How Monday Night Raw And SmackDown Differ From NXT

It’s a different way of doing things. With the amount of people wrestling for WWE, it makes sense to split the roster up into a few different groups. That is how we have gotten to the point of Monday Night Raw, SmackDown and NXT all having their own unique rosters, which means they are put together rather differently. It turns out that things are a good bit different behind the scenes as well.

Despite being the third brand, there is a very different feeling to NXT. The show serves as both a two hour television series but also the company’s developmental system. It also helps that NXT only builds to a handful of Takeovers a year rather than a monthly pay per view. As it turns out, there is a different booking philosophy to NXT than compared to the other shows.

According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, NXT is written differently than both Monday Night Raw and SmackDown. The two main roster shows are both booked in a rush, with scripts often being changed at the very last minute. NXT is planned out months in advance for long term booking and a show is rarely changed for any reason other than an emergency.

Opinion: You can tell this is the case most of the time as the wrestlers have more defined motivations and reasons for doing whatever they wind up doing. At the same time, Monday Night Raw and SmackDown come off as shows that are put together at the last minute and with very little planning for anything that they are doing either that night or in the future. It makes all the difference in the world and you can see the differences in how things go.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his- Amazon author page with 30 wrestling books. Get the latest and greatest in professional wrestling news by signing up for our daily email newsletter. Just look below for “GET EXCLUSIVE UPDATES” to sign up. Thank you for reading!