Brand extension endings

[Guest Trivia247]

Courtesy of turnbuckle.com

 

Brand Extension To End, 07/05/2002 By Matthew Boone

Generally, the entire wrestling world agrees that the brand extension was a failed idea. The extension resulted in a lack of entertainment and lack of enough talent on both shows, among other negativities. Right now, the WWE knows they have to come up with a way to just end the split and bring RAW and Smackdown back together. The main thing holding this movement back, at least in the short-term, is the recent swarm of media commenting of the failure of the roster split. Being that Vince McMahon already failed in his XFL venture, now is not the time for him to admit another mistake, especially when it would confirm everything negative that has been reported about the WWE

 

 

 

Ultimately that is probably the best course of actions. So whats the pro's and cons of it

 

Lets start with the cons since we go alphabetical order.

 

Cons. Those new coming wrestlers or wrestlers that were buried or sent to the minors might get buried again since the volume of wrestlers on the shows would shove them to the Velocity and Heat. matches might go back to the shorter version again.

 

Pro you can get all the cruiserweights on both shows. All the titles are accessable and the Tag team Division might get Resurrected. New Storylines can develope quicker with everyone involved. maybe things get back to normal.

 

What do you think?

[Guest Brian]

Actually, it isn't failed thing yet. There's still alot of upside to it, ratings could probably be alot worse, and a lot of talent is getting more time. In fact, if they really wanted to end it they would have done it immediately after Vince beat Flair. They want to play it out, obviously.

[Guest Downhome]

This is just a rumor, and I personally see no truth to it what so ever at this time.

[Guest The Electrifyer]

I certainly do not want to see it end. If they do end it, I doubt that ratings are gonna get any better. They better realise that its not the brand extension thats losing them ratings, its there own uncreative ideas and bad use of some stars. The worst thing about the brand extension ending will probably be the Cruiserweight division completely coming to an end.

[Guest Austin3164life]

There's no way that Vince would want to end his "Brand Extension" idea so quickly. If any idea is his brainchild, he'll never want to kill it until it's pretty much dead and buried. The only upside I see to the split, though, is that new talent is getting air time.......

[Guest Gendo]

I can not really see them ending it at this point. They have brought up way too much young talent and ending the split would make all those little mini-pushes useless. I just do not see a real point of ending the split, if they did the roster would be giant and you would end up with pretty much the same thing anyway with talent only performing one night a week and rarely working both shows unless they were invlolved in a really hot angle.

[Guest The Man in Blak]

Actually, I say pull the split and cut your losses. The split was a great experiment, but with the WWE split in two, they're cheating fans out of half of their property and it's showing in the attendance.

 

Yeah, there are some positives, meaning elevation of midcarders (Edge) and the influx of new talent (Lesnar, Cena, Noble), but in reality, the WWE roster is weak enough now that those are things that would have - or at least SHOULD have - come to pass anyway.

 

Just think about who's not current active on the WWE roster:

 

Austin.

Rock. (he's back, but only long enough to put over the Great Lesnar)

Triple H.

 

Your top three stars from the last era are gone, leaving these guys as main eventers:

 

Undertaker

Angle

Hogan

Jericho

 

Two of these guys could die in the ring at any notice, and the other two have almost been entirely sabotaged by booking. AND, most importantly, only ONE of these guys is on the Raw brand.

 

Cut your losses. End the split.

[Guest claydude14]

hmmm yes, if the spilt ended, HHH could be on both shows! i agree, end it.

[Guest Shaved Bear]

nooooo we need the team canada stable

and then theyll be forced to provide an excuse for benoit not joining

[Guest Trivia247]

If Abdullah the Butcher can still be Impaling people with forks and waddle around the ring at near 70 forget his actual age... born in what 1932 and he started officially in 1950 and he still alive and kicking than Undertaker and Hulk Hogan will Not simply Die in the ring. Espically since both are in 3 times better condition he is in.

[Guest LJSexay]

If it ends, I will be so fucking upset, people are finally FINALLY seeing longer matches and better pushes, jesus christ.

[Guest The Man in Blak]

Joke. J - O - K - E. OLD joke, at that.

[Guest papacita]

I say they keep the split, because by dropping it, they risk alienating a whole lot of people: The wrestlers, by forcing them to work an increased schedule (and we've all heard how much they love the new reduced schedule), the younger wrestlers, particularly the ones receiving pushes right now that will inevitably be dropped once the split ends, and then the fans, who have been subjected to so many "fed altering" events over the past year (Invasion, Flair as co-owner, the nWo poison and now the split), that doing away with the split *could* cause fans to lose faith in the product. And ultimately, it unstablizes the WWE as a whole, which is not good. I say they just leave well enough alone and keep the split.

[Guest The Man in Blak]

Or fans that weren't interested because they weren't able to see their favorite star due to area-specific programming could come back if the split was dropped. (Some markets don't carry UPN, though, admittedly, that number is small).

 

The main deal is that once they bring the roster together, they need to learn how to build things in moderation. I think the overall tone in programming (longer matches, less interviews) would stay, just because that's catering to the WWE's current strength, but I would hope that the WWE wouldn't feel the need to pimp that killer Rock/Undertaker feud three times a week. That is hard to speculate, though.

 

That is a good point about the wrestlers, though - if the atmosphere in the WWE locker room hasn't been chaotic enough over the last couple of months, combining the two brands would probably put it over the top.

[Guest undisputedjericho]

I've never heard of turnbuckle.com before, how credible are they? Though I'd love for the stupid split to end.

[Guest bps "The Truth" 21]

I don't want it to end.

 

RVD and Eddy will be buried and Storm and Christian will just plain old be off tv.

[Guest Kahran Ramsus]

I like the brand extension. My only problem is they haven't gone far enough. I like the idea of the World Champion being on both shows, but the tag titles should float too, and Smackdown needs its own title (like RAW has the IC Title). I also hate when one show recaps the other.

 

Other than those gripes, the brand extension is the best thing going on right now. The last thing we need is the NWO and HHH taking up all the time on both shows.

[Guest Some Guy]

If Abdullah the Butcher can still be Impaling people with forks and waddle around the ring at near 70 forget his actual age... born in what 1932 and he started officially in 1950 and he still alive and kicking than Undertaker and Hulk Hogan will Not simply Die in the ring. Espically since both are in 3 times better condition he is in.

Because all Abdullah does is walk around, stab guys and hit an elbow drop, my 80 year old Garndmother could do that, plua he does it in the Indies in front of 200 people, not on national TV in front of 4 million. He was obviously being sarcastic when he said that Taker and Hogan could die at any time, but his point is valid due to their age and inability to bring the goods in the ring.

 

Back on topic.

 

What sence does it make to end the split? It had only been 3 months. How long did it take Austin, Rock, and HHH to start drawing? Years. Don't give up in this now because a bunch of guys who have been made to look bad in the past aren't drawing right away when you were willing to let the thre I've mentioned devolop over time. RVD, Booker, Cena, Brock, etc.. won't be huge draws over night, it takes time. It took Rock 2 years, HHH 5, and Austin 8 before thay drew anything. Why should these guys be held to extremely higher expectations?