Friday Night Smackdown

***WWF SmackDown*** was a professional wrestling television program for WWF that aired on USA Network every Friday.

## Show History

### Brand Extension(1992-1994)

The brand split was announced leading up to Wrestlemania X as RAW and a new show, Smackdown were going to have 2 different rosters competing for brand supremacy.

Smackdown was a big Ric Flair catchphrase and it was fitting that he debuted at Wrestlemania X and him along with his stable, Four Horsemen(Lex Luger, Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels) were the main stars of Smackdown.

The first episode of Friday Night Smackdown was on 1st May 1992 where we had the debut of Jeff Jarrett, the debut and World Tag Team Championship win of Headshrinkers and Yokozuna becoming the first ever World Heaviweight Champion in a battle royal.

Smackdown was very different from RAW opting to use new talent and bringing them to their full best, while RAW had Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Mr.Perfect,The Mountie and more people who had been there a while, Smackdown had Ric Flair, Lex Luger,Shawn Michaels, Doink The Clown and some more people who just werent getting used like Yokozuna, Tito Santana and Barry Horowitz.

RAW ratings declined during this time while Smackdown's rose and Vince Mcmahon still wanted RAW to be the A Brand so he brought the Four Horsemen to RAW while Empire(Randy Savage, Sycho Sid and Steiner Brothers) which pretty much killed Smackdown's ratings.

Smackdown as a whole really went down after Survivor Series as Tatanka was not a good World Heaviweight champion and there werent stars on the brand, this led to In Your House 5, one of the worst PPV's ever for WWF, a solid opener with Steiner Bros vs Demolition but afterwards it all went downhill to the point where the crowd didn't react at Undertaker teasing his return, people barely cared about Empire winning all the SD titles and Dibiase's career ending injury made way to one of the worst PPV's ever and it was clear that Smackdown was going down as RAW the monday after got 3 million viewers while SD got 600 000 viewers, their lowest rating to date.

Smackdown was on a really bad state having no stars but they continued building Doink who was now paired up with Horowitz which seemed like the only thing people were actually interested in, Smackdown slowly got more entertaining with Savage vs Taker and Yokozuna thinking he's in 1991 again. In a time where over the top gimmicks were dying down, Doink was the last over the top gimmick that worked as he slowly rose up the ranks and finally won the World Heaviweight title at Survivor Series 1993 ,from Survivor Series to Wrestlemania X the amazing Undertaker vs Doink feud was what solidified Smackdown as maybe an even better show than RAW and then from Wrestlemania all the way through december, we got the ending arc of Doink as he battled his biggest challenger, former childhood friend and former slave, Barry Horowitz, somehow Smackdown managed to make 2 former jobbers the stars of their show and everyone bought into it as IYH 15 saw this amazing arc come to an end with both Doink and Horowitz dying after a war (I was high while writing most of these storylines.)

When the Monday Night Wars began, Vince tried to put the big storylines and big wrestlers on Smackdown so he could have a safety net if he ever needed to cancel RAW to not be beaten by WCW, this didn't work as this information leaked out and Bischoff called Vince out at Starrcade 1994, the brand split ended right after the 8 week break as Vince wanted to focus on RAW and making it the best show ever so Smackdown was cancelled (Smackdown only had 4 shows without Doink the Clown and Barry Horowitz). All of Smackdown's championships ended up being unified to RAW's championships at Wrestlemania XI and deactivated soon after.