WWE SmackDown: 5 Interesting facts you didn't know about the show
SmackDown celebrated its 20th Anniversary with the move over to The FOX Network back on October 4th and it appears that it has been the dawning of a new era for The Blue Brand, which has always been seen as the second show, in the shadow of WWE's flagship show Monday Night RAW.
Whilst RAW has been airing for much longer than SmackDown, there have been some patches of the brand's past where it has been more popular than WWE's original show. There was also a time when The Brand Split allowed the likes of The Undertaker, Batista, and Rey Mysterio to exclusively ply their trade on SmackDown, which definitely helped with the ratings.
Over the past two decades, SmackDown has created some interesting history and here are just 5 fascinating facts.
#5 SmackDown was originally supposed to be a women's show
SmackDown made its debut back in 1999 and whilst the show was named after The Rock's famous catchphrase, but it wasn't a show that was supposed to include The People's Champion.
According to Bruce Prichard on his Something To Wrestle With Podcast, WWE initially thought about making the show an all-female affair, but there wasn't enough talent around at the time to make it happen.
“We definitely discussed it, we looked at it, but we just didn’t have the depth to do it on a consistent basis week after week."
"We really didn’t have enough talent to do that, and in addition to that, if you were going to do that maybe not do it on the broadcast show because Vince McMahon was looking at that the more eyeballs maybe if this broadcast show takes off to possibly make RAW an all-women’s show, but we definitely discussed that many times throughout the years," he said via Wrestlingnews.