Last week we posted the top 5 reasons why the WWE brand split should return, and this week we present the counter-point!
Click the thumbs up button if you agree with Oli! The video with the most thumbs up will be declared the first round’s winner.
Shane McMahon turning up in his suit and high-top trainers seems to have given everyone selective amnesia between the years 2006 to 2011. “Yay, Shane’s back,” everyone shouts. “He’s going to turn this company around for the better, where everyone jumps off TitanTrons and throws terrible punches.” Wrong. Shane’s a figurehead, he’s a character onscreen. Vinnie boy’s still running the show, and he’s a crazy man.
The brand split was a bad time for wrestling. And I’m here to tell you the five most pressing reasons why it shouldn’t return.
5. RAW IS…EVEN LONGER
Albert Einstein once described his theory of General Relativity like this: “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.”
Raw, when it’s great, is like paying a beautiful girl – I mean spending money on a romantic date – for an experience that lasts a few minutes. When Raw is bad, it feels as though your hand’s is wedged between two hot stoves for several days with Hornswoggle kicking you in the nuts.
The point is, some episodes of Raw feel long enough as it is. If the brand split returns, these three hours are going to feel even longer.
Don’t kid yourself into thinking WWE will drop that extra hour. The higher estimates have the USA Network paying $300,000 for those additional 60 minutes of Authority promos, and WWE need the money. The Network still isn’t as profitable as they’d like it to be.
Try and imagine 3 hours of Raw with a roster split in half. There won’t be as many performers, so you’d be seeing the same matches over and over again, like being stuck in an eternal wrestling purgatory, watching Big Show vs Kane to infinity.
4. THE KING OF KINGS…(AND EVERYTHING ELSE)
Before the Roman Reigns of Terror we’re currently living through, the period between 2002 and 2005 in wrestling was known as Triple H’s Reign of Terror.
These were the early days of the brand split, having begun in March 2002. Smackdown went on to have arguably the greatest period ever in professional wrestling – The Ruthless Aggression era under Paul Heyman – but that unfortunately sucked everything good from Raw, leaving Triple H on Monday nights to do what he wanted. And what Triple H wanted was to beat everyone.
He buried Booker T, after being racist towards him, he unmasked Kane and hit one of the company’s lowest creative points with the Katie Vick storyline, he defused Goldberg, terribly feuded with Scott Steiner and kept Chris Benoit – I can say his name, right? – kept Stevie Richards off the top of the card, even though Richards was champion.
When people reminisce about the brand split, Smackdown is held up as their glistening, Brock Lesnar-faced defence. What they forget about is how much Raw sucked. If the brand split returned, the same thing would happen, because there’s no way Triple H and Stephanie won’t just make themselves Authority figures on one of the two main shows again.
3. STRAPPING DOWN
One of the best things the WWE did in the last five years is finally unite their World Heavyweight and WWE Championships. I could never quite get round the two world title concept. It’s like when the ring apron gets untucked on the side facing the hard cam. Sure, I can watch the match, but I won’t really enjoy it. I’ll just be thinking: TUCK THE GOD DAMNED CORNER INTO THE MAT!
But that isn’t where a brand split return would stop.
Not only would there now be two world titles, you can bet we’ll be getting two divas titles, two tag team belts – so four tag team belts – and US and Intercontinental straps. It’ll be like Noah’s ark for waist-level gold.
Even in this day and age, titles are important. Having so many will water that significance down. There’s nothing simpler in wrestling to base a feud upon, and a brand split would immediately cheapen that resource.
2. TALENT
When the original brand split occurred back in 2002, WWE had good reason to do so. Their roster was bursting at the seams. Both WCW and ECW had gone out of business just the year before, and the WWE had been slowly absorbing their top names. Although the brand split execution was poor, the idea at least made sense. In 2016, it’s about as crazy as the owner of the company-ah, damn that means he might actually do it.
Wrestling is currently in two periods – the age of the injuries, with unprecedented numbers of wrestlers out of action, and the age of the mid-card, where the WWE’s booking strategy is to trade wins and losses, keeping everyone at the same average level apart from a handful of older guys. It means they haven’t made enough stars.
But what about NXT? Good point. NXT has a great roster. Samoa Joe, Hideo Itami, Finn Balor, Bayley, American Alpha, Enzo and Cass – they’re all ready to be called down to the main roster right away. But that isn’t enough.
Back in 2002, the WWE had two full-rosters – not developmental – in WCW and ECW to cherry-pick from. NXT has nowhere near that amount of quality. And, something that everyone seems to be forgetting, what does that mean for NXT, one of the best weekly wrestling shows out there right now? It’ll either disappear, or be a shadow of its former self.
The depth of talent just isn’t enough for a brand split in wrestling today. Which brings me onto my main reason why the brand split shouldn’t return…
1. THEY WON’T STICK TO IT
In the history books – by which, I mean Wikipedia – the first brand split existed from March 2002 to August 2011. In reality, however, it only ever ran until 2006.
What made the brand split work initially – note how I said ‘work’ there, not ‘enjoyable’ – was how both Raw and Smackdown were kept separate from one another. Wrestlers drafted to one would not show up on the other unless there was an invasion angle, even having their own Pay Per Views – sharing the big four, Wrestlemania, Summerslam, Survivor Series and Royal Rumble, and alternating the rest.
In 2006, however, this was proving to be too many pay per views for a 365 day period. Brand exclusive Pay Per Views were ditched and the streams were crossed. which, if you’ve ever watched Ghostbusters, you’d recognise as a big no-no.
That same year, ECW was brought back as a third brand. This confused the roster segregations even further and before you knew it, wrestlers were turning up everywhere. Nobody backstage or onscreen really cared about the brand split, yet they still talked about it as though it were a rigid operation.
I can’t tell you how much it used to frustrate me. I think everyone has had their ‘I’m Done’ moment with wrestling – where it’s annoyed you so much you nearly quit. The WWE’s poor treatment of a consistent brand split pushed me the closest I ever came to stopping altogether. The WWE was so bad back then, that I actually became a TNA diehard for a while.
If a brand split returned now, I promise you, the WWE would eventually treat it with the same amount of disregard.
So those are my top 5 reasons why the brand split should return to the WWE. If you agree with me, click the little thumbs up button and we’ll tally them up before the next video.
You can watch both videos in the players below!
