Since the brand split occurred back in late July of 2016, every single Smackdown Live and Monday Night Raw show was a live TV program. Smackdown used to be taped when there was just one unique roster, and it aired every single Thursday. That was changed last year, and blue brand’s shows have started to rise in the ratings. There were even a couple of weeks where SD was able to overcome Raw when it comes to viewership.
Usually, WWE does everything on Live TV. The only thing that is never live is when a Superstars is in the ring and is talking with somebody that is on the screen like Bray Wyatt. Those videos on the screen are always pretaped, and the person in the ring knows what they need to say in order to make the segment work. Everything else is live.
This past edition of Raw was marked by the attack of the Smackdown Live roster. Shane McMahon led a group of his stars down the crown and into the ring to confront Kurt Angle. After they warned him, Shane ordered SD Liver roster to go in the backstage area and take everybody out.
The battle was seen on screen for the fans in the arena, but that actually wasn’t live action. WWE pretaped that attack on the Raw roster as they wanted to make this assault as brutal as possible. If some of the shots looked a bit too much like a work, the WWE wanted to edit that out and do it the right way. The same thing is probably going to happen when Raw eventually attacks the blue brand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuXT-k4jOPQ
