10 Reasons WWE Fans Should Be Worried About Brand Split 2016
Can WWE's forthcoming split overcome these major concerns?
The brand split is looming.
July 19th’s live Smackdown broadcast will play host to the 2016 WWE Draft as the company looks to reshuffle its deck, refresh its product, and reignite its ailing year by splitting the roster in two.
The “New Era” that juddered WWE back to life after the disappointment of WrestleMania 32 has stalled. Raw has returned to the tedium of old, where very little happens other than the same handful of superstars wrestling the same opponents over and over. New faces like Enzo & Big Cass have freshened things up somewhat but, after a few months of promise, WWE has largely reverted to the same holding patterns that have plagued Raw and Smackdown for years.
The product has stalled. It’s stagnant, stale, and in dire need of change, and WWE are hedging all their bets on the new brand split being a success. The company’s taking a risk, and with casual fans dropping like flies and ratings stuck in the doldrums, they need it to succeed.
There are lots of reasons to be optimistic about the company’s forthcoming hard reset, but each is tempered by a cause for concern. Here are 10 reasons WWE fans should be worried about the brand split.
10. History Repeating Itself
WWE doesn’t exactly have a great track record when it comes to learning from mistakes. Look no further than Roman Reigns: Vince McMahon’s latest hand-picked poster child, whom WWE continue to shove down fans’ throats despite their continued rejection of him as the company’s leading light.
Despite the previous brand split’s mid-2000s successes (when Smackdown in-particularly was churning-out quality wrestling matches on a weekly basis), WWE’s last attempt at roster reorganisation ended in failure. Smackdown inevitably reverted to the “B Show” that WWE have always regarded it as, Raw became a nightmare of sports entertainment’s very worst tropes, and towards the end, wrestlers were appearing across multiple shows regardless of the split, thus rendering it redundant.
While the split might bear a number of short-term benefits, history suggests that this won’t last. Just think about how quickly the “New Era” has regressed.