Backlash: The Beginning of the End of the Brand Split

This Sunday at Backlash, WWE brings its superstars from both Raw and SmackDown Live together for one pay per view. A move that’s meant to make them more exciting, and yet I feel disappointed.

This happens every time they do the split. Every few years, they align certain superstars to one show. In the beginning, they hit the ground running. Then they refresh the lineup by trading some from each show and the feuds run for too long and become tiresome. Then they decide to bring them together more often than just the big pay per views. This hurts the dignity and legitimacy of the brand split and ends up doing more bad than good.

The split is supposed to give more talent time to shine, and letting more feuds a spotlight on a bigger event. But now, with each pay per view having top feuds from each show, it will be harder for low-card guys to land a spot. More talent is going to be left in the dark that don’t deserve it.

Now, I don’t think it’s possible to give every guy a push all the time. But there are certainly guys who are misused because of this. Guys that are always over with the crowd such as Zack Ryder, Tye Dillinger, or even the ever-lovable Rusev, are being seriously mishandled. Rusev gets almost as much of a positive reaction as Daniel Bryan and he’s a fucking heel!

My main gripe with this is that every time they play out this trend, it ends up being only a matter of time until Raw and SmackDown play the same hand.

A good solution for this would be to have wrestlers indulge in an offseason.

Too many times during the year do you hear of wrestlers getting injured or just burnt out by the grueling travel schedule. If you give us time to miss someone, that will surely shed light on how we really feel when they come back. Hell, I’ve never been the biggest Dean Ambrose fan, but now that he’s been out for this long, I miss him! Dolph Ziggler is another that could use a break. No days off for 12 years hasn’t been doing him the utmost of favors…

The roster is already far too stacked for this practice. Be it new NXT prospects, homegrown talent in the Performance Center, or old legends, WWE is bringing in another big name practically every other week. You can’t logically find time for all of them. It’s becoming too cumbersome.