WWE has a huge deal in place for television contracts coming up next year. Starting in October 2019, Raw will remain on USA Network but SmackDown Live is moving to Fridays on Fox’s main network channel. This is a huge deal and will mean and extra $1 billion coming to WWE for the next 5 years.
Joe Peisich said on Barnburner’s No Holds Barred podcast that he’s heard a rumor that WWE might be considering something big in order to make sure the top stars are available for this new deal.
“The TV networks want programming. They want programming from WWE. They want programming from all of this. So they got SmackDown. WWE’s going to have a re-draft and push all the main stars on SmackDown. In fact, I’ve heard there may not be a Raw/SmackDown all the guys who are in WWE show up for Raw, for SmackDown — forget about a brand split or whatever.”
“I’m not saying the brand split is going to stop, but I heard that. There’s a million rumors you hear a day, especially with wrestling. But Fox wants content.”
If you consider the idea that Raw and SmackDown will be on 2 different networks and the Blue Brand will be on Fox where there will more viewers just because it’s a major network, it’s been said that SmackDown will become the A-Show anyway. Therefore, it stands to reason that if WWE is going to nix the brand split then October 2019 might be a perfect time to do it,
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