Alright so I've been thinking about this for a while now, and I thought I would just shoot it out. What is the situation with the GM's of the brands? Raw really has not had a GM over a year now, except for Coach, who is really an executive assistant and not a GM. ECW is without a GM or any sort of authority figure say for McMahon making his random appearances. Smackdown has a GM in Teddy Long, but there has been talks of taking him out of this role and replacing him. What I am driving at is whether there is even a point for the GM now? In fact I am beginning to question the whole brand extension. If I remember, the brand extension was decided upon because the wwe had such an influx of wrestlers, and quite frankly not enough room to use them all. They had roughly 10-12 mega-stars at the time, people like Hogan, Rock, Austin, HHH, Undertaker and so on who were still wrestling. They also had a number of middle card wrestlers who were not being used, and this was largely because no room on the card. So the brand extension was made, with each brand having 40 wrestlers, and that was kept as the norm for a while. Now each brand had 4 of their own ppv's, plus the 4 major ppv's, and between these there was suppose to be a lot of time to develop good storylines and rivalries for the ppv's. Also, with such a smaller roster, many of the wrestlers deserving of a spot would be on the ppv. I will say that at first I was not happy with this, as at the time I didn't get Smackdown, so I missed out on seeing a lot of my fav's. Raw became my show. But then amazing stuff started happening, you had the GM idea being implemented, the brand drafts, the inter-promotional matches at WM and to a similar extent, Survivror Series. As long as the brands stayed separate, except for coming together for some extraordinary matches, this system would work.
Then ECW came into being again, and suddenly you had wrestlers appearing on a show one week, then somehow being part of the roster of another show the following week. There was no longer any storyline reasons for the switching. Then you started having wrestlers appear on both or all 3 shows to push their own feuds, such as the Hardy's/MNM, or Lashley/Umaga. Then comes the announcement that the all the ppv's are inter brand, which thusly means that only the top tier stars, or those stars with titles, will be involved in the ppv's, and the rest of the wrestlers are crap out of luck.
What I am getting at is that the brand extension idea is a joke now. The initial reason for having such an extension is now shot. There is such a mixture of stars on every show that it really makes you wonder whether there are separate brands anymore.
So what I think should happen, and maybe its just a natural progression, is that the whole brand extension idea is coming to an end. Maybe it will end in a few weeks(unlikely) or a few months(also unlikely). Maybe it'll take a year or still a couple of years down the line, but the fate of the separate brands appear to me to be pointing at ending. If you really look at, it is what the wwe needs. The situation in the wwe exists where there are no longer a large amount of wrestlers in the top eichelon of the megastars to really keep the brands separate. If you look at each brand, they are lacking the necessary amount of top heels or even top faces to keep the interest of fans. What you see is the same 2 or 3 wrestlers involved in main event match, and wrestlers who hold on to their brands titles for longer then in reality they should. In looking at the brands separately, on raw you have Cena, Micheals, Edge, Orton, HHH(when he is healthy again) and maybe Umaga. Smackdown has Undertaker, Batista, maybe King Booker, maybe Kennedy eventually, maybe Mysterio. ECW has Lashley. By combining the brands together, there can now be better feuds, more men in the main events, and the wrestlers who deserve to be in these spots will be in these spots.
The problems of course are numerous as well. For one the house show numbers will be lowered, as there would no longer be separate brand shows, and so wwe would lose out on a lot of money. I guess the only way to solve that would be to keep separate brands or have wrestlers be grouped into 2 groups for house shows. Another problem is development wrestlers, in that with so many stars again on a single brand, many of the development wrestlers will have a hard time cracking the roster, and if they do will have a hard time moving up. But again if a wrestler is that good enough to be on the main roster, they will get there. Finally many, many of the wrestlers, those middle to low cards, will lose out on tv time. But that could be solved by re-introducing Heat/Velocity on tv.
Again I think the brand situation is a joke, and that it is naturally progressing towards a single brand promotion once more. It is impossible to tell when this will happen, but it will happen sooner rather than later. And I think this is exactly what the wwe needs to add excitement and interest once more into their product.
So what do you all think about this?
Then ECW came into being again, and suddenly you had wrestlers appearing on a show one week, then somehow being part of the roster of another show the following week. There was no longer any storyline reasons for the switching. Then you started having wrestlers appear on both or all 3 shows to push their own feuds, such as the Hardy's/MNM, or Lashley/Umaga. Then comes the announcement that the all the ppv's are inter brand, which thusly means that only the top tier stars, or those stars with titles, will be involved in the ppv's, and the rest of the wrestlers are crap out of luck.
What I am getting at is that the brand extension idea is a joke now. The initial reason for having such an extension is now shot. There is such a mixture of stars on every show that it really makes you wonder whether there are separate brands anymore.
So what I think should happen, and maybe its just a natural progression, is that the whole brand extension idea is coming to an end. Maybe it will end in a few weeks(unlikely) or a few months(also unlikely). Maybe it'll take a year or still a couple of years down the line, but the fate of the separate brands appear to me to be pointing at ending. If you really look at, it is what the wwe needs. The situation in the wwe exists where there are no longer a large amount of wrestlers in the top eichelon of the megastars to really keep the brands separate. If you look at each brand, they are lacking the necessary amount of top heels or even top faces to keep the interest of fans. What you see is the same 2 or 3 wrestlers involved in main event match, and wrestlers who hold on to their brands titles for longer then in reality they should. In looking at the brands separately, on raw you have Cena, Micheals, Edge, Orton, HHH(when he is healthy again) and maybe Umaga. Smackdown has Undertaker, Batista, maybe King Booker, maybe Kennedy eventually, maybe Mysterio. ECW has Lashley. By combining the brands together, there can now be better feuds, more men in the main events, and the wrestlers who deserve to be in these spots will be in these spots.
The problems of course are numerous as well. For one the house show numbers will be lowered, as there would no longer be separate brand shows, and so wwe would lose out on a lot of money. I guess the only way to solve that would be to keep separate brands or have wrestlers be grouped into 2 groups for house shows. Another problem is development wrestlers, in that with so many stars again on a single brand, many of the development wrestlers will have a hard time cracking the roster, and if they do will have a hard time moving up. But again if a wrestler is that good enough to be on the main roster, they will get there. Finally many, many of the wrestlers, those middle to low cards, will lose out on tv time. But that could be solved by re-introducing Heat/Velocity on tv.
Again I think the brand situation is a joke, and that it is naturally progressing towards a single brand promotion once more. It is impossible to tell when this will happen, but it will happen sooner rather than later. And I think this is exactly what the wwe needs to add excitement and interest once more into their product.
So what do you all think about this?