FOX reportedly wanted rights to WWE's flagship show instead of SmackDown

It appears the blue brand wasn't FOX's first choice

It sounds like if FOX had their way, they would be broadcasting WWE RAW instead of SmackDown.

According to Dave Meltzer on the latest episode of Wrestling Observer Radio, FOX's initial deal with WWE was for RAW, but USA Network had the rights to match any offer, and they did. This prompted FOX to set their sights on Friday nights instead.

However, this caused USA Network to spend so much money on RAW that they weren't willing to get into a bidding war with FOX for the blue brand. Since the deal was finalized in 2019, SmackDown has showcased mainstream talents such as Roman Reigns, Brock Lesnar, and Ronda Rousey.

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At one point, FOX wanted both WWE RAW and SmackDown

In even more shocking news regarding FOX's deal with WWE, on a recent episode of Wrestling with Freddie, it was revealed that at one point, FOX was looking to acquire both brands.

"I haven’t said this before, but I’ll say it now because it has been long enough," Freddie Prinze Jr. said. "I was talking to a dude who was interviewing to be their COO, or they wanted to interview. They ended up going with Nick Khan, he had passed but he wanted to talk to me about the company. So we were just talking about the brand and all this. And he goes ‘yeah, they wanted us to buy the whole product.’ He’s an exec at FOX. He goes ‘they wanted us to buy the whole brand but the number they wanted wasn’t a number we were going to pay, so we licensed SmackDown instead.’"

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Are you shocked to hear that FOX almost landed WWE RAW? What do you think WWE would be like right now if all of their programming were on FOX? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.

Thanks to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription of this podcast.