WWE should bring back the Brand Pay-Per-Views

[jmt225]

You know what was a great pay-per-view? Vengeance 2003, the very first Smackdown Brand pay-per-view.

I mean, seriously, what more could you ask for out of the show? Great match after great match, and stars being born in the process.

The show opened up with Chris Benoit vs. Eddie Guerrero in a twenty minute masterpiece for the United States Championship. When was the last time a WWE mid-card title got twenty minutes worth of air time? Hmmm…. I can’t think of one either.

Speaking of WWE mid-card titles getting some recognition and a lot of time to work with… the WWE Tag Titles were also on the line that night between The World's Greatest Tag Team (Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas) vs. Rey Mysterio and Billy Kidman. These two great tag teams were given 15 minutes to work with, and what a show they put on with that time. It was awesome and everything you could ever want in a tag team wrestling match.

The show had its fair share amount of silly bouts, but they were all entertaining in their own right. Noble vs. Gunn, both storyline and match, wasn’t too bad. The APA Invitational should’ve gotten a chuckle out of you. Steph vs. Sable in basically a Cat fight was nice eye candy for a couple of minutes. And Vince McMahon vs. Zack Gowen was awesome, especially after the wicked chair-shot Vince took.

And then there were the two main events.

The main main event was a Triple Threat match between Brock Lesnar, Kurt Angle, and The Big Show for the WWE Championship. There’s nothing to say about this match other than that it was fantastic. In fact, I would claim that it’s the second best Triple Threat match in WWE history, right behind the one at ‘Mania 20. But, let me get to the match before it and the ultimate reason why I’m creating this thread.

WWE started building up a young man by the name of John Cena. He was just some punk who ran his mouth, but God Damn was he entertaining as hell and man did he have an awesome gimmick. Plus, he could work. The only thing he was missing at the time was legitimacy. So how does WWE give it to him? By putting him in an angle with ‘Taker and looked how it worked out. Not only do you get a solid storyline with a couple of great matches, but YOU BUILD A STAR. Seriously, without Smackdown’s own Pay-Per-View… does Cena ever get pushed like he did? I mean, just the month before when every pay-per-view was still for both Raw and Smackdown, you know what Cena was doing at Judgement Day? Participating in a 3 minutes six man tag match where he teamed with the FBI to face Rhyno, Spanky, and Chris Benoit. And the month before that he only gets used to make Brock Lesnar look strong, after WWE couldn’t get him a spot on the Wrestlemania card the month before that. And the reason they couldn’t fit him on the Wrestlemania card was because there was no room for a talent like Cena on the pay-per-views building up to ‘Mania.

Answer me this… what the hell were the “scrubs” in Evolution doing before the brand pay-per-views started? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That’s what. They didn’t even accompany HHH to the ring at Wrestlemania 19. And you know why? Because WWE just couldn’t find time to build them up when every pay-per-view was built around both shows. But when Raw started getting their own pay-per-views, all of a sudden you saw Randy Orton getting the rub from Shawn Michaels and becoming the ‘Legend Killer’, and you saw Batista becoming the big bad ass enforcer of the group. I honestly don’t believe neither happens if Raw doesn’t get their own pay-per-views.

But because Raw and Smackdown got their own pay-per-views, there was time to build up three of the top guys in WWE today in John Cena, Randy Orton, and Batista, whereas before those pay-per-views started, WWE couldn’t find any time to do anything with them.

If Judgment Day last week was just a Smackdown pay-per-view, would it have as many buy rates as it probably got? Most likely… no, but you can’t tell me it would be that huge of a differential. And the fact of the matter is, what hurts WWE in buy rates for brand pay-per-views, helps them for their bigger pay-per-views (Summerslam, Survivor Series, The Royal Rumble, & Wrestlemania) and for the future of the company period.

WWE these past couple of weeks have been building up The Miz, for example. Whether you like him or not, or whether you believe he deserves the push or not, WWE is pushing him. However, what is it going to amount to if there’s no time to put him in a pay-per-view match? Where was he at Judgment Day? Doing some silly ass segment with Santino, that’s where. And is he booked for Extreme Rules? Nope. It’s just too hard to build people up when the pay-per-view of the month has to fit a certain amount of wrestlers, when there are so many of them.

Brand pay-per-views fixes this though. With brand pay-per-views, you’re able to make the IC, US, Tag Titles mean something because the matches last longer then four minutes. With brand pay-per-views, you’re able to make nobodies into true Superstars. With brand pay-per-views, your shows end up being more balanced out and each match end up meaning a lot more for their respective show. With brand pay-per-views, shows like Summerslam and Survivor Series start looking special again. Etcetera, Etcetera, Etfuckingcetera....

