As mentioned earlier, when the brand split was first implemented, the WWE Champion could travel back and forth between shows. In those early days, first one brand would be able to post a challenger to the title, and for the following Pay-Per-View, the other brand would get the chance. That only lasted about four months. Once Brock Lesnar won the title, he was drafted solely to Smackdown! Raw created the World Heavyweight Championship and gave it to Triple H, and for the next 11 years, the company had a hard-to-explain setup where there were two world champions. Finally, in 2013, the belts were unified, and since then, the WWE Championship has generally felt more important. It's imperative, for the sake of the title as a drawing card, that WWE doesn't split the belt again if they bring back the brand extension. Though each show should feel like a different promotion, having one WWE Champion go back and forth between them will make the title - and the champion - seem like a huge deal. In an era of waning popularity, the company can't sacrifice what could be a very important tool for making money.
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013
