4 Ups & 3 Downs Of WWE Universal Championship

1. Raw Superstars Have Something To Fight For

A brand without a World Championship is like a rudderless ship: completely directionless.

While a “floating” belt would’ve gone some way to bring parity to both Raw and SmackDown without sacrificing prestige, there’d be times when the champion would inevitably be more focused on a challenger from one brand than the other. In the interim, the other brand’s main eventers would be forced to sit and twiddle their thumbs until the belt-holder came back around: an unideal scenario, and one that WWE have successfully avoided.

Raw superstars now have a clear goal to work towards. Holding a World Title provides justification for all the blood, sweat, and tears that a wrestler has poured into their career. Capturing the gold is official recognition of their hard work, and should be considered the ultimate honour among professional wrestlers. When you hold the belt, you’re supposed to be the best in the world, and it’s hard to prove that status without a strap to work towards.

The Universal Championship gives the likes of Balor, Rollins, and Reigns a purpose. Some wrestlers never get to be the champion, true, but everyone has ambitions of one day becoming the top dog. Without it, these talented wrestlers would become stuck in never-ending holding patterns, and without a “top tier” to work towards, Raw’s biggest and brightest would be stuck with nowhere to go.

A wrestler’s ambitions are seriously inhibited when he doesn’t have a target to aim for, and what worth is a competitor without goals, dreams, and aspirations?