The Blue Brand hasn’t had the best 12 months, and has fallen under massive criticism as of late from both journalists and, more importantly, the fans.

Images from last week’s show revealed WWE were struggling to sell tickets, leaving their arena nearly half empty. This news isn’t exactly ground-breaking as images of half-sold arenas were shared around social media almost every week for most of 2017. And this is quite clearly an issue the company wants to address, with WWE announcing plans to drop the brand-exclusive PPVs – which is reportedly due to poor ticket sales on Smackdown Live events – and John Cena being advertised for Fastlane, which was made official on Raw last night when it was announced that Cena was heading back to Smackdown Live for the first time since last August – presumably to help push struggling sales.

According to Brad Shepard at Bodyslam.net – who has a relatively good track record – even WWE are aware that the show’s quality is down at the moment. “A source in WWE told me that basically everyone that works there knows it’s not good.”

While a very vague statement from Shepard, the Cena move to Smackdown Live is an interesting one as Dave Meltzer and several other outlets have been reporting for months now that Big Match John’s Big Mania Match is against The Undertaker. And if that is still the plan – and Cena’s promo on Raw would certainly suggest so – that would mean that Undertaker will also be appearing on Smackdown Live heading into their biggest show of the year – which in theory would also help ticket sales and increase TV ratings.

• Shane McMahon
• SmackDown Live
• WWE SmackDown Live
• Smackdown
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