So it would appear that at WWE’s next pay per view Tables, Ladders, and Chairs, The WWE Championship and World Heavyweight Championship shall be merged into one Unified Championship. Some are still skeptical that there will be a clear cut winner, and the possibility for shenanigans is high, but nonetheless as fans the WWE is hopeful that we shall accept the claim at face value. Those of us that have seem to be split down the middle between feeling excited at the idea of a Unified Champion, and feeling dread at banishing one of these titles. For the life of me I can’t see why.
In 2002 the WWE was at a cross roads. Having vanquished World Championship Wrestling and failing to build THAT brand as its own identity which could be used to manipulate fans into believing the wrestling war wasn’t over, Vince McMahon decided he would create his OWN war. A Civil War between his two existing TV series: RAW and Smackdown.
The idea was a great one in my opinion and added another dimension to the WWE Universe (not the fan base, but the mythos.) However, after a few too short years WWE became impatient, and realized they were not building stars fast enough to meet the demand of a duo brand. So they started holding Raw “Supershows” which had both rosters.
At first it was a fun gimmick, and maybe even made RAW seem like a big deal. But eventually they dropped the Supershow from the title and it just became an accepted fact that the rosters were no longer split; WWE had all but quietly abandoned the brand extension. Disappointing as it was, it was just a failed experiment, no harm, no foul right? Well…
You see, the bigger issue was with the championships. At first WWE tried having an Undisputed Champion who would travel from show to show taking on all comers. This was another reason I loved the brand extension as it added prestige to the title. The Undisputed Champion had to be the best, because he had to wrestle contenders from both brands. However, less than a year into the extension, the call was made to give each brand a top tier title that would be exclusive to that brand (unless said champion was drafted…or they decided to vacate it…they changed the rules a lot as they went).
Had WWE managed to have the patience and ability to sustain their brand split, that would be one thing, as it could have lead to some great Champion v. Champion contests each year and some inter company rivalries, but they didn’t and as a result WWE became bogged down with too many championships, meaning that their overall value would drop.
Once everybody started mixing things together on both Mondays and Fridays there really was only so much room, meaning that certain championships had to take a back seat or be left off the card all together. That doesn’t elevate your title’s status at all. On the flip side, fighting to make sure EVERY belt got a segment made the matches seem less important, and in turn the title’s value diminished.
Because of this, on more than one occasion, we have had the winner of the Royal Rumble, one of WWE’s highest honors, go on to challenge for the World Heavyweight Championship at Wrestlemania…in the opening contest. By allowing the company to trudge forward, ever pushing the World Heavyweight Championship further down the card, it has also damaged one of it’s other top honours.
WWE has realized that it needs to cut off the foot to save the leg. With the rosters once again unified, the titles should be too. WWE already figured this out years ago with both the Divas Championship and the Tag Team Championship, sonow it’s time to do what’s best for business and have one championship for the top guy in the company. One roster, one Unified Champion.
Photo courtesy of WWE.com
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