Why A Hard Brand Split Is Best For WWE (& Why It Hurts WWE)

When WWE first announced that they were bringing back the Brand Split in 2016, many fans rolled their eyes, being fairly jaded and unexcited at the prospect of the WWE trying once again to implement a split. To nearly everyone's surprise, the company would knock it out of the park, delivering arguably the best iteration of the Brand Split to date.

RELATED: 8 Signs The Latest Brand Split Is Doomed

With 2022 seeing WWE slowly phasing out the last stages of the current Brand Split, Raw and Smackdown are already headed into merger mode, with both the WWE & Universal, and the Raw & Smackdown Tag Team Championships all being unified, and the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship sitting vacant for months now. As wrestlers freely jump between brands, it does appear that the Brand Split is dead as dirt once more, but that should not be the case.

10 BEST FOR WWE: New Wrestlers Can Break Out

For all the talk of WWE needing to build up and create new stars, the easiest way to do so is by creating a Brand Split, which allows for more wrestlers to shine on their respective shows, as there are not two rosters trying to fit into 2 or 3 hours of TV. 2016's Brand Extension would see the likes of Braun Strowman, Kevin Owens, Chad Gable & Jason Jordan, Heath Slater, Alexa Bliss, Becky Lynch, and several others truly break out as major players within the WWE.

RELATED: Tiffany Stratton & 9 Other Young Women's Wrestling Prospects That Will Be Future Stars

Should the company put the effort they did into the 2016 version, a new Brand Split could turn several members of the WWE roster into bonafide stars, with names like Montez Ford, Doudrop, and Shotzi being prime contenders this time around!

9 HURTS WWE: Even More PPVs

An area that AEW has thrived since debuting in 2019 is with its PPV system. Sticking to 4, or possibly 5, PPV events a year has not only helped each event feel that much more special, but also allows the fans paying out of pocket some breathing room with not having to pay for each show every month.

The absolute negative for the 2016 Brand Split were the Brand Exclusive PPV events. WWE went from doing a PPV a month, to sometimes having events twice a month which could lead to easy burnout for any fan following both Raw and Smackdown, and tuning into every PPV event.

8 BEST FOR WWE: Survivor Series Feels Bigger & Meaningful

Something that most fans can agree upon is that Survivor Series is far from what it once was. Despite the current Brand Split still existing, with the introduction of the "wildcard rule", Survivor Series' entire brand loyalty concept of Raw vs Smackdown has felt like a joke for the past few years.

Having wrestlers that appear on both shows, all of a sudden become increasingly proud of their own specific brand while choosing to go to war with their co-workers while barely having a Brand Split is insulting to the intelligence of the audience. With a hard Brand Split, this goes away, as the rosters are legitimately only crossing over once a year.

7 HURTS WWE: The Roster Becomes Smaller

One glaring downside to splitting the WWE main roster into two halves is the fact that both Raw and Smackdown's rosters would be slimmed down to allow for exclusivity. While that does help each show foster their own feeling and identity, it also does mean that the options for who to push and feature becomes a bit smaller.

Prior to WWE mass-releasing talents during the COVID-19 Pandemic, this issue would have been less glaring as the number of contracted wrestlers across NXT, Raw, and Smackdown was quite high, meaning that call-ups could have occurred to help fill in gaps in each roster. With NXT 2.0 being proper developmental again, multiple call-ups seem less likely to happen during a brand split, meaning the rosters would remain fairly dwindled.

6 BEST FOR WWE: Championships Feel More Important

With the Brand Split comes brand-specific championships. Each show would be assigned their respective titles, and each belt would then have their own divisions. By having fewer titles on each show, instead of two sets of titles on each show, the belts themselves and the champions holding them feel more important by extension.

Look no further than the Intercontinental Championship during 2016, with Dolph Ziggler and The Miz having a legendary feud over the title and making it feel once again like the true workhorse championship in all of wrestling.

5 HURTS WWE: Major Injuries Can Be A Disaster

In addition to having slimmed down rosters, looking at 2022 as an example year, when the injury bug hits, it hits hard. Should WWE opt in for a new brand split, injuries are a major cause for concern, even more than usual.

When either brand's divisions become smaller and smaller during the brand split, should multiple stars go down with injuries, it could leave creative with next to no options as other superstars could be tied up in their own programs. With the intensity of the WWE schedule and wrestling being a risky activity already, injuries derailing major storylines like Finn Balor's horrid injury at SummerSlam 2016 can be looked at as major reasons against a brand split.

4 BEST FOR WWE: Raw And Smackdown Have Their Own Identities

Creating unique identities for the WWE main roster shows is a must, as having both programs feel identical with storylines, matches, booking, and looks, can often times lead to fans tuning out as it just feels like it is all the same. That is something the Brand Split can help with.

Whether it be the different set designs for each show, their separate rosters, or genuine differences in storytelling and match quality, the Brand Split can do a whole lot to make Smackdown not just feel like a shorter version of Raw.

3 HURTS WWE: It Can Become Stale Sometimes

Critics of WWE's Brand Split often use the idea that it is a tired, bored, and often stale storyline for the company, and while sometimes that can be true, there are ways around it.

Having smaller rosters and less variety to play with can lead to the shows becoming stale. The way to work around this is simply to have a yearly or bi-yearly reshuffling of the brands, to utilize trades well, and to occasionally have a brand call some hot young prospect from NXT 2.0 up as an exciting new member of their roster.

2 BEST FOR WWE: The Shows Become More Exciting

For those that are of the opinion that the brand split is a negative and that its time has deservedly come to an end once more in WWE, look no further than the famous 2016 Brand Split for proof of the opposite. For many fans, the 2016/2017 eras of Raw and Smackdown were the last great time for the shows since the inception of AEW in 2019, with both red and blue shows feeling more exciting than they had in years prior.

RELATED: 10 WWE Storylines We Want To See Before The End Of 2022

Smackdown became a show filled with top-notch in ring action, both in the WWE Championship and Intercontinental scenes, while their tag division thrived as the women's division gave birth to stars in the form of Alexa Bliss, Carmella, and Becky Lynch. Similarly, Raw would feature increased focus on two major women's stars with Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks both landing on the "A Brand", while also featuring youth with Kevin Owens and Seth Rollins serving as the male leads on the show.

1 HURTS WWE: One Brand Will Be Prioritized

While this may not be inherently negative, the idea that one of the WWE main roster shows is more important than the other always tends to come around when the company opts in to doing a hard brand split. Whether it be RAW getting more draft picks every year, Smackdown's debut on FOX getting The Rock, or Raw being referred to as "the flagship", it treads a troubling territory for WWE during each attempt.

If WWE themselves refer to one show as the flasgship, it immediately puts it in into their audience's heads that said show is the more important of the two. 2016's brand split somehow bucked this trend a bit, with RAW seemingly being prioritized by the company, only to have Smackdown become the preferred show with names like AJ Styles, Dean Ambrose, The Miz, Dolph Ziggler, Alexa Bliss, and Becky Lynch all becoming wildly popular during this period.