Brand Extension On It's Last Legs?

[wwe_fanatic]

There might have been threads on this before but I think at this point that it's most significant and it's time for it to end. WWE has milked the brand extension for all its worth (maybenot but still). There ain't much they can do with it now.

Smackdown is a poor show, it needs to have the two shows together again, have the same superstars. Bringing it together could create some better rivalries. You could quite easily pull off 2 shows a week with a sunday event every 4 weeks just like the good ol' days. Right?

Whats everyone elses thoughts on the matter?

 

[n00b]

I agree, although it lets young guys gets over th ebrand extension right now is as boring as shit..fuck the brand extension..

 

[Fatal 55]

Simple Answer...NO! Reason's Being :-

1. Cash

WWE are making considerable more money than they ever were doing during the turn of the century & towards the end of the attitude era. Why would they compromise that & risk losing a whole ton of money, especially while ratings are down! If anything the WWE would be more likely to start a 4th Brand than sending it back to 1!

2. Schedule

The Superstars allready have a tough enough schedule as it is, think about if your the top guy. It's hard enough to keep up with just the Raw Live events let alone a pile of Smackdown House shows added onto that. WWE's run of inuries this year has been contributed by VERY Busy schedules with House Show's & TV Tapings & so on... Think of the injuries that would occur if the schedule was doubled... Yer, exactly!

3. Opportunites

Although the programming would be far more entertaining no doubt, the opportunity for younger guys to step up & make it to the Main Event would be very limited indeed! How would you expect such people as CM Punk, Matt Hardy, Chuck Palumbo, Carlito & others be used on the show! Answer = they wouldn't because it would be too star studded for guys struggling to make it on TV anyweis! Just because there are more guys on a show deosn't mean it's going to be a ton better. Look at Raw This summer, they nick everbody from SmackDown!, Clogg up the Main Event... & have the same stale Ratings, & the programming quality itself hasn't improved a bit. The staleness of the show's isn't down to not enough people, it's the booking itself!

The brands as a whole is working fine ATM... There are plenty of opportunities for younger guys to step up into the Main Event on both SmackDown & ECW! (Not so much on Raw) Why would WWE compromise this & just combine the Brands. It's just stupid. One day you'll find out from a BUSINESS standpoint, that the Brand Extension is here to stay & is far better than just 1 roster. I have a feeeling your just wanting WWE to collect that Attitude era feeling again... But the truth is, even if they were to combine the Roster's The Show would still be shitty & would pale in comaprison to 1997-2003... Wrestling's moved on, we can't live in the Attitude Era for ever, people need to realise this that no amtter how hard you wish... Those days are the past & there's no going back.

& Smacky-Backy isn't a poor Show, yes it may be a little worse than back this time last year but it's always in transition, as you can see new guys coming quite often! Plus, SmackDown usualy has the better matches out of all three shows, so TBH it can't be THAT bad!

 

[The Leviathan]

I think you're wrong... Smackdown is still that good imo.. It only went down after the Undertaker and Edge suffered an injury, but as you can see, Smackdown has more entertaining matches before this happened just like what F55 had just said. And another point, if they stop this brand extension, I think it's hard to put, HHH, Orton, HBK, Taker, Mysterio, Batista, Lashley (returning) and Edge in one night....

 

[phantomgerald]

Simple Answer...NO! Reason's Being :-

1. Cash

WWE are making considerable more money than they ever were doing during the turn of the century & towards the end of the attitude era. Why would they compromise that & risk losing a whole ton of money, especially while ratings are down! If anything the WWE would be more likely to start a 4th Brand than sending it back to 1!

2. Schedule

The Superstars allready have a tough enough schedule as it is, think about if your the top guy. It's hard enough to keep up with just the Raw Live events let alone a pile of Smackdown House shows added onto that. WWE's run of inuries this year has been contributed by VERY Busy schedules with House Show's & TV Tapings & so on... Think of the injuries that would occur if the schedule was doubled... Yer, exactly!

3. Opportunites

Although the programming would be far more entertaining no doubt, the opportunity for younger guys to step up & make it to the Main Event would be very limited indeed! How would you expect such people as CM Punk, Matt Hardy, Chuck Palumbo, Carlito & others be used on the show! Answer = they wouldn't because it would be too star studded for guys struggling to make it on TV anyweis! Just because there are more guys on a show deosn't mean it's going to be a ton better. Look at Raw This summer, they nick everbody from SmackDown!, Clogg up the Main Event... & have the same stale Ratings, & the programming quality itself hasn't improved a bit. The staleness of the show's isn't down to not enough people, it's the booking itself!

