Is WWE SmackDown Better When It Is Broadcast Live or When It Is Pretaped?

This past Tuesday was SmackDown's live Holiday special on Syfy. The night was hosted by Mick Foley and was meant as a way to celebrate all things holiday-related in WWE.

The show was put on live as opposed to being pre-taped, which is usually the case with SmackDown. Many people are saying that the show was received poorly due to being broadcast live.

One thing we may not take much notice of is how much editing really goes into the SmackDown we see every week on Friday night.

If you ever read the SmackDown spoilers posted each week on various sites, you will often see mention of things being reshot if they did not look so good the first time through.

This has happened a few times with Sin Cara—after he botches some moves, he just tries again and they edit in the best one.

It also occurs if WWE changes their mind on how a segment should play out or how a match should end. I have even heard of two superstars being brought back out just to re-shoot the finish to a match.

Having SmackDown be pre-taped allows WWE to show only what they want us to see, but it also allows them to show off their talent in a more flattering light.

Guys like Sin Cara may not be as popular if fans only saw the true way the matches happened and not an edited-together version of the same match.

Being live may not be the only thing that made SmackDown subpar this week. The fact that we had a holiday special that was in November was enough to make anybody cringe.

Whoever pitched a holiday show for right after Thanksgiving might just be a big scrooge who wanted the holiday stuff out of the way, who knows?

The fact that we had an unusually high amount of backstage segments this week might have contributed to the low quality of the show.

Having Hornswoggle win a battle royal and having his wish of being able to speak did not help things much either.

I would be interested to see another live SmackDown with their normal format to see if it is as good as the pre-taped shows we are used to seeing.

The Daniel Bryan vs Mark Henry cage match looked great live in my opinion, but these are two veterans who have been around the block a few times so they know how to perform live.

What do you think, is SmackDown only good when it is pre-taped or can it be just as good live?