When Brock Lesnar won the WWE Undisputed Championship from the Rock at SummerSlam 2002, it caused a brief dilemma because Lesnar was a SmackDown-exclusive star. In response, RAW began using the World Heavyweight Championship, and the two belts have changed shows a number of times ever since. What is important, however, is that having one belt on each show helped make both shows equally important. While many fans have traditionally disagreed on having two World Titles (and were thus satisfied when they were merged in 2013), SmackDown was able to have good shows on its own without needing to have its stars go after a single champion on RAW and vice-versa. Having two titles and two champions gave more people the opportunity to shine and become bigger stars, instead of the same handful of stars always getting shot after shot at the one World Title. Without a World Title of its own, SmackDown doesnt have anything that allows it to compete with RAW, nor does it have its own mechanism to build new stars to challenge for the title. Instead, everything related to the World Title happens on RAW, and therefore the biggest stars in the company are perceived to be on RAW. SmackDown, meanwhile, has just become a show where nothing exceptionally important ever happens, which leads to a major problem when it comes to building hype for PPVs'
Alexander Podgorski is a writer for WhatCulture that has been a fan of professional wrestling since he was 8 years old. He loves all kinds of wrestling, from WWE and sports entertainment, to puroresu in Japan.
He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Queen's University in Political Studies and French, and a Master's Degree in Public Administration. He speaks English, French, Polish, a bit of German, and knows some odd words and phrases in half a dozen other languages.