The brands as a whole is working fine ATM... There are plenty of opportunities for younger guys to step up into the Main Event on both SmackDown & ECW! (Not so much on Raw) Why would WWE compromise this & just combine the Brands. It's just stupid. One day you'll find out from a BUSINESS standpoint, that the Brand Extension is here to stay & is far better than just 1 roster. I have a feeeling your just wanting WWE to collect that Attitude era feeling again... But the truth is, even if they were to combine the Roster's The Show would still be shitty & would pale in comaprison to 1997-2003... Wrestling's moved on, we can't live in the Attitude Era for ever, people need to realise this that no amtter how hard you wish... Those days are the past & there's no going back.

& Smacky-Backy isn't a poor Show, yes it may be a little worse than back this time last year but it's always in transition, as you can see new guys coming quite often! Plus, SmackDown usualy has the better matches out of all three shows, so TBH it can't be THAT bad!

Fatal said it all.

 

[LKP]

If they had a total redraft of all three shows then the shows would make more ratings and vacate all of the titles. Start again and go for it. Main ones to move to make a difference would be hhh to smackdown cm punk to raw and kane to ecw.

 

[JHar888]

They'd have too many people. They can't go back and change the brand extension without messing everything up again. There'd be way too many people.

 

[The Rated R CMStar]

You just have to be patient. Look at ECW for example right now it is all about Punk and Morrison, with Kevin Thorn, Elijah Burke, Big Daddy V and Tommy Dreamer coming close. But give them a year, come back this time next year and we will see how build up they will be. I can't imagine how over will CM Punk be. And they have evolved already, Elijah Burke was, only last December, managing Silvester Terkay.

With Smackdown is the same. Mostly is a young roster, with 3 or 4 true Main Eventers and 3 other entertaining stars. It has always, since 2005, been like this. But the starts will became Main Eventers, or don't you remember Ken Kennedy, having a little feud with Tony Chimel? MVP, that the only thing he could get was mockery? See them now: Mr. Kennedy, stablished as the future, in fact, if it weren't because he's an idiot he would already be main eventing in a storyline with Vince. MVP has the most interesting storyline in the entire WWE.

Wait for the future, because there is no way the brand extension is going

 

[wwe_fanatic]

Wrestling's moved on, we can't live in the Attitude Era for ever, people need to realise this that no amtter how hard you wish... Those days are the past & there's no going back.

It's not that, it's just that I don't see what more can come out of the brand extension. The fact that every few months WWE just ramdomly swap people over just takes the hype out of "He's moving to *insert brand here* OMG!"

But then again, I agree with Fatals comments. And I can't see it happening with the plan to go Global.

 

[Fatal 55]

Yer, i understand what you mean fanatic... What you mean is if there going to do the whole Brand Extension atleast make it seem as though both are completely diffrent! I liked it back during 02/03 due to the feeling that both ther Raw & SmackDown guys no matter what hated each other. Now it helped that there were two great General Manager's on both sides but it was still a treat or a rarety too just see guys swap & change as they will without any questions asked!

 

[The Rated R CMStar]

I like when they really treated as competition, like that SS match at 2005, or the rivalry between Bischoff and Steph, going from Heyman quitting when he was drafted to Raw to all the comments Tazz used to made about SD guys in multi-man matches.

 

[KenFan4life]

"Brand Extension sucks."-says a Fan
"Yeah!!....Well......FUCK YOU TOO!!!!"-says Vince McMahon

Well, I've got an idea.
How about a comprimise. We could cut it down to two brands,a WWE Brand(RAW&SmackDown!) with all the Maineventers & upper-midcarders, along with the popular tagteams who can all wrestle on a schedule that makes them wrestle two television tapings , with one house show per week.
and the ECW Brand could be its own brand, with all the midcarders, and less popular wrestlers and they could give ECW an extra hour to showcase all their guys in a equal way to the WWE Brand.
The ECW guys could wrestle One Television taping with two houseshows per week, so that'll mean the company can have about 6 shows a week along with their monthly pay per view without burning out their workers.

 

[Travis40]

^That's actually a halfway decent idea KenFan...keep up the good posts man. I guess I'll add some rep for that.

 

[wwe_fanatic]

Good idea KenFan but if ECW was full of mid-carders, would anyone watch it?

I like when they really treated as competition, like that SS match at 2005, or the rivalry between Bischoff and Steph, going from Heyman quitting when he was drafted to Raw to all the comments Tazz used to made about SD guys in multi-man matches.

That was the peak of the brand extension but now there is no GM for RAW, Vince is just constantly there and Vickie for SD! GM! WTF!

We need new GMs in order to get the spark back into this.

 

[Superfluous Idealist]

I think Vince still says fuck the fans. WWE needs to treat each of the brands as competition since they all seem to be buddy buddy and occasionally sharing superstars. Either they get rid of the split or they go back to doing real stories and competition between brands. Just talking about this makes me remember the hey days of the raw brand with Bischoff.