Shining a Spotlight 05.24.12: The Brand Extension

The Brand Extension.

It’s lost its luster now but for a time, it was something WWE really tried to hold onto and make the company stand out. And it really did work as from 2002-2006, you could see a clear distinction between RAW and SmackDown that got fans into WWE and helped to elevate both shows. The company really did a decent job making the shows separate so a guy “crossing over” was a big deal. It’s a bit sad that’s fallen by the wayside now as the brands helped give WWE a push at a very needed time.

The Beginning

For a man who went to such lengths to take total control of the wrestling landscape, Vince McMahon prefers competition. He’s said that he felt at his best taking the fight to Turner and it’s obvious that the high of the Attitude era was because WCW was dominating so much and Vince had to respond. So when he finally won the war with both WCW and ECW going down within weeks of each other in early 2001, Vince must have felt like Alexander, weeping over no lands left to conquer. Of course, that ended badly with the Invasion as Vince never allowed WCW a chance to be seen as equal to WWF and botched the whole thing with the push of Shane and Stephanie as owners of the Alliance and too many turns. It got worse as 2002 dawned as Vince decided to bring in Hogan, Hall and Nash in hopes the New World Order would spark something only to see Hogan be welcomed as a hero and getting another title run. With ratings going down, Vince wanted something and the brand extension seemed a good bet.

It’s forgotten that when Vince bought WCW, he originally intended to set it up as their own show and have them continue under the WWF brand. However, WCW had been so devalued over the last few years, Vince couldn’t get any networks to agree to carry a WCW-only show and thus we got the mess of the Invasion. But that idea, to give a brand a show, still remained. It was actually something Eric Bischoff had come up with at the height of WCW’s power, believing fans would watch an NWO-only show (which just shows how far Bischoff was gone in his obsession with the group). With things rocky for WWF, Vince decided that making RAW and SmackDown their own separate brands would be a smart move.

In storyline terms, to salvage the Invasion, the idea had come up that Ric Flair had bought half of the shares in WWF and he and Vince were co-owners. Their feud included Flair kicking Vince’s ass at the Royal Rumble and Flair put his control up for grabs in a match with the Undertaker at Wrestlemania. However, that unseen “board of directors” whose power over Vince comes and goes depending on the storyline, declared that the best way to handle this was to split the roster down between the two main shows. So on March 25th, the first Draft Lottery took place to split the two brands down, breaking up teams like the Dudley Boyz and promises of how we’d be getting two promotions for the price of one.

Early Days

Of course, it didn’t quite work out that way in the beginning. The extension was an afterthought following Wrestlemania when Hogan took off as the face enough to be given the belt again and then Undertaker having a run with it as well. They did do some pushes like Jeff Hardy getting his shot at singles stardom in a ladder match against Taker but we still had guys jumping between shows and commentary teams mostly the same for both. It wasn’t until June that the extension really became a fact when Eric Bischoff was shockingly hired to run “RAW” while Stephanie was established as general manager of “SmackDown.”

RAW was a rough start as the company made the poor decision to do away with the Intercontinental title and then just gave HHH his own World Championship belt, pushing the “HHH steals spotlight” mantra that continues to this day. There were highlights, such as Booker T and Goldust forming a surprisingly fun tag team, good in the ring but better with vignettes of Booker driving crazy by his partner’s whacky antics. SmackDown, on the other hand, was quickly established as the far better brand. Brock Lesnar was pushed as the monster winning the belt and the fans while Edge was elevated with his feud with Kurt Angle that ended with Angle’s head shaved. Eddie Guerrero returned with a great push as he created his “lie, cheat, steal” persona and Rey Mysterio’s arrival pushed the Cruiserweights to good matches. And mid-way through the year, a young rookie by the name of John Cena arrived, although it’d take a bit to find his groove.

2003 was when WWE got serious about the brand split. First, aside from the big four (Mania, Rumble, SummerSlam and Survivor Series), the PPVs were split to give each show their own event, mixing months. The company then smartly brought back the secondary titles, the IC belt revived for RAW and the U.S. title for SmackDown which elevated the mid-cards of both shows. Again, SmackDown was clearly the superior brand thanks to Benoit, Guerrero, Mysterio, Undertaker, the Brock/Angle feud and an actually good tag scene with Haas and Benjamin among others. RAW was decent although HHH’s dominance was driving fans away and harming the image of the company a bit too much. The arrival of Goldberg wasn’t as awesome as hoped, his title run way too brief to mean anything big as HHH still was the focus of the show.

As 2004 dawned, things were building with Benoit winning the World title on RAW and Guerrero the WWE champ on SmackDown and another draft lottery shaking things up. However, SmackDown suffered as JBL’s sudden push to the title didn’t go over well with fans while RAW looked up with Benoit and then Orton winning the title but of course, they had to screw Orton’s face turn up with HHH getting the belt back fast. The “Taboo Tuesday” PPV was a bit of a shot of unpredictability but the shows remained pretty strictly divided, including the ’05 Draft when Cena and Batista swapped the championships over to the other show. With the arrival of ECW, the brand division grew more unique as the company tried to give this new brand a push with some of their older guys while trying to give others a chance like CM Punk. Sadly, it wasn’t long after that the lines blurred and the whole “separate brands” began to fade into “guys just showing up on each show all the time” that we have today.

Distinctions

It’s a shame the extension has faded as it really did make WWE stand out a bit more in the early part of the 2000’s. It gave the fans a choice when RAW was going bad to turn in to the fun SmackDown was bringing and vice versa. It really felt like a big deal with a RAW guy would pop on SmackDown or the other way around and loved stuff like “Survivor Series” or “Bragging Rights” where they’d have teams going head-to-head. That included fun of guys who normally hated each other banding together to take on the other guys to defend the honor of their own brand. You could also get surprises like when RAW’s Angle showed up in a battle royal to win the World title in 2006. It was an air of unpredictability that seems to have vanished from WWE today, something fans enjoyed.

It also gave boosts to certain stars. I doubt Cena would have taken off under a HHH-dominated RAW but Smack Down gave him the ability to grow, to break out and win over the fans and prove he could handle the spotlight as champ before jumping to RAW. Batista was able to rise on RAW before moving to SmackDown to give that show a boost and even ECW was a way for some guys to show their stuff like Swagger or Nitro turning into John Morrison as well as CM Punk first proving he could carry a title well. It allowed fans to choose the right PPV to watch given their likes or who they wanted to see and you had fun of the general managers in charge from Angle and Long on SmackDown to Bischoff on RAW. It was really a big deal for guys to be associated with one brand or another and made WWE interesting when there wasn’t much competition around (TNA was just a blip on the radar for its first three or four years).

Sadly, that’s faded away. Sure we get talk of “trades” and such but the fact is that the brand split has pretty much evaporated, guys show up on each show all the time and the ending of ECW makes it all the clearer. The idea of having two World champions doesn’t matters as much since they keep swapping shows around, ditto for the IC and U.S. belts. It’s a shame as it was something unique WWE needed at a key time in wrestling, to give some illusion of competition and shake things up with the fans. Sadly, as with so much of WWE in the last few years, the charm has faded and we just have a mess of the two shows going on without much clear direction. But for a time, branding the company was a move that made WWE shine a bit more and a shame we’ve lost that luster when the company could use some real life excitement now.

For this week, the spotlight is off.