WWE News: This Week's SmackDown Rewritten Due to Conflict with UFC

Vince McMahon would probably say that he doesn’t view UFC as competition, but anything that combines both combat sports and entertainment is likely going to affect the WWE in some way.

If there’s a UFC pay-per-view on Saturday night and then a WWE PPV the next day, chances are that’s going to cause fewer fans to buy the WWE show because some of them bought the UFC one the night before. 

I’m sure this is a taboo topic in the WWE, but—guess what—the “UFC as competition” debate is coming up once again. 

From F4Wonline.com (via WrestleNewz.com):

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Over the weekend, WWE officials were re-writing this week’s SmackDown after realizing that it will go head-to-head with the debut of the new season of UFC’s Ultimate Fighter. The two shows will go head-to-head this Friday and again on June 1st for the TUF finals.

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Assuming this report is true, it all but confirms that at least someone in the WWE realizes that UFC and the WWE are a lot more closely related than you might think. 

Although there’s no statistical breakdown, the truth is that the WWE and UFC likely share a large percentage of their fans, and thus—no matter what anyone in the WWE wants to believe—UFC is indeed competition. 

That’s definitely not a bad thing, though. 

The best period in wrestling history, the Attitude Era, was a result of the WWE’s ratings competition with WCW, and if nothing else, it proved that competition will prevent the WWE from relaxing and instead, force them to create more compelling TV every week. 

That’s what’s going on here. 

If the upcoming episode of SmackDown has indeed been rewritten, chances are that that happened because the original script wasn’t all that great and the WWE wanted to come up with a loaded show to combat UFC on Friday night. 

Now, we, the fans, are going to be the real winners in the situation. Competition means better programing and leads to satisfied fans. 

Drake Oz is a WWE Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter and ask him any wrestling-related questions on Formspring.