Smark Out Moment

Welcome to another edition of Battle of the Brands from Smark Out Moment, where we compare this week's episodes of Raw and SmackDown and determine which one of the two was the better show.

BATTLE OF THE BRANDS:

RAW vs. SMACKDOWN

FACTOR 1: CROWD

I really thought that the Raw crowd would be a little down with it being Christman Day, but it must have made the perfect present for the holidays. I liked both crowds, and I should've known better with it being Chicago. However, Raw had a better crowd.

WINNER: Raw

FACTOR 2: COMMENTARY

Gah I find myself going back and forth on these two commentary teams every week it seems. This week all I wanted was Graves and Phillips to do both shows by themselves and just be the roaming commentators. I know that won't happen with it being separate shows, but I love the two of them together on the Blue Brand.

WINNER: SmackDown

FACTOR 3: MATCHES

Both shows had some great matches. But I think Raw had the better line-up. Cena is in action, there's a fun IC Title match, and The Bar always does well even against a rag-tag team like Jordan and Rollins. Also, Strowman is awesome.

SmackDown didn't impress me as much even with the awesome main event they had. I was surprised to see Corbin lose in the first round of the United States tourney that shouldn't even be happening, but I'll complain about that later.

WINNER: Raw

FACTOR 4: PROMOS

Samoa Joe stood out to me with the best promo with Renee Young talking about injuring Dean Ambrose. Even though some time off for Dean, even in rough circumstances, is not a bad thing for his character. His return pop will be big time.

SmackDown really only had Bryan starting the United States Championship tournament, which is utterly stupid to begin with.

WINNER: Raw

FACTOR 5: STORYLINES

Okay, so the storyline here is that Dolph has seemingly vacated a title he just won because he didn't return any messages? Really? I think that is ridiculous. I know it has to be some sort of play for him to return later in the tourney, but how dumb is that? To me, it's a little ridiculous. I'm glad to see Shinsuke has officially been put Rumble match, and he is my favorite going into it. Who AJ faces for the belt should be fun with rumblings of Taker returning at the rumble and no clear-cut favorite to face him in my opinion unless its Kevin Owens.

Strowman should win the belt, but he won't. And when he does win it he should keep it for years, but he won't. The guy is a bonafide stud, but with Kane being in the match that is all signs pointed to Strowman losing without being in the decision. At least I hope. I'm not a huge fan of randomly thrown together tag teams like Rollins and Jordan winning the belts, so let us hope for The Revival to save the day. I'm tired of both Absolution and The Riott Squad already but I'm sure they'll play out big in the first Women's Royal Rumble. Here is to hoping Joe is holding main roster gold after the RR too. I think this is easy, Raw has the more intriguing options by far.

WINNER: Raw 

FACTOR 6: SCHEDULING / PACING

SmackDown all day here. I understand there are too many people on the roster to constitute only two hours of Raw, but three seems like way too much still.

WINNER: SmackDown

FACTOR 7: VISUAL PRESENTATION

Bruan Strowman is a real-life monster.

WINNER: Raw

EXTRA CREDIT BONUS ROUND!!!

Nada.

POINT ADJUSTMENTS: Raw (+0 / -0) / SmackDown (+0 / -0)


Even though Raw wasn't that good, they still won. I don't what that says about the product in general either. I think SmackDown could be okay, they just need that other top guy outside of AJ and KO. Just give them one more super star caliber guy that people care about that isn't Randy Orton. Raw gets the 5-2 win here.