10 Ways The Brand Split Has Changed WWE (One Year On)
9. Extreme Roster Bloat
WWE have never been as overstocked with talent as they are today. Across Raw, SmackDown, 205 Live, and NXT, the company currently have access to just under 200 wrestlers, not including UK stars, Performance Center trainees and inactives. That’s too much even for WWE’s seven hours of original weekly programming, and the bloat has left some of their most talented midcarders stranded.
Guys like Tye Dillinger, American Alpha, and Luke Harper have all struggled for airtime recently. They are casualties of WWE’s decision to load up their roster after splittig it in two, and while the company having more wrestlers than they can accommodate isn’t a new problem, it has been exacerbated since the 2016 draft.
The split has afforded plenty of onscreen opportunities that didn’t exist before, but their giant roster has left dozens of wrestlers lost at sea, and WWE have never carried so much dead weight before. Some wrestlers are currently paid to do little more than fill house show lineups, and with WWE still signing swathes of new performers every other month, the problem isn’t going away anytime soon.