WWE.com continues it’s bizarre trend of shooting the internet, and then taking content down before the internet can view it. This past week’s Byte this is the latest example. Micheal Cole and Tazz interrupted Todd Grisham and began to cut an awesome promo. The footage has suspiciously disappeared from the Byte This archives.
Here’s an excerpt:
Cole: That’swhat it’s all about. It’s about Smackdown and this prevailing thing that’srunning around the place that Smackdown is a B-show. It’s absolutely ridiculous.What really irks me is that we had a Smackdown announcer hosting this show.Steve Romero from Smackdown. All of a sudden, you come on board. Big RAW guyhere to save the day! and Steve Romero gets fired.Tazz: Yeah,but it’s nothing against you. Nothing against Todd. I know it kinda seem like ashot. Kinda looked like we hit you in the nuts there, but we didn’t. And evenbefore that, it was Josh. Josh Matthews was hosting it and I had some free time.I’d come in the studio and do Byte This with Josh for a few weeks. Next thing Iknow, Josh gets relieved of his duties. Smackdown guy (referring to Josh).(points to himself) Smackdown guy. They couldn’t fire me because I wasn’tgetting paid to do it anyway. Again, gripe isn’t with you. The gripe is withthe whole perception.
Cole: Andyou know, Tazz, it’s not only WWE.com. Its not just dot com. It’s the magazines.Smackdown Magazine, you know, two years ago whatever it is now, started theirown magazine. You don’t see any announce talent with columns in the magazine.RAW magazine has JR and his hat thing; you got Coach and his column. No announcetalent has anything on Smackdown magazine. I called 325 Smackdown shows, that’sthe equivalent to 25 years of Monday Night Football. I can’t even get a columnin the magazine. Again, it’s not about me. It’s just about the entire perceptionof Smackdown…
Pro Wrestling Insider – Pro Wrestling News Inside & Out
It’s funny how WWE and WWE.com seem to work like two different companies. One doesn’t know what the other is doing.
But anyway, Tazz & Cole bring up a good point. Smackdown’s ratings are not good (the move to Friday’s is probably to blame), but they treat it as a second rate show. It’s like the management puts all their efforts into RAW and then once Smackdown comes along they half-ass it. Then, management will blame the wrestlers, fans, workers etc for the problems, but never look at the real problem, themselves. When Heyman was writing for Smackdown, things were fresh and exciting. I hope the same feeling comes back with Dusty Rhodes’ vision of Smackdown.
I don’t have the solution to this problem, but I do know that Smackdown needs to try something new and fast they need to do it fast.