Photo Credit- WWE
The WWE are having a “draft” which means, for anyone not familiar with the concept, that WWE Wrestlers get moved to either Raw or Smackdown. Now your next question will probably be “why?” And for that I agree, why? What is the point in all this? What is the difference between Raw and Smackdown apart from the network it airs on and the colour scheme? A person moving to a different show, in the exact same promotion, means absolutely nothing and you could find more excitement looking at wet paint than you could when it is revealed that Otis gets drafted to a different “brand”.
Firstly, The WWE should scrap the brand split because it just waters down the star power on each show, when it’s not like they are filled with superstars to begin with. Instead of having all WWE’s main event stars on one show, which keeps us excited to carry on watching, we are left every week to watch 10 minute, undercard matches, between Nia Jax and Mandy Rose for example.
Secondly, the WWE should scrap the brand split because, as a result of having two seperate brands, they have an overload of Champions. They have two main event champions in the WWE World Championship and the WWE Universal Championship, they have two mid card belts in the WWE United States Championship and the WWE Intercontinental Championship, they have two Men’s Tag Team Championships in the WWE Raw Tag Team Championships and the WWE Smackdown Tag Team Championships and two Women’s Champions that are named the same as the Tag Championships minus the Tag Team part and a Women’s tag belt that seems to be more worthy than being a Woman’s champion because if you are a singles Woman Champion in the WWE you are only the champion of a particular show!!!…breath. None of these championships are anything different from one another, why is being the Women’s Champion of Raw more worthy than being the Woman’s champion of Smackdown? Being the champion of a “brand” does not sound good. The NWA/Jim Crockett Promotions in the 1980s had a lot of belts, but at least they all meant something, at least there was one world champion, then a champion of the United States, then a champion of the telivision, then a World Tag Team Champion and a United States Tag Team Champion. At least with those belts you are representing something that actually means something, being the champion of Raw means nothing to anyone and as a result you have an overload of belts, that water down each other because they all on the same level of Worthiness by the title and as a result none of them feel like they are worth anything and you have this because of the brand split. And having all these belts lead to my next point…
Thirdly, because basically 45% of the roster is a Champion, you get too many matches on Pay Per Views because they have to put all these title matches somewhere. If you had one main event Champion, two mid card champions, one set of Tag Champions and a Woman’s champion and maybe a mid card Woman’s belt, you’d probably shave 40 minutes-1 hour from these PPVs. Now the counter argument I hear all the time to wanting to have no brand split is “but it gives everyone something to do”… I don’t care. At the end of the day I’m the viewer, I’m investing my time in a Wrestling program, not a charity and shouldn’t have to suffer through overly-long, undercard matches on telivision or 6 hour PPVs because it allows everyone to take part in the show. The WWE should get rid of the brand split and focus on its top and upper mid card guys, not everyone has to be doing something.
