Could having champions appear on Raw and Smackdown work?

[Why Always Me]

***I hope this isn't deleted because while the roster split/brand extension is discussed a lot, this hopefully is a different spin on things***

My biggest pet hate about the brand extension is the fact that there are two champions for each division (3 for the Heavyweight title).

As much as I would love to see the 3 brands become one, it aint gonna happen (at least not anytime soon).

When the split first started the Undisputed Champion and Women's champion appeared on both shows, that went out of the window when Lesnar won the WWE Title and went to Smackdown.

It was also unsuccessful because the WWE Champion only could have his fued on one show (eg The Rock was champion, feuding with Lesnar on Raw, had nowt to do on Smackdown).

The tag team division has suffered IMO most from this, the IC and US divisions are ok(ish), having 3 World Champions is a joke though.

If the titles were to be unified, the only way I could see it working is perharps having the champion appearing on both shows and then when a match is signed for a PPV, the challenger/s can als appear on both shows to further the fued.

However would having undisputed champions hurt the house shows, for example when Raw is on TV the WWE sometimes runs a Smackdown house show and vise versa.

Would there be a way to make this work, if so how?

Thoughts please (sorry if this thread is deemed to be deletable).

 

[steven87gill]

I'd tend to agree with you here, the idea of 3 world champions is to give upper mid card guys runs with the top title that they wouldn't have got otherwise, but that advantage is rendered meaningless if the world title they are holding feels 'watered down' in any way, i'd say a strong IC Title is worth more to an upper mid carder that 3 watered down world titles, so yeah, an single WWE World Title would be the way to go with a strong looking IC/US belt as the main secondary belt.

 

[TheOneBigWill]

I think you're both missing the whole point to all the Championships. You see, the idea of the brand extention in the first place.. was to give the feel of having multiple companies. Kinda like W.W.E.'s way of making it seem like even though W.C.W. & E.C.W. are gone.. this is their way of making it seem as if the competition is still there.

Therefore, both Raw & Smackdown have their own set of Championships. A World Heavyweight Championship, a mid-card Championship, a Tag Team Championship.. & the Women's Championship, along with the former "unique" Championship that was specific only to the cruiserweights.

It was never a "bad" thing that they had so many, as it allows for so many Superstars to have the opportunity to become a Champion. The only thing it does, is hurt the credibility of a World title.. since they technically have three.

Smackdown is branching out with allowing E.C.W. Superstars to get chances at their titles. (such as Morrison & Miz holding the tag team titles) Whereas Raw is basically alone to itself.

This, in my mind, also helps p.p.v.'s as they have the ability to make every match for a Championship.. & anytime a title is on the line, its a great thing. But once again, it hurts the credibility of the title, because the idea of a Championship is to allow one person the ability to be over all others. And when you have, what, 8-9 titles.. it defeats the purpose.

 

[steven87gill]

I think you're both missing the whole point to all the Championships. You see, the idea of the brand extention in the first place.. was to give the feel of having multiple companies. Kinda like W.W.E.'s way of making it seem like even though W.C.W. & E.C.W. are gone.. this is their way of making it seem as if the competition is still there.

Therefore, both Raw & Smackdown have their own set of Championships. A World Heavyweight Championship, a mid-card Championship, a Tag Team Championship.. & the Women's Championship, along with the former "unique" Championship that was specific only to the cruiserweights.

It was never a "bad" thing that they had so many, as it allows for so many Superstars to have the opportunity to become a Champion. The only thing it does, is hurt the credibility of a World title.. since they technically have three.

Smackdown is branching out with allowing E.C.W. Superstars to get chances at their titles. (such as Morrison & Miz holding the tag team titles) Whereas Raw is basically alone to itself.

This, in my mind, also helps p.p.v.'s as they have the ability to make every match for a Championship.. & anytime a title is on the line, its a great thing. But once again, it hurts the credibility of the title, because the idea of a Championship is to allow one person the ability to be over all others. And when you have, what, 8-9 titles.. it defeats the purpose.

I do understand what you mean, and i'm not against the brand extention in principle, but in its current form. If you had a company name like WCW or ECW behind one of the shows, like a ECW or WCW smackdown vs WWE Raw, then i think it would not only give credibility to the brand extention but also justify having more than one world title, the problem at the moment is that it feels two much like two halfs of the same product rather than two distinct brands especially since the scrapping of single brand PPV's(which was understandable since they never did great buyrates)

 

[Derf]

I think that as long as they have three shows, they should have three world titles. The US and IC titles are doing their jobs good, as is the womans title. The Tag team division is dead with two titles. This is a really old, yet hot discussion right here ya know. I think having One world champion appearing on all three shows would be a good idea, of course excluding the whole "house show" ordeal. It would show who is the current top dog in all of WWE, but with that comes a problem in the form of another John Cena title reign. When Cena was champ for over a year, people got bored and wanted to change the channel. Thats where having two other world champions came into play, we had some other top names + batista (lol) to call the top guy, we had a variety. If we get rid of all but one world title, then the WWE really is forcing John Cena, or whoever, down our throats without any other alternatives.

 

[Evan Snow-Wolf]

I understand where you are going with this thread, but it was my understanding that part of the reason they had the Brand Extension in the first place was so champions didn't have to appear on both shows. It was totally cripping their main eventers. Its bad enough doing all those house shows as a champion, then you had to do both TV shows and still make the PPV on Sunday.

The brand extension cut exhaustion and so forth in HALF. That's a good thing. I do agree though that the extension itself sucks. We need more random appearances and mixed characters instead of the same stuff over and over again.

 

[Y 2 Jake]

This has been done to death.