During a recent interview with Ariel Helwani, Paul Heyman commented on the battle of the brands between RAW and SmackDown and why RAW is “clearly the B show” these days. He said,
“There is no rivalry, SmackDown has beaten the sh*t out of Raw, Raw is clearly the B Show. There is no more competition. We won. I have no bitterness towards Raw. If Raw goes sour, it hurts SmackDown. If Raw goes sour, it hurts WWE. It hurts the stock. The stock goes sour, it hurts me personally. I don’t want Raw to do bad. I wish Raw would do even better and provide stiffer competition to SmackDown because if a star emerges on Raw that Roman Reigns can draw box office with, we have another opponent. The problem with Roman Reigns is not the limit of his greatness, his greatness gets more defined as every performance is put forth. The problem with Roman Reigns is, we have such a limited number of people that we can viably and actually work with that people will look at and say, ‘That’s an opponent for Roman Reigns, that’s someone I’d like to see challenge the Tribal Chief.’ That’s why Brock Lesnar’s return is so huge because we don’t have five other people waiting in the wings that automatically step up and can be a credible opponent for Roman Reigns.“
(h/t – Fightful)