The upcoming brand split was always going to raise the question of whether or not WWE were set to divide the two world titles that were only unified less than three years ago.
The World Heavyweight Championship and the WWE Championship were united at TLC in 2013 when WWE finally decided that one championship was enough for their one roster of talent. This has now seemingly changed since WWE have recently announced that the WWE World Heavyweight Championship will once again he referred to as the WWE Championship.
Rumours about the title spread following this weeks episode of Raw since Dean Ambrose was referred to as the ‘WWE Champion’ backstage during an interview with Jojo, which was odd because WWE are usually meticulous about the way they address their champions.
It was always going to be an option for WWE to bring back the World Championship and since the title that is currently being held by Dean Ambrose does look a lot like the old WWE Championship, a title that used to have a place on Raw it makes sense for it to be left on that brand.
The World Heavyweight Championship was a much bigger title and found it’s home on Smackdown so it wouldn’t come as much of a surprise if WWE decided to bring it back when the Tuesday night show goes live on July 19th.
It wouldn’t be much of a stretch for WWE to schedule a match for the Championship at Battleground just five days later and then split the two titles back up so that each roster once again has a Champion.
Add this to the rumours about the Women’s Division also being split into two and having a second belt on the Smackdown show and WWE suddenly renaming Night of Champions as Clash of Champions begins to make sense.
The show didn’t make a lot of sense with just five title belts but with these two added and a speculated Cruiserweight Championship in the works, WWE could easily schedule eight matches for the eight Championships and ensure every match on the night is for a title, unlike the last few September based Night of Champions events.
It was almost common knowledge that WWE needed to split some of the titles back up after they decided to unify the World, Tag Team and Women’s Championships in recent years when they thought that The Brand Split was over and there was no need for two belts when the roster was all wrestling as one.
This is now no longer the case, the brands are set to be re-split and with the talent about to head up to the main roster from NXT added to the talent that WWE are about to bring back, there will definitely be a need for more Championships on the Smackdown brand.
WWE are hoping that Smackdown can become the show it was back when The Rock was at the helm in it’s very early 2000 days. Since then it has always been in Raw’s shadow after WWE decided that Raw should be the flagship show and it became live for three hours.
Smackdown has recently been used as a glorified highlight show for Raw with numerous replays of Raw matches as well as many superstars making various excuses just to get rematches from Raw that didn’t need to happen. This turned Smackdown into a show that could easily be skipped without a lot of action being missed and the fact that it wasn’t live meant that the spoilers were leaked online and many fans preferred to read about the show rather than wait until Thursday or Friday to watch it.
NXT has been rated above Smackdown in recent months and it is possible that this is one of the reasons WWE have decided to re-vamp it. New titles and new stars will help Smackdown become the force it once was and it will hopefully add more wrestling action to what is set to be an incredible weekly line up from WWE.
With Smackdown set to slot in between Raw and NXT on a weekly basis, it could add something extra to many of the WWE Universe’s weekly intake and it could help the show eventually fight for top spot with Raw.
The World Heavyweight Championship needs to come back to Smackdown and this latest announcement only adds fuel to the speculation that it soon could be.
