During the 2020 WWE Draft, a big angle from Monday Night RAW was moved to Friday Night Smackdown. The Rey Mysterio-Seth Rollins feud that also involves Murphy and the Mysterio family has switched brands.
The move leaves Smackdown with several key angles: Roman Reigns as the Tribal Chief, Mysterio-Rollins, and Bayley-Sasha Banks. Daniel Bryan is also set to return to Smackdown on tonight’s show.
According to a recent report from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the reason WWE has these big angles on Smackdown and not RAW is that they have more motivation to keep Fox happy than the USA Network.
“It was noted to us by one key person in WWE that having the three big angles all on Smackdown was on purpose because Raw is a lock on USA no matter what because they need the show or USA Network collapses in the ratings,” wrote Dave Meltzer. “FOX doesn’t need Smackdown.”
RAW does still has several big angles on the show. After the draft, the Bray Wyatt and Alexa Bliss angle was moved to Monday nights. The Retribution angle with Mustafa Ali as the leader of the group (and T-Bar on social media) is also a major angle exclusive to RAW. Braun Strowman, AJ Styles, and Matt Riddle all moved to RAW from Smackdown as well.