Now, granted, some of those brand pay-per-views back in 2003/4/5 were terrible, but you know what? First of all, if WWE takes their time with each pay-per-view like they did with Vengeance 2003, then they would all end up being good, entertaining shows. But secondly and most importantly… WWE didn’t have the talent of roster back then that they have today. Look at WWE’s roster. It has never been better. There is so much potential it’s unbelievable. But how can WWE make these guys like up to their full potential if there’s simply no time to give them big matches? Brand pay-per-views fixes that.

Wrestlezone recently had a report stating that Steph said that WWE was ready to make new stars, and in my opinion, the very first step to make that happen is to bring back the Brand pay-per-views. Do you agree?

 

[powermonty]

i could not agree more!!!!!!!!!!!! i was actually thinking about this the other day. it was a great way to help mid-card talent get good air time and push them to main event statise. there was alot more time to hype the matches on brand shows which made for better matchs. ortan vs undertaker in hell in a cell would never of been as rememberable with out all the hype eg. cowboy bob ect. i would give anything to have the seperate brand ppv's again

 

[HBK-aholic]

I just don't see the point of having two separate brands if they're going to have joint PPV's. Personally, I think the brand split should end, and then the PPV's would be 'mixed'. But anyway, having brand only PPV's is the better thing, but is there enough talent on them to have a full 3 hour show? With how things are at the moment, I can't imagine Smackdown or Raw being able to put on a quality show for that long. Not all matches are great now and that's with a mixture.

 

[psykohurricane]

The mian problem is if you bring back the brand only PPV, what do you do With ECW. Do you had them to the smackdown PPV or the Raw PPV or do you just forget about them all together and just put them on the big 4 PPV. ECW cannot have a 3 hours PPV since they barely have enough wrestlers for a 1 hour show. I would like to see the brand only PPV simply because we wouldn'T have to see the same guys over and over again and would justify why both brand got seperate mid-card titles. But i doubt it would comeback the way it was and that'S to bad because it was better with Brand only ppv.

 

[Lil Wes]

Meh, from a business standpoint what they're doing right now is better. You're getting all of your top draws from all 3 shows on the cards and people will pay and buy to watch them all, plus it's easier to promote all together. So that's not going to change. Those sucked anyway.

It's the booking of midcard/young talent. They fail to find the right feuds in enough time to get them built for the PPV's. That's mainly because they're so fucking bunched together it's damn near impossible, especially when the creative team is as awful as WWE's is.

For your Miz example, he's getting left off because WWE made him look bad by having Show tell him "he'll have to wait". ******ed. Big Show has already lost fuckloads of times to Cena. Move on to the next one.

 

[latinoheat8979]

I hated the Brand PPV concept. I also hate the brand split idea as well, even though it gives tv time to the mid-carders. I think shouldn't bring it back and leave it how it is now. I actually think a lot of people hated as well. The buyrates must've been that low why else would they merge all the brands for all PPV's?

 

[8five]

I hate the brands being split but right now I would have loved a brand ppv over what we got at judgment day. It would have been a perfect smackdown card. You could open with Punk v. Umaga, and then go to Ziggler v. Khali, then onto a triple threat womens title match with Gail v. Michelle v. Melina, followed by R truth v. Knox in some gimmick match, then have Morrison v. Benjamin, Rey v. Jericho and edge v hardy, now that would have been an awesome card.

 

[psykohurricane]

What was fun with Brand only PPV was that you could actually have a diversity with the match instead of always seeing the same guys over and over again. The main problem with PPV the way they are right now is that if your not part of the main event group of Cena, Orton, Batista, Undertaker, HHH, HBK, Jeff Hardy and Edge, you have to fight to find a way to get into a PPV card. You got your semi regular guys that don'T have to much problem getting into a PPV card. Guys like C.M. punk, Chris Jericho and REy mysterio can always find a way to get into the card because they are popular and event through they are not consider main event talent, they are still realible workers so nine time out of ten they will get a match on a ppv card. The problem is that everybody else have to fight to get into a PPV. How many PPV was MVP, JOhn Morisson, Evan Bourne, Kofi Kingston and The miz on last year. Not that many. Same things goes for the divas, they want us to take them seriously but they don'T even put a diva match on ppv anymore. The last time they had a diva match on PPV was the wrestlemania battleroyal. Sure Vicki and Santina will get a match at EXtreme rules but i don'T really see that has a diva match.

