YMMV / WWE SmackDown

• Audience-Alienating Era:
  • While SmackDown is usually praised for its wrestling-focused show, the show's roster, and thus, quality, was decimated in 2004. The show lost most of its main players from the previous two years: Brock Lesnar left the company, Chris Benoit went to RAW during his angle, Edge (who missed a year due to neck surgery) returned on RAW rather than SmackDown, The Undertaker began to cut his schedule, and Kurt Angle was injured for most of the summer, shuttling him into a GM role. Their once-vaunted tag team division was now reduced to the Dudley Boys (with one foot out the door in the company), Rico & Charlie Haas, and Billy Gunn & Hardcore Holly. The Cruiserweight Division, one of the unique staples of the Blue Brand, was phased out due to Vince's concerns over their frequent injuries due to the heavy schedule, and ended up going into the hands of Jacqueline, Chavo Guerrero Senior, and Chavo Jr. winning it back from Jacky with one hand behind his back (on PPV). Their newcomers mostly flamed out in that time span; while they hit a home run with rookies like Brock Lesnar and John Cena in 2002, new faces like Mordecai, Rene Dupree, Kenzo Suzuki, and Nathan Jones all failed to make an impact. And finally, you had Tough Enough 4, which played out like a male version of the Diva Search rather than the well-received reality show of before. The show got so bad that Scott Keith ended his run of doing reviews of the show and the show's fall arguably helped the company fall out of favor with the IWC for several years.
  • The PG-era and the end of the Brand Extension arguably made matters even worse; things of any major significance to the plot of a storyline rarely, if ever, happened on SmackDown anymore, and wrestlers appeared on both shows as they pleased. Things didn't get better until the second brand extension started. While initially off to a rocky start, it only took two weeks for it to be considered better than Raw almost nigh-universally.
  • While nowhere near as drastic, many feel SmackDown has fallen firmly back into "B-Show" territory after WrestleMania 33; the loss of talents like Dean Ambrose and The Miz (and with them their feud for the Intercontinental Championship) was bad enough for many, but the writing is widely agreed to have taken a sharp downturn in quality on top of Jinder Mahal becoming WWE Champion in a reign which, if it wasn't already, has quickly become known as a debatable all time low for the championship. This largely ended along with both the end of Jinder Mahal's title reign and the rise of The Usos as one of the most popular tag teams in the company as a whole, as well as Shinsuke Nakamura's ascent to the main event.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Both its midcard and the show as a whole. SmackDown offers more in-ring wrestling than promo-heavy Raw, meaning some of the company's underlooked talent get a lot of time to shine by putting on some stellar 10-15 minute matches, and the emphasis on matches over promos tend to be a reason why the IWC usually favors it over Raw. The tag-team division in 2002, dubbed the "SmackDown Six" by the IWC, also gained notoriety for putting on some incredible matches with each other in either singles or team competition, consisting of a murderer's row of talent including Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, Edge (breaking through as a singles star), Rey Mysterio (back when his knees were healthy and could fly around the ring), Eddie Guerrero and his nephew Chavo Guerrero.
  • During the fall of 2016, Heath Slater and James Ellsworth became immediate fan favorites. Despite no longer wrestling, Daniel Bryan's position as GM has been very favorably received.
  • Once the Smackdown Women's Championship was established, the division itself became a very highly anticipated part. Where the Raw women suffered from horrible repetitive booking, and NXT at the time was struggling from a lot of mass call-ups, SmackDown found a way to utilise all of its women and develop characters for them. Elimination Chamber 2017 in particular featured three highly anticipated women's matches across the card.
  • In the summer of 2017, Breezango emerged as fan favorites due to their "Fashion Police" gimmick and hilarious skits that show off their incredible comedic talents and add a little bit of silliness in the ultra-serious world of sports entertainment and for demonstrating some genuinely funny comedy when for years Raw's attempts at comedy skits have been considered to have fell flat.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "The Blue Brand" due to its blue colour scheme.
  • The six hard-working men (Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, Edge, Rey Mysterio, Eddie Guerrero and Chavo Guerrero) who are considered to have made SmackDown fun to watch during the beginning of the first brand extension were nicknamed "The SmackDown Six".
  • The six hard-working women who created a fun women's division in 2016 (Becky Lynch, Naomi, Nikki Bella, Carmella, Alexa Bliss and Natalya) are nicknamed "The New SmackDown Six".

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