One of the biggest pieces of news this week was the unveiling of two new championships on SmackDown as Daniel Bryan created both Women’s and Tag Team titles exclusively to the blue brand.
Whilst the unveiling was handled well and SmackDown’s show, in general, was better than Raw (once again) I couldn’t help but question the WWE’s decision to add more title’s to their programming.
Yes, I know that it has been common knowledge for several weeks as it has even been referenced on SmackDown but that didn’t prepare me for it actually happening.
Why am I so frustrated by the decision? It’s simple, the popular phrase ‘ It’s quality, not quantity.’ A phrase that WWE has completely ignored when it comes to championship belts by creating two more.
Now we have two tag team championships and two women’s championships, yet we are expected to hold all four titles in high prestige and respect? It doesn’t work that way, people have learned to respect the holder of the Women’s Championship (on Raw) because it has had a long healthy run by Charlotte and the belt gained prestige.
Well, all that was for nothing as now there is another Women’s Championship, which means they are on a level playing field.
The company has spent SummerSlam weekend promoting their Women’s division with the latest WWE 24 documentary and two blockbuster matches for both the NXT and the main roster’s Women’s title. On top of that, they had the return of Nikki Bella and the main roster debut of Bayley, but the second title has squashed some of that momentum.
It’s quite obvious that the WWE doesn’t have the main roster depth to have two split women’s rosters and two championships, for the short term it is going to work, fresh feuds, important matches that make the division have a more prominent place.
But in the long term, once you’ve seen those matches several times over there is a major issue.
The company missed out on having one brand exclusively having the women, like RAW have the cruiserweights. Just a few injuries to Emma and Sasha Banks and a suspension for Paige has left the rosters looking very thin.
WWE’s tag team division has exactly the same problem, there simply isn’t enough credible teams for split title’s.
On Raw, there are three teams to be taken seriously and that can compete for the belts, on SmackDown there’s arguably only two in the Usos and American Alpha.
Sure the company can build teams such as Breezeango but how seriously can you take Golden Truth?
One of the major issues from the last brand split was that the titles were devalued and became worthless, eventually being merged together.
Ultimately it would have made more sense to just have the champion cross brands and keep the quality of one belt instead of just throwing as many belts (that all look exactly the same) as possible at us.
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