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The SmackDown! Superstars will typically perform four shows in a week. WWE generally tapes its Tuesday evening show for UPN to air on Thursday evening of the same week.
WWF SmackDown! (as it was originally known) was set up to compete against WCW's Thursday night show, Thunder . In the spirit of the WWF's Attitude Era, the show was originally planned to be two hours of WWF Divas in primetime TV. However, this did not work out, and instead SmackDown! became a complementary show to RAW.
In early to mid-2002, World Wrestling Entertainment underwent something they called the “Brand Extension”. Basically, this meant that the two WWE television shows ( RAW and SmackDown!) would become competition for each other. This came about when WWE purchased their two biggest competitors, WCW and ECW.
The Brand Extension would bring about a change like nothing the WWE had seen before. Wrestlers would become “show-exclusive”, wrestling for their specific show only. At the time this excluded the champions as originally, the WWE titles would be defended on both shows. However, later in 2002, Brock Lesnar, then the WWE World Champion, refused to defend the title on RAW, causing the title to become SmackDown!-exclusive. Following that, both shows then got their own exclusive titles.
The SmackDown! brand has a sister show, Velocity, broadcasting Saturday nights from 11:00 PM-12:00 AM Eastern Standard Time on Spike TV. It consists of low-card matches and recaps of last Thursday's SmackDown!.
| Title Notes: | Current Champion(s) |
| WWE Champion 1 | John Bradshaw Layfield |
| WWE Tag Team Champions 2 | René Duprée (René Goguen) and Kenzo Suzuki |
| WWE Cruiserweight ChampionThe WWE Cruiserweight Championship is a title for competitors weighing under 220 lb (100 kg). It is currently exclusive to the SmackDown! brand, and the current holder is Spike Dudley. Before World Championship Wrestling was purchased by the WWE, the Crui 3 | Spike Dudley (Matthew Hyson)Matthew Hyson aka Spike Dudley was born on August 13 1970, in Providence, Rhode Island. He is a professional wrestler performing in World Wrestling Entertainment on the Smackdown! brand. Hyson is famous as the "runt" of ECW's infamous Dudley Family, a sta |
| WWE United States ChampionWWE United States Championship is formally the WCW United States Championship but is now a WWE title exclusive to the SmackDown! brand. History The title was a WCW championship, respectively, until; during the Invasion storyline in 2001, the United States 4 | John CenaJohn Felix Anthony Cena (born April 23, 1977 in West Newbury, Massachusetts) is a professional wrestler currently performing for World Wrestling Entertainment on the Smackdown! brand. His WWE debut was in 2002. Cena attended Springfield College in Springf |
1: This is the original WWE World Championship Title. It became SmackDown! exclusive when the champion Brock Lesnar refused to defend it on RAW.
2: These are completely new Tag Team Titles. The original WWE World Tag Team Titles became RAW exclusive.
3: This title originally was the WCW World Cruiserweight Title. The WWE adopted it and dropped their own World Light Heavyweight Title in favor of it. It also became SmackDown! exclusive.
4: The original WCW US Heavyweight Title was once disbanded when it was unified with the WWE Intercontinental Heavyweight Title. However, the title was revived for Stone Cold Steve Austin of RAW, along with reintroducing the Intercontinental Heavyweight Title for RAW.