Let the countdown begin.
We’re still about ten months away from the premiere of SmackDown on Fox. But when the network’s invested billions and WWE’s finally checked “get a prime time spot on a broadcast network” off Vince McMahon’s bucket list, nobody’s waiting to start the hype train.
Last night’s Thursday Night Football game between the Tennessee Titans and Jacksonville Jaguars featured our first noteable bit of promotion from Fox. It also confirmed reports the network plans to cross-promote SmackDown with its other live sports offerings like the NFL, Major League Baseball and NASCAR.
Will that lead to a more “sports-like” approach to putting the show together? We’ll continue to look for signs of that (along with any storyline fallout from Raw’s Survivor Series sweep). In the meantime, the game being in Nashville provided all involved with options of how to tie together Tennesseans mutual love of pigskin and rasslin. And they went with...
Making local boy and WWE country music-gimmicked Hall of Famer Jeff Jarrett an honorary Titan.
Check it out, along with lots of SmackDown hype like a Joe Buck plug, chyron banner and Double-J busting out a logo-ed shirt:
The amount of things going on here which most of us wouldn’t have believed would ever happen is mind-boggling. Go back to last December and imagine someone telling you that TNA founder Jeff Jarrett, who was widely rumored to be blacklisted by Vince for extorting him for an appearance on his way to WCW at the height of the Monday Night War, would represent WWE on a national primetime NFL broadcast to promote SmackDown moving to a live Friday night spot on a major network as part of an unbelievably successful round of TV rights negotiations for McMahon. It sounds like a fever dream.
Yet here we are.
The SmackDown on Fox era begins with Double J plunging a sword into the 50 yard line.