Another good thing about Brand only PPV is that it makes the big four PPV look special. You see right now, you got 14 ppv a year. Out of these 14 PPV, you got 6 PPV that got a gimmick so they look differrent. Which leave you with 8 PPV that look exactly the same. You want the big four to look different from the other 10 but only Survivor series and Royal rumble are able to look special. Wrestlemania might be the biggest PPV of the year but wrestling wise, it'S just like Backlash or judgment day. Same goes with Summerslam. That'S because you get the same people wrestling on these PPV that you had on the regular PPV. If Backlash was only a Raw/ECW PPV and Judgment DAy was only a Smackdown/ECW PPV then when you get to summerslam and got all three brand on the card, it looks special because you get to see all the top stars on one card.

That's why, brand only PPV were so good because they gave a chance to the mid card talent to shine on PPV and get some much needed experience and exposure and at the same time made the big 4 look special.

 

[Nev]

Yes you're recalling the the 2003 PPV's. You're forgetting how crappy the Smackdown PPV's started to get in 2005. The mid-card talent and those squash matches were boring and was going nowhere. Plus honesty, who wants to spend 35% of the PPV time watching meaningless matches? Unless these matches carry on to Smackdown with storylines and such. Therefore, the brand split was born.

The Brand split as a whole was a bad idea. The primary idea of the brand split was to find new rising stars while risking a ratings slump. Unfortunately, fast forward to today: Brock Lesnar, Batista, and John Cena all rose. Most of their pushes didn't really need "more TV time" for the superstars to work. The Brand Split still seems like veterans and developed superstars still dominate the show. The whole idea should stop now, you could probably keep smackdown as a "low key show" with more unused talent doing matches, but still carry over the storylines and such.

The Brand Split was only necessary for 2003-2004.

 

[Greenlight13]

I have mixed feelings about this idea. I mean you're right, they aren't using the stars they're building on tv such as the Miz, Brian Kendrick, MVP, etc, and it does make more sense if the brands are going to be seperate to have their own PPV's. It would also make the belts mean more again.

However...

PPV's started to suck some major balls when they were split. The problem is that while some people aren't getting on PPV that maybe should, there are a lot that aren't on because they don't deserve it and with a roster of 20-25, it's difficult to book a three hour pay per view, I mean you'd have to use pretty much everyone. The average PPV has 8 matches roughly, if we say one of those is a tag match and the rest are singles, you're using 18 wrestlers. Do both brands have 18 decent wrestlers? Not just "they're ok" decent, but "I want to pay to see him wrestle" decent.

The roster isn't deep enough for it. You can fill two hours of TV with 25 wrestlers because you have commercials, skits etc. That's why there's more tag matches, they struggle to get the people they WANT to use all squeezed in. But you take away those time fillers and slap on an additional hour and it gets difficult to fill the card with people they like.

For that same reason the mid-card and tag titles don't matter as much and the womens divisions both suck. If you combine all the divas there's probably 5 or 6 that people would actually care about watching, but they're split across the brands (and Natalya is on ECW wrestling no-one) so nobody gives a shit about seeing Mickie James fight Maryse every week. Nobody cares about the Bella Twins, nobody cares about Maria. Sure they're hot, but I don't watch wrestling for hot, I could google search these chicks if I was interested in that.

Among the 20 male wrestlers on a brand there's not enough room for more than 2, possibly 3 teams, so unless they want to make tag teams able to wrestle on all three shows, there's no point putting focus on the division because there's no creative plans for 2 teams, you have to have several.

The mid-card is the easiest to fix because it doesn't require them recombining the brands. They are taking steps to do so as well, or at least they're claiming to. One problem is they have too many main event players not actually getting title shots but are considered too big for a mid-level title.

It may have taken a while to get to this point but what I'm saying is that the rosters aren't deep enough to provide single-brand PPVs. Add in the fact that you have to do an additional month of build-up, which can make the pay-off seem less sweet, I mean eventually you run out of things to do, there's only so many contract signings and tag matches where the face goes over that you can do before people feel they've seen what they want to see, and it just doesn't seem viable to me.

Plus, as someone said, what do you do with ECW? Have them wrestle a little on each? They sure as hell can't have their own, they couldn't fill a 2-hour show with their 10-man roster, let alone a 3-hour PPV. Abolish ECW and split the stars among the other 2? No, they like it how it is, a training ground.

 

[EGfan4life]

I agree with JMT255.

Vengence 2003 was a great ppv. One of the greatest in history. Beniot and Guerrero had a phenomenal match. McMahon and Zach Gowen were nuts! World's greatest tag team vs. Kidman/Mysterio was a superb match. And the WWE championship was just classic. I miss the good ol' days

 

[ronthony717]

I totally agree that these ppvs should come back.. Give ECW one PPV and throw in one or two of ecw matches on each of the raw/smackdown brand ppvs.. Things are getting very repetitive now and kind of dull. When they first started the brand only ppv's i dont thing they were totally ready. I think they should of started and kept the brand only ppv's about 2-3 yrs ago. So I say the ppv sched could look like this:

Royal Rumble: All three brands would host
No Way Out: This would be a Raw show (atleast one ECW match)
WrestleMania: Obviously all Brands
Backlash: SmackDown would host this one (atleast one ECW match)
Judgement Day: Raw would host this one (Atleast one ECW match)
Extreme Rules: ECW would take this one (Atleast one Raw and Smackdown match)
The Bash: SmackDown would host this one (Atleast one ECW match)
Night Of Champions: All brands host and move this before Extreme Rules
SummerSlam: All Brands would host
Unforgiven: Raw (atleast one ECW match)
No Mercy: SmackDown (atleast one ECW match)
Cyber Sunday: Raw (atleast one ECW match)
Survivor Series: All brands would host
Armageddon: SmackDown (atleast one ECW match)

Now heres my explanation. ECW is one hour but deserves to show their talen off. Give them atleast one match one every brand only ppv besides their own would show all fans what they have in talent. Can be a title shot can be just a single or tag fued. As long they are being shown. Also have them host one brand only ppv so all their talent can be shown. They could use the WWE.com website to help promote more fueds for the ppv when they cant throw them onto the show. Also the reason i say add one raw and smackdown match to the ecw ppv is because it could be part of like a deal like theodore long made where his wrestlers was able to go on raw and smackdown and visa versa. Having Night of Champions would obv be a new main ppv thatll have all brnads host and shouldnt be by another one which would make sence of moving it before extreme rules.

Are they ready now to do all of this? i think so... raw can build their guys and fueds better..
Batista vs. HHH and Randy Orton vs. Kennedy can be the fueds to main event it and have some great matches and fueds finally being built including MVP, Matt Hardy, Regal, Kingston, Goldust, Big Show, John Cena, Miz, TBK, Carlito and Primo, Santino and others... The divas division can improve with more effort and room for them to see Mickie and Beth alittle more involved with Kelly Kelly, Mayse, Jillian Hall and the other girls. We can also see the general Managers acting like they give some shyt about being general mangers lol...

Smackdown can head line with Edge, Jeff Hardy, Undertaker, Jericho, Mysterio, CM Punk, Umaga being the top stars with Hass, Shelton, Cryme Tyme, Morrison, Ziggler and others making a name for themselves.. Their diva division can also get a better push like Raws with their top stars like Gail Kim and Michelle McCool along with Melina and others..

ECW can use their "spot light" matches on other ppvs to show their top talent like Christian, Finlay, Bourne, Henry, Dreamer, Swagger and Kozlov and at the same time show their new talent and make a name for them like Ezekiel, Smith, Kidd, Natalya, Ryder, The Burchills and others...

I just wish WWE would realise that now these brand ppvs would work and help them push these future stars and really bring the ratings and stuff back up just above what they are doing now..

 

[Age of Orton]

If you look back at the branded PPV's

Vengeance 2003 was the 2nd branded PPV (Bad Blood being the first) but how many branded PPV's were actually good? Vengeance 2003 was an exception, you did get some good shows but none that were in that league.

The idea tho that we have separate brands one would think they'd have separate PPV's, however in all honesty it's probably better doing what they're doing now.

 

[phemom]

This thread exposes a different problem...it's almost like they have too many starts for the current format, but not enough to separate them all (this reminds me of the good times of WCW when the had 3-4 shows a week...and 80% of them were good).

As for actually dividing the PPV's...it can be done....only if the writers are willing to create good stuff for the undercards of Raw & SD (considering both have a good 10-15 wrestlers who are almost never used). The upper will be good b/c both have enough main event talent.

As for ECdub, they more wrestlers before they get a PPV....even through "Extreme Rules" should be theirs, but if Vince considers ECW FCWplus then WTFdoes it matter? You can keep them having the openers on all of the ppv's.