WWE brand extension

The World Wrestling Entertainment Brand Extension was a device first used in 2002 by the professional wrestling organization as a means of providing separate brands of wrestling through its two top shows, RAW and SmackDown!, and, in 2006, with the revival of Extreme Championship Wrestling.

Brand extension is not a concept that began with WWE - indeed, one of the greatest successes of former WWE competitor World Championship Wrestling was its nWo faction, which, at the height of its success, was always referred to as its own promotion - going so far as to co-brand all pay-per-view events as "WCW/nWo". Yet, the overuse of nWo led to little fan interest when a new nWo-exclusive show (which would become WCW Thunder) was proposed, and the nWo-exclusive Souled Out pay-per-view was regarded as one of the worst in WCW's history.

History

Ever since acquiring the remains of World Championship Wrestling, its greatest competitor throughout the 1990s, in March 2001, the WWF (World Wrestling Federation) sought for a way to split itself into two separate promotions, due to the numbers of talent that it had acquired as part of its purchase. The original plan was to recreate a new WCW (which would be an independent entity in the storylines but would be under the WWF's auspices in reality), and for this new WCW to take over RAW and use the show to recreate its WCW counterpart, WCW Monday Nitro. This experiment was first made in June 2001, when the final few minutes of RAW was given to WCW programming, in which the RAW crew was largely replaced (with Scott Hudson and Arn Anderson doing commentary, as well as a major stage overhaul). Fans, however, did not hold the WCW segment in high regard, especially when WWF wrestlers interfered at the end of a match between Buff Bagwell and WCW World Heavyweight Champion Booker T. With WWF focused on splitting its roster, the infamous Invasion storyline was used as a second resort.

Faced with the early termination of the storyline in that year's Survivor Series, the WWF executed their alternate plan, which was to separate the two shows themselves: previously, wrestlers appeared on both RAW and SmackDown!, but with this extension, wrestlers would be exclusive to only one show. Only the men's champion and the women's champion were exempt and could appear on both shows.

This was represented in storylines as a feud between the on-screen co-owners Ric Flair and Vince McMahon, who would each take one show - Flair with RAW, McMahon with SmackDown! - and draft their initial group of superstars. Later on, when McMahon reasserted control over both shows, he appointed general managers to lead each brand. To many of the fans' surprise, Eric Bischoff, the former Promoter and President of WCW who tried to run the WWF into the ground during such tenure, was placed as the general manager of RAW, while Stephanie McMahon, who had led the faction of Extreme Championship Wrestling superstars in the Invasion storyline, was installed as Bischoff's counterpart on SmackDown!.

The revival of ECW

Although in the 1990s, Extreme Championship Wrestling was another competing promotion, it was highly touted as an "up-and-coming" organization from within then-WWF itself, even going so far as to invade Monday Night Raw for one night. When ECW fell largely due to monetary problems, many of its top talent, as well as promoter Paul Heyman, found its way to WWE. Indeed, the failed Invasion storyline also featured an ECW faction, working alongside WCW (as the Alliance faction) to unseat WWE from power.

Although the storyline was a failure, the idea of reviving the former promotion under WWE auspices (or in other words, as a third brand to compliment Raw and SmackDown!) was kept on the backburner, largely due to the influence of ECW-style wrestling, the talent that had employed it, and the loyal audience that had enjoyed every moment of it. The success of The Rise and Fall of ECW allowed WWE to revive what was a failed experiment with World Championship Wrestling. To test the waters for this brand, a special ECW reunion show was booked, held from the Hammerstein Ballroom, one of ECW's old venues. ECW One Night Stand, as it would be called, would employ ECW alumnus from both Raw and SmackDown!, as well as other wrestlers not employed by WWE at the time. Despite the show originally touted as free of "WWE influence", the show did have some "WWE involvement", but in the end it was a huge success.

One year later, Rob Van Dam would win the Money in the Bank ladder match at Wrestlemania 22, signalling to many fans that WWE intended to split off an ECW brand, and would cash in his world title shot at One Night Stand later that year - yet at the time WWE Champion John Cena was not an ECW alumnus (World Heavyweight Championship Rey Mysterio, however, was an alumnus of ECW, but Van Dam was a Raw wrestler while Mysterio was on SmackDown!). The following months would indeed meet these expectations: Heyman would resurrect the ECW brand, and would raid both the Raw and SmackDown! rosters for talent - notably Rob Van Dam and Kurt Angle, a man who staunchly opposed the ECW of old due to being witness to the infamous Raven crucifixation storyline.

