Could the WWE be hinting at ending the brand split? It appears that way with Sasha Banks challenging Asuka for the Raw Women’s Championship. To be honest, the brand split’s been nothing short of a joke.
It’s meant to give each show the ability to function separately from one another, yet both are fully controlled by one person, robbing each of their own individual personality. It’s no secret Vince McMahon manages everything he can, and he has every right to. It’s his company, he built it into the Disney of professional wrestling, so he has every right to run it as he sees fit.
It’s time to retire the brand split concept
Reportedly, the brand split initially came about in 2002 to make room for the sudden influx of talent from McMahon’s purchase of WCW and ECW. It made sense on the surface given the promotion doubled its size.
But given the few amount of wrestlers the WWE kept from those promotions at the time shows their plans didn’t work out like that had hoped. It’s how things work sometimes. People have different attitudes, habits, or expectations than we’d expect and changes have to be made.
But there really isn’t a reason to have a split anymore expect out of monetary benefit for selling multiple championship belts. That’s it, especially given the shrunken size of the WWE roster.
While the various championship belts theoretically double the income when fans buy the replicas, they’ve made the championships mean far less than they used to.
The Women’s Championships are a perfect example.
Implied competition
Each women’s champion in recent memory have cited their desire to make their brand’s championship the top one in the promotion. It’s a lofty goal, but with Sasha Banks challenging Asuka, it also buries it.
The thing is, the brand split is supposed to keep wrestlers drafted to a brand on that brand, but the Women’s Tag Team Championship allows them to float (as does the 24/7) and hence open the opportunity for Banks to challenge Asuka. But what if she wins?
Well, she’ll have to represent the Raw brand while Bayley the Smackdown while they’re also the tag team champions.
While this may make for an interesting storyline at some point, like pitting friend against friend finally, it just feels so contrived and further breaks down any boundaries between the brands.
At some point, we’ll have a champion versus champion match and the winner will be Whoever Two Belts again. Or their matches end in a disqualification or something along those lines, because if one of them loses and keeps the belt, guess who is considered a mid-card champion?
Yep, which means they’ll trade wins until one wins both or one belt will be devalued. Not exactly the most exciting idea around since it’s easy to see how it’ll have to play out if McMahon wants to keep the championships relevant.
The split’s become a sloppy, incoherent mess that’s just not believable or feasible anymore, and we could be witnessing the first steps to doing away with it, hopefully permanently.
To be honest, the only brand split they really need is the women’s division having their own. It’d allow us to see them in action more and allow the unification of the top championships and introduction of a mid-card title. Like 205 Live, they’d still crossover occasionally, but with their own show they can really grow and show what they’re capable of.
SUBSCRIBE NOW: Get The Overtimer’s Hottest Stories, Breaking News and Special Features in your email, CLICK HERE!
