The Raleigh scramble
The March 20 SmackDown broadcast at the Lenovo Center in Raleigh was less of a polished television product and more of a frantic exercise in damage control. When the original card for a major television event falls apart, the audience usually notices the seams. The decision to pull a marquee matchup due to a reported car crash left a gaping hole in the middle of the show that the creative team struggled to fill effectively.
As WrestleTalk reported, the sudden absence of a planned title-adjacent encounter forced a pivot into pure storyline chaos. Relying on brawl-heavy sequences between Drew McIntyre and Jacob Fatu is a safe fallback, but it highlights a lack of depth in the current mid-card. When you lose a technical showcase, you lose the balance that keeps a three-hour show from feeling repetitive.
The tag team title mess
The booking of the WWE Tag Team Championships has reached a point of absurdity that feels disconnected from the rest of the show. Seeing Damian Priest and R-Truth claim the titles during this specific broadcast felt like a jarring shift in tone. While R-Truth remains a consistent draw for live crowds, putting gold on a comedic pairing during a night otherwise defined by intense, heavy-hitting brawls creates a tonal whiplash that hurts both the comedy and the drama.
It is difficult to take the tag division seriously when the belts bounce around based on whoever happens to be standing in the ring during a segment. The lack of a clear, long-term trajectory for these championships makes the division feel like an afterthought. It is a rinse-and-repeat cycle that devalues the work of teams actually dedicated to the craft of tag wrestling.
The DQ trap
The Women's Tag Team Title match ending in a disqualification was the most frustrating booking decision of the night. Fans in Raleigh were treated to a high-intensity bout that showed genuine promise, only to have the finish discarded for the sake of a post-match beatdown. As Ringside News noted, the brutality was the point, but the execution felt lazy. A disqualification is a relic of 1990s television that rarely serves the wrestlers involved in the modern era.
When you sacrifice a clean finish for a brawl, you tell the audience that the match itself does not matter. It undermines the athleticism displayed by the competitors during the opening 12 minutes of the contest. If the goal was to build heat, there are more effective ways to do it than robbing the viewers of a definitive winner.
Missing the mark
Looking at the overall reception of the episode, the reliance on sudden, unannounced changes created a disjointed experience. The show felt like it was being written in real-time, often at the expense of the talent. While Drew McIntyre and Jacob Fatu delivered the intensity fans expect, they cannot carry the entire weight of a broadcast on their backs.
Booking chaos is a temporary fix, not a strategy. The lack of a cohesive narrative thread left the show feeling like a collection of clips rather than a unified story. For a company that prides itself on premium production, the Raleigh show was a reminder that even the biggest machine can sputter when the script gets thrown out the window.