With RVD being part of the new ECW, RVD would be free to challenge Cena for the WWE Championship at One Night Stand, with the provision that should RVD win, the ECW World Heavyweight Championship would replace it. Indeed, while the 2005 edition of One Night Stand was to remember the ECW of old, the 2006 edition would effectively be the celebration of ECW's new beginnings.

Wrestler impact

As a result of the WCW acquisition, the WWF had acquired many lower-card WCW talents (higher-card talents were typically contracted to Time Warner itself and were usually too expensive for WWF to buy out - and thus absent from the Invasion storyline), all of which worked both RAW and SmackDown!. However, because of the limited time given to each show, many wrestlers (especially former WCW talents) would not appear for weeks on end. The brand extension served to split up the roster so that more of these wrestlers would have screen time, but at the expense of mainstays who regularly appeared on both shows.

Wrestler movement between the two shows were mainly through trades set up by agreement between Flair and McMahon, and later between McMahon's appointed general managers. Other wrestler movements were largely done through brand-versus-brand storylines in which the two shows would compete for talent in bidding wars. Journeymen wrestlers could also quietly change shows by means of a character retool through the developmental territories. In 2004, shortly after WrestleMania XX the annual WWE Draft also served as a means of wrestler movement.

Interbrand Competition

The brand extension originally tried to minimize interbrand relationships, so as to maintain the fact that the two brands had little relation to each other. Among WWE's annual shows, it was envisioned that the "big four" (for a short time five due to the King of the Ring) pay-per-view shows (Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series) were the only ones to feature both brands, and among those five only WrestleMania, the Royal Rumble match, and (when it was around) the King of the Ring tournament itself would feature interbrand competition. Indeed, for a while matchups between RAW and SmackDown! talent were regarded as "interpromotional". The introduction of ECW in 2006 introduced further confusion, as ECW was touted as a separate promotion from the two "WWE brands", and as such only interbrand matches involving ECW were deemed to be "interpromotional". The reintroduction of Saturday Night's Main Event have also led to interbrand supercards.

The tradition in giving the Royal Rumble winner a shot at the heavyweight championship at WrestleMania was also altered as a result of the brand extension and the separation of the men's titles in 2002 - initially (for 2003), the Rumble winner was slated to face their brand's champion (which led to the match between Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle), while in 2004, a supposed "loophole" in tradition allowed SmackDown! talent Chris Benoit to face RAW's Triple H, much to the disappointment of RAW's top Rumble finisher that year, Chris Jericho. Since then, the Rumble winner has the choice of which champion to face at WrestleMania, allowing the winner a chance to change shows. To date, there has been no alternate arrangement, such as a handicap championship match between the Rumble winner and both top champions (with the Rumble winner gaining the title of whoever they pinned). Because of this arrangement, there is no special accolade given to the highest-finishing wrestler of the losing brand at the Rumble. However, the losing brand (i.e. the brand whose top championship wasn't being challenged by the Rumble winner) has always held an event shortly following the Rumble (being a tournament or a battle royal) to determine its top condender for their own top championship, which is generally labeled the "Road to Wrestlemania".

2005 also introduced the Money in the Bank ladder match, a ladder match that assured the winner of a title shot for either of the two top championships up to the following Wrestlemania.

The introduction of ECW in 2006 entailed that the "big four" pay-per-views would also involve ECW, although there is no indication as to whether the brand will be involved in interbrand matches such as the Royal Rumble or the Money in the Bank ladder match, nor whether a victorious wrestler could challenge the ECW World Heavyweight Champion in a similar manner.

Wrestlers could appear on two (or conceivably all three) shows temporarily as part of an ongoing storyline. Examples of such instances include the aforementioned Rumble winner attempting to see which champion he will choose to face, and the brand-versus-brand storyline in which wrestlers from the opposite brand performing run-ins.

Pay-per-view impact

Although wrestlers were on separate brands, with each brand getting one show, the pay-per-view events were at the start shared between the two shows - this changed in June 2003, when WWE Bad Blood became the first RAW-exclusive pay-per-view event worldwide (the RAW-exclusive WWE Insurrextion pay-per-view was held before this in May 2002 but was only shown however in the United Kingdom). From then on, each pay-per-view event, with the exception of the major pay-per-views, would be show-exclusive. Even in the joint pay-per-views, inter-brand matches would be limited to the Royal Rumble main event, King of the Ring (before it became defunct), SummerSlam, Survivor Series and WrestleMania, and the intermittent brand versus brand storyline. Former ECW superstars Rob Van Dam, Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, Rey Mysterio, Tajiri, Tazz, Steven Richards, Simon Dean, Nunzio, Chris Jericho, Lance Storm, Dawn Marie, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Mick Foley and The Dudley Boyz, who were all separate by the WWE draft, reunited on June 12, 2005 for ECW One Night Stand 2005.

The formats of the Rumble and King of the Ring were altered as a result of the brand extension - although many early reports assumed that there would be separate RAW and SmackDown! Rumble events, in the end, the single 30-man event would involve 15 wrestlers from each brand. For King of the Ring, the format varied from year to year, mainly in experimenting with whether the quarterfinal round would appear on the King of the Ring card itself, as well as determining the point in which wrestlers from opposite brands facing each other - the final King of the Ring card in 2002 only included the semifinal and final rounds, with inter-brand matches beginning in the semifinal round.

As a result of wrestlers effectively working a reduced schedule, due to the fact that wrestlers would (barring trades or other character retooling) work at most half of the televised shows and eight of the twelve pay-per-view events each year, WWE added several new pay-per-view events to their calendar, such as New Year's Revolution, Taboo Tuesday and the The Great American Bash.

Championship Impact

Much of the redundant Invasion-era championships (that is, the WWF championship titles and their WCW counterparts) were unified in the fallout of the Invasion at the 2001 Survivor Series, with the WCW and WWF tag-team and second-tier titles being merged. Not long later, with the unification of the WWE Championship and the WCW World Championship, the absorption of the Intercontinental, European, and Hardcore belts into the new World Heavyweight Championship, combined with X-Pac appearing without the WWF Light Heavyweight Championship, despite him being the current title holder, there were effectively only four championships: the brand-neutral men's and women's champions, and the tag and cruiserweight belts, both of which were exclusive to SmackDown! (as both sets of champions, Tajiri and the team of Billy and Chuck, were drafted into the junior show).

After Vince McMahon named Eric Bischoff and Stephanie McMahon as general managers of RAW and SmackDown!, respectively, in July 2002, there was an open period in which wrestlers were free to change shows for the supposed lure of bigger contracts on the other show, with some wrestlers regularly appearing on both shows due to an ongoing "bidding war". During this time, the tag champions (Lance Storm and Christian) moved to RAW. Then Intercontinental Championship holder Chris Benoit moved to SmackDown!. He would lose the title shortly after that to RAW's Rob Van Dam at SummerSlam 2002. The title was then moved back to RAW. It was also during this period when then Undisputed Champion Brock Lesnar refused a challenge from RAW's top-contender, Triple H, by agreeing to only wrestle on SmackDown!, and as a result, the World Heavyweight Championship would be created for the champion of RAW. With the "bidding war" at an end by an edict of Vince McMahon, a new set of tag team titles were created for SmackDown!, and both tag belts were renamed so as to be consistent with their heavyweight counterparts: thus the older title was renamed to the World Tag Team Championship while the newer belt became the WWE Tag Team Championship.

The Intercontinental and WCW United States Championship titles were also reintroduced (and for the latter, as a WWE belt), giving RAW three belts and SmackDown! four. To even out the number of belts on both brands, the women's championship was made de facto RAW-exclusive, although the title remained open to challenge to both brands.

It remains possible that any of WWE's eight belts (if the Women's championship is to be considered a RAW-brand title) can change shows. The most notable example of titles changing shows was in 2005, when, as part of the annual draft, the two heavyweight belts switched shows over a four-week period, with WWE Champion John Cena being drafted to RAW as the first pick. As a response, SmackDown! general manager Theodore Long attempted to create a third heavyweight belt that would represent SmackDown!, but found it unnecessary when World Heavyweight Champion Batista was drafted as the last pick in the draft.

In 2006, the WWE Cruiserweight Championship became the first belt to temporarily change shows as a result of a match, when RAW's Gregory Helms defeated the Cruiserweight Champion (SmackDown!s Kid Kash) and other challengers at the Royal Rumble. It would not be revealed until after the Rumble that Helms would be moved to SmackDown! as a result of the victory. Also in 2006, Rob Van Dam became the first wrestler to concurrently hold championships from two different brands, having held both the WWE Championship and the newly-reintroduced ECW World Heavyweight Championship. This has also led to the WWE Championship being defended on two different brands while Van Dam was champion (the ECW Championship having never been defended on Raw during this time).

Criticisms of the Brand Extension

The brand extension has not, however, come without criticism:

Criticisms of brand extension in general

Some criticize the brand extension over its lack of perceived continuity. Although Royal Rumble, Money in the Bank, and the buildup therein involve both brands, many believe that the perception that the two brands are distinct entities is being diluted or erased with too much interbrand competition - thereby forming a discontinuity in kayfabe. Constant "invasions", the WWE Draft, frequent trading, and wrestlers brand-jumping as a result of Rumble or Money in the Bank victories - or even without explanation, are often cited as moments where WWE did not maintain their own kayfabe.

When ECW was introduced in 2006, the third brand was often contrasted with Raw and SmackDown! together. Raw and SmackDown! were perceived to be the two "WWE brands", and ECW as a separate promotion altogether.

Criticisms of Raw and SmackDown!

Some fans, mainly smarks feel that the Brand Extension has proven fruitless in many areas, citing periodic "down cycles" in certain divisions of certain shows:

The focus on singles-oriented wrestling on Raw largely kept the focus away from tag-team wrestling, leading some to believe that tag-team wrestling is only used to tie singles-oriented storylines together (ie. by tag-teaming the faces from two feuds against the heels from these feuds). Some also claimed that the World Tag Team Championship is not being defended as often as it should, or that it is being consistently held by either top singles-capable talent or lower-midcard tag-team specialists.
Despite the exclusivity of the cruiserweight division on SmackDown!, some claimed that cruiserweights do not attract as much attention, and are used only as jobbers in squash matches.
The women's division on Raw is similarly criticized, due to the overall trend to focus on "eye-candy" divas rather than divas with accomplished wrestling skills. Thus, the WWE Women's Championship lacks capable contenders, leading to unusually long title reigns and even fewer title matches. The WWE Diva Search, the trend in 2005 of releasing technically sound wrestlers (such as Gail Kim) to make room for "eye-candy" divas, and Trish Stratus' 15-month long reign (of which four where Stratus was out with an injury) are often cited as evidence.
As a result of the division exclusivity, it is claimed that Raw cruiserweights or SmackDown! divas are not as important, as they cannot compete for their division's championship.
Some believe that despite the perceived equality, WWE tends to focus on Raw more than SmackDown! - as of 2006, Raw has the three older belts, and is performed live as opposed to SmackDown!'s tape-delay. Many past wrestlers often only make guest appearances on Raw and not SmackDown!. These claims are often supported by the Raw vs. SmackDown! storyline in 2005 that culminated in SmackDown! announcers Michael Cole and Tazz making bickering with the Raw announce crew at Survivor Series, in what many perceived to be shoot comments made by the SmackDown! table. The same show also saw SmackDown! victorious over Raw in the main event, leading some to believe that the SmackDown! victory was only booked to quiet these critics.

Opponents of these claims believe that these downturns are part of the booking process, and that some divisions will naturally be ignored as a result of attempting to push storylines in other divisions.

Criticisms of ECW

The introduction of ECW has also lead to many criticisms:

Many believed that taping ECW alongside SmackDown! was a poor move by WWE, as SmackDown! is perceived to be more family friendly (being broadcast on an over-the-air network) while ECW is seen as catering to a more mature audience (by contrast, many perceive Raw to be somewhere in between). Thus, concerned audience members may be offended by either of the two shows - ECW for being too offensive or SmackDown! for being too tame.
The choice of drafting Kurt Angle is considered a questionable move - Angle was a staunch opponent of the ECW of old, having been offended by the Raven crucifixation storyline while in attendance at an ECW show. Furthermore, Angle had never been an ECW alumnus (the closest being a member of the Alliance during the Invasion storyline - and even then he is considered to be the cause of the Alliance's downfall), and was among the anti-ECW contingent at 2005's One Night Stand. Some have also claimed that Angle's drafting would lead to him and other Raw and SmackDown! defectors to being the new face of ECW - a criticism held over from the Invasion storyline.
Nonsensical characters such as vampires were added to the ECW roster in order to meet broadcaster demands. The ECW of old was not particularly story-oriented (preferring a more worked-shoot style), and having these characters is perceived to dilute the ECW experience.
After its introduction, some believed that the new ECW was watered down compared to the ECW of old - in particular, although it was advertised as a distinct entity from WWE, the writing for ECW still goes through Vince McMahon for final approval (although Paul Heyman remains the principal writer). Another piece of supporting evidence lies in the fact that shortly after the new ECW was announced, that all matches in the new ECW would be under WWE rules (ie. the same rules as used for Raw and SmackDown!) rather than its distinct set of rules (known simply as "Extreme Rulez") carried down from the ECW of old.
Another criticism is how the ECW originals (i.e. Justin Credible, Al Snow, Little Guido, Tony Mamaluke, Tommy Dreamer, Sandman, etc.) have mainly been used as jobbers to the ECW newcomers (i.e. CM Punk, Kurt Angle, Mike Knox, Test, Kevin Thorn etc.) .

The Brand Extension today

Today, all three brands enjoy a top championship, while Raw and SmackDown! enjoy a second-tier championship, a tag-team championship, and a fourth championship. The ECW World Heavyweight Title returned on June 13, 2006, on the premiere of "ECW on Sci-Fi," when Paul Heyman crowned Rob Van Dam the ECW Champion.