nothing at the moment and it’s probably to insert her into this picture.
The combination of the Wyatt’s and Randy Orton continues to be one of my favourite things in wrestling. All three of the guys involved are fantastic at what they do, with Orton in particular being in my opinion underappreciated as on his day he truly is one of the very best in the world. Unfortunately there isn’t a great amount of tag teams for these guys to compete with on Smackdown. I maintained after the draft that there were a lot of teams with potential of being rehabilitated on the Smackdown brand. Unfortunately, only the Uso’s have really had that pleasure. American Alpha still remains a fantastic team but outside of those three teams, there isn’t too much competition. The Hype Bros could be a good short term feud between pay per views for Wyatt and Orton, although I very much see the future of this team being a series of matches against American Alpha, which if they end up being like the match they had on Smackdown a few weeks ago, could be a fantastic feud. I’d like to see some tag teams begin to move up from NXT soon. Raw has a decent wealth of teams: New Day, Anderson and Gallows, Enzo and Cass and Sheamus and Cesaro are all very good and you could make up 1 or 2 very capable teams from the Cruiserweights if you desired. So I’d very much like to see the Revival debut on the Smackdown brand fairly soon which would begin building on the division.
The main event scene on Raw at the moment is a little odd. In theory, I’d imagine I would enjoy it, although it has kind of fallen flat for me. Much of this is down to the fact that Royal Rumble and the road to Wrestlemania is fast approaching. Which means I have this feeling of kind of wanting to get through what is currently going on and get to the Rumble. Additionally, a lot of people have not been happy with the WWE’s treatment of the US title. The title has been an afterthought as Roman Reigns has went after Kevin Owens and his Universal title. The thought when Reigns won the title was that he would do as Cena did, and elevate the title. Sadly this has not really been the case, the title has felt forgotten and I’d honestly think that with the amount of talent on Raw, there were plenty of other guys the title would have been more useful on.
I could see Raw going up a little in viewership next week, whereas Smackdown could potentially fall a little.
