8 Signs WWE's Latest Brand Split Is Dying
We all knew it was going to happen eventually.
WWE's decision to bring back the Brand Split in the summer of 2016 was met with mixed reactions from fans. There were those who salivated at the idea of certain stars receiving more television time and opportunities to succeed, while others argued it would lead to Raw and SmackDown Live becoming more repetitive and watered-down than they already were.
There have been certainly been pros and cons to the Brand Split over the past three years, but by and large it has been a net positive. WWE did a decent job for the first year or two of making it feel like there was actual animosity between the shows, but recently have gotten lazy with enforcing the rules of the Brand Extension and ensuring stars stick to one show (outside of special occasions).
At this point, it's more a matter of when and not if WWE will call off the entire thing and go back to having everyone appear on both brands (for better or for worse). If you have a hard time buying into that harsh reality, look no further than the following eight signs that essentially spell the end of the Brand Split in WWE.
8. Dual-Branded Pay-Per-Views
Dual-branded pay-per-views are far from a new concept, but when WWE made the decision to do away with brand-exclusive events in early 2018, that merely marked the beginning of the end of the Brand Split.
To be fair, some of those early Raw-exclusive pay-per-views in late 2016 were pretty abysmal. The red brand struggled with roster depth at the time, though the same can be said for SmackDown Live back then yet their events never failed to deliver.
The brand-exclusive events provided talent who weren't as high up on the totem pole with a platform to showcase their skills and win over the audience. The only negative was that having one PPV a month for both brands led to WWE's event schedule becoming bloated with way too many shows.
Thus, WWE announcing that they were cutting back to one event a month and that every PPV would feature superstars from SmackDown and Raw was something of a relief. It then became apparent that the amount of PPVs WWE runs each year hadn't changed one bit thanks to the addition of international events to the schedule.
In essence, there is still an abundance of WWE shows with less variety and no consistent quality. Got it.