I think I hate the brand split more than any part of wrestling continuity. It’s something that,
on the face of it, should be so simple. Too many wrestlers, cut the wrestlers in half,
they live on their separate islands, giving you a reason to tune in to both shows. Easy. Nothing
is ever easy. The draft only happened a few weeks ago and it’s already been bollocksed. Here’s how.
I’m Adam from WrestleTalk and here are 10 Ways WWE Has Already Ruined The Brand Split
SmackDown Stars Competing For Raw Championship This is a nice simple one to start off with,
so let’s have a brief recap. Roman Reigns is both the Universal
and WWE Champion - an undisputed champion, if you will - and has not defended the belts separately
since he won them at WrestleMania last year. Triple H announced on Raw that because no one
can beat Roman and he doesn’t defend his belts that much, we’re going to crown a
new World Heavyweight Champion that will be exclusive to the brand that Roman isn’t on.
Roman is put on SmackDown which means the new World Heavyweight Championship is exclusive
to Raw. Fast forward just a few days later and Wade Barrett said on SmackDown that SmackDown
wrestlers will be wrestling in the tournament to crown the new World Heavyweight Championship that
is supposed to be exclusive to Raw. This is so needlessly complicated.
Because you either just have the Raw guy win the tournament, thus rendering the finals predictable
and redundant, or you have a SmackDown guy win it to swerve you and your friend Mark and either
they get Drafted to Raw which makes the Draft redundant or you have that guy stay on SmackDown
leaving Raw without a f***ing belt again. This… this shouldn’t be that hard.
Speaking of which. Women’s Champions On The Wrong Shows
We’ve been down this road before and yet here we are again. For whatever reason WWE like to
make things harder for themselves than they need to. The first of this was naming belts
after specific brands and then doing a silly thing like swapping them so we now have the SmackDown
Women’s Champion Rhea Ripley on Raw and the Raw Women’s Champion Bianca Belair on SmackDown. Is
it a deal breaker? No, not really. But it does highlight how little sense this all makes. Also
the last time this happened Charlotte threw a belt on a floor and I now have to include that
in loads of new list videos so I think we should try and avoid situations like this in the future.
An easy way out of this situation is to make the brand’s champs undraftable.
Rhea is locked to SmackDown, Belair is locked to Raw. It avoids this confusion, and just makes
my life easier. Or rename the belts! Just… don’t do the belt swapping gimmick. Please…
NXT Women’s Tag Champs Drafted To SmackDown Yeah so the NXT Tag Team Champions are also now
on the main roster. At least Indi Hartwell had the good decency to shatter her ankle and vacate her
belt before leaving. Oof, sorry Indi. Full disclosure, we’re recording this
before SmackDown has aired. So they might do something awesome on that show that makes
his entry look really stupid and I’ll look like a massive lobster head. So if they do,
feel free to leave a comment down below that tells me I’m a massive lobster head.
But if they don’t, then they may as well meld these belts with their other women’s tag team
championships. It’s not like there’s a plethora of tag teams in the NXT women’s
division vying for the belts as the only other big team were also drafted to Raw.
And speaking of tag team champions… What Is Going On With The Tag Team Champions?
Does anyone know? Like, are Roman’s belts two belts? Is it just one belt? Because Kevin Owens
and Sami Zayn’s belts are two belts. And not just two because there’s two of them.
I’m seeing double here, four tag titles. They said on Backlash that while Kev and
Sami have been drafted to Raw, they can also be on SmackDown because they’re the tag champs
of that show. Which is great, but if that’s the case, WHY COULDN’T ROMAN ALSO BE ON RAW
SINCE HE’S ALSO THE CHAMPION OF THAT BRAND. There’s no consistency to this whatsoever.
Wait, hold on. If Kev and Sami can be on SmackDown because they’re the SmackDown tag champs,
WHY CAN’T RHEA BE ON SMACKDOWN AS THE SMACKDOWN WOMEN’S CHAMPION?!
Natalya Can Be On Both Brands, Apparently Speaking with Archive of B-Sox, Natalya said:
“I got drafted from SmackDown to Raw, but that doesn’t mean that I still can’t show
up on SmackDown. You’re drafted to a certain brand, but if the storyline calls for it,
you can show up on another show. It’s cool.” I know what you’re thinking, so say it along with
me: WHAT WAS THE F***ING POINT OF THE DRAFT THEN. I mean ultimately this will all be pointless
anyway because they’ll just merge the brands together in a few years time and
then they’ll decide to split the rosters again when the TV rights need to be negotiated and we
can do this merry dance again and I can make some more lists about it. Wonderful.
Not that it really matters anyway, because there’s such things called…
“The Free Agents” On the second night of the Draft,
Triple H announced that Brock Lesnar had signed a cool deal that meant he was a free agent and could
appear on both Raw and SmackDown. It was later revealed that MVP had negotiated the same deal
for Omos because both brands should be able to see just how tall he is. OK, I guess they both
are special attractions, I guess? But wait, because Cedric Alexander is also a free
agent. And so is Mustufa Ali. And Von Wagner. What if Cedric and Shelton win the SmackDown
Tag Championships? Does that mean that they could defend those belts on both
brands and then another Raw tag team wins them and the belts become exclusive to Raw?
And if Nattie just wants to be on both shows, why didn’t they just make her a free agent? My brain
is growing a face and that face is screaming like that face in the sand in the mummy.
Not Using the Tournament To Make A New Star Let’s circle back to the World Heavyweight
Championship Tournament for a second, and one of the common complaints about is that
very few people - particularly on the Raw side - felt like they belonged. Finn Balor may as well
be called Pinn Balor, Cody is in the tournament but is also finishing his story for a different
title elsewhere and The Miz’s credentials to get into this tournament was losing to Snoop
Dogg at WrestleMania. Priest was one of the few actual credible names in the tournament and there
felt like a genuine effort to make him feel like a big star, which means it’s
pretty obvious that this is just Seth’s to win. Had the tournament been Raw exclusive, which would
MAKE SENSE you could have had a longer tournament with more rounds of singles matches and allowed
some new names to shine. They don’t need to win, but at least get good showings. Chad Gable,
Xavier Woods, Dominik Mysterio or even an NXT call-up like JD McDonough. Use this tournament
to establish a new main event scene. Don’t use it to have…
Shinsuke Nakamura in Mizcard Vortex Welcome back, Shinsuke, Time to get
pinsuked. Old Nackers actually started the match looking fired up, almost as though he’d been
told he was going all the way and feeling newly inspired, but alas he didn’t have the… pedigree
If you’re really not giving Damian Priest the title then wouldn’t it be better to have Priest
be the fall guy? Wasn’t he still hurting from his quadruple B - Backlash Bad Bunny Beatdown - so
it wouldn’t have done him any real harm. Instead though, Nakamura not only lost but
by the end of the show he was entering into a new feud with none other than The Miz, who at this
point is essentially the new Dolph Ziggler of WWE. He seems to be there just to wrestle NXT call-ups
or returns for their first feud back. The Way
WWE has always said that a lot of the main roster audience doesn’t watch NXT,
but like all good rules, they’re made to be broken - even if doing so doesn’t make a lick of sense.
On this week’s raw, we got a backstage segment in which Indi Hartwell was hanging out with Candice
LeRae, Johnny Gargano and Dexter Lumis - in other words, NXT faction The Way.
They did this without a word of explanation, not even a simple video package to explain why these
guys are all pals, so now anyone who doesn’t watch NXT has just been left scratching their heads. But
then that’s nothing new when it comes to how this lot have been booked - How has Mr Takeover, Johnny
Wrestling done almost nothing since coming back? NXT continuity is a good thing in general,
but at least explain it for those who are new to the story! You can’t have your cake and eat it,
as they say… although what else are you supposed to do with a cake?
Cody Rhodes Will Never Get To Finish The Neverending Storyyyyy.
Seriously, where is all of this going? Are we really now waiting until WrestleMania 40 for any
chance of Roman Reigns losing the title to Cody in the rematch everyone wants? And what happens
in the meantime? It seems as though Cody is going to spend the next few months in pursuit of a title
he never wanted, just to kill some time until we get into WrestleMania season and everyone forgets
there was ever a brand split in the first place. If that’s the plan, it’s just as bad for Roman
as it is for Cody: the list of credible opponents on SmackDown who remain serious
contenders to dethrone the Tribal Chief is pretty small - and anyway, where would they do it? Money
In The Bank in London will be great, but it’s not WrestleMania. And neither is Summerslam in
Detroit. So it feels like we’ll be waiting a long time to get what we want - but by then we’ll all
want it more because Cody will have faced a shed load more adversity, or some bollocks.