Why do we have three brands again?

I think everyone can agree that World Wrestling Entertainment is not having a good year by any means. After business had been on the rise for most of 2006 and early 2007, there have been many bumps in the road that have hurt the promotion. The most severe has to be the Benoit family tragedy, which hit the wrestling industry in general, and has brought attention to the drug problems in wrestling to congress. WWE is not making things any easier for themselves, and I will explain why.

I ask the question "Why do we have three brands anyway?" I have explored the stupidity that WWE incorporates when it comes to their three brands in past entries, but this is a subject that continues to bug me. Let's take a look at some problems they have had recently, and how the brand split should have helped them but didn't.

For starters, at the beginning of the summer, the WWE was running an elaborate "Who killed Mr. McMahon" angle. They were betting on this to be a big ratings draw, so they played out aspects of the angle on ECW and Smackdown as well, despite this being a