When I looked at the Raw roster today, it currently had 30 wrestlers. Considering one of them is Lita, you have 29. Also one of them is Terri, so you have really 28 active wrestlers on the RAW roster.
Of those 28, 25 male, 3 female. Can this brand actually be entertaining for 3 hours of weekly wrestling with such a small roster?
Smackdown currently has 36 and will probably add one more next week (Shannon Moore?) and one down the road (Mysterio).
So what should the Raw brand do? BTW, put the brands back together at this time is not feasible at this time.
I imagine Kanyon, Mike Awesome, and Rhyno will enter the RAW brand once healthy. Does anyone know how much longer they will be out?
Hogan: Whatcha gonna do Undertaker when me and all the World Wrestling Entertainment fans run wild on you.
The WWF^HE is interested in pairing Arn Anderson with Chris Benoit once Benoit returns this Summer. The hitch in the plan, however, is that Benoit's on Smackdown, and Arn's on Raw. So a trade of some sorts can be made, and Benoit's easily inserted into the upper midcard, at least.
Rhyno would be another good fit for Raw. Kanyon could go either way, and Smackdown's likely to inherit Moore, Rey Jr., and Jamie Knoble soon.
To be specific, here's the RAW roster as it currently stands (w/o Perfect and Hall):
ACTIVE/SEMI-ACTIVE: "Stone Cold" Steve Austin Big Bossman The Big Show Booker T Bradshaw D'Lo Brown Justin Credible Tommy Dreamer Bubba Ray Dudley Ric Flair Goldust Eddy Guerrero Jeff Hardy Matt Hardy **Hulk Hogan** Crash Holly Brock Lesnar Raven William Regal Shawn Stasiak The Undertaker Rob Van Dam X-Pac
INJURED: Spike Dudley (worked, most likely) Kane Lita Kevin Nash (although he's still got an on-air role)
I don't know how much Mr. Perfect and Scott Hall really brought to the table, as the former was a glorified jobber at this point, and the latter was, well, Scott Hall.
Thusfar, they've gotten by just fine with this roster, and it's a good bit deeper than the one they had in '98 when they hit the mainstream, so I wouldn't sound any funeral bells just yet.
In fact, it's actually a good thing, considering pretty much every one of those guys is involved in some angle or another... (Even guys like Tommy Dreamer and Crash Holly are involved in the constant schmoz that is the Hardcore division. The only guy up there who's doing absolutely nothing is the Bossman, and, well, who cares?) For some reason, Smackdown can't seem to find anything to do with a lot of talented guys (Christian, Lance Storm, Faarooq, Val Venis, Funaki - well, they're never going to actually do something with Funaki, but...),
"It's a sad day when mocking one's opponent via midget becomes an acceptable form of entertainment." --Lance Storm
The WWF^HE is interested in pairing Arn Anderson with Chris Benoit once Benoit returns this Summer.
1. According to whom? and 2. Why? Benoit has advanced his mic skills lightyears ahead of what he entered the WWF with (yet still will never again hit his WCW peak- "Talk to the hand, cuz the man don't understand.")
After reading this thread I did a little research on who has really worked matches for each roster over the last four weeks. Raw has 30 "superstars" listed on their website. They have one wrestler that has been active but is not listed (Flair) and four that are listed but have not been active (Three because of injuries, and one because she's Terri--unless you count a swimsuit contest as a "match"). This gives a total of 27 active wrestlers on the Raw side. The smackdown web page lists 36 superstars. One wrestler has been active but is not listed (Chavo, not sure why not), and eight that are listed but have not been active (Four due to injury, in DDP's case probably career ending, one due to his movie career, and three due to being valets. The two girls will hopefully remain inactive, but Deacon Bautista may transition to active wrestler anytime.) This gives Smackdown! just 29 active wrestlers, only 2 more than Raw. Not as big a discrepancy as originally thought.
Also for each show about 17 of them could be described as "A" show regulars. (I'm not counting showing up for a Hardcore Title schmozz or betting on Mark Henry.) Plus Jazz should count as a regular for Raw and Hogan for SD!
Another interesting thing that I noticed when looking over the match stats is that one wrestler has been in the main event for his show all 4 weeks. It's not Austin, not HHH, it's Jericho! Hogan has been in 4 main events, too, but split between two different shows.
sergei
"I tear my quadracep all the time! I tore it this morning, I'm fine!"-- Kurt Angle
Rhyno whould be on RAW just because I like Rhyno and I like RAW. Kanyon should also be on RAW as he is a top notch IC guy that could put on great matches with Eddy, RVD, Booker T and even a Hardy. Benoit should also be another RAW guy, either as some kind of Flair hitman or Horseman type of character. Plus it would lead to a pretty damn good PPV match which WCW missed the boat on, Flair vs Benoit. It may not be as good as it could have been at this point in time, but still a damn good match none the less.
As for Smackdown, well, it's such a clusterfuck at this point I don't know where to really start.
I think a smaller roster helps everyone. It forces the writers to come up with something to do for more people (even if it is mostly glorified time killing, at least they're doing something). Plus, it turns Heat and to a lesser extent Metal into watchable, somewhat important shows, as there has been *gasp* undercard angles developing and advancing on these shows, with some of them finally woring they're way onto the main shows (Lance and Val, for example). That's good stuff.
"I'm bi a lot of things, but lingual's not one of them."
Originally posted by sergeialAfter reading this thread I did a little research on who has really worked matches for each roster over the last four weeks. Raw has 30 "superstars" listed on their website. They have one wrestler that has been active but is not listed (Flair) and four that are listed but have not been active (Three because of injuries, and one because she's Terri--unless you count a swimsuit contest as a "match"). This gives a total of 27 active wrestlers on the Raw side. The smackdown web page lists 36 superstars. One wrestler has been active but is not listed (Chavo, not sure why not), and eight that are listed but have not been active (Four due to injury, in DDP's case probably career ending, one due to his movie career, and three due to being valets. The two girls will hopefully remain inactive, but Deacon Bautista may transition to active wrestler anytime.) This gives Smackdown! just 29 active wrestlers, only 2 more than Raw. Not as big a discrepancy as originally thought.
Also for each show about 17 of them could be described as "A" show regulars. (I'm not counting showing up for a Hardcore Title schmozz or betting on Mark Henry.) Plus Jazz should count as a regular for Raw and Hogan for SD!
Another interesting thing that I noticed when looking over the match stats is that one wrestler has been in the main event for his show all 4 weeks. It's not Austin, not HHH, it's Jericho! Hogan has been in 4 main events, too, but split between two different shows.
sergei
I just looked at the Smackdown Superstars page again and the link to Chavo's page is back. I think it had been gone for a while--I presume it was just an oversight.
sergei
"I tear my quadracep all the time! I tore it this morning, I'm fine!"-- Kurt Angle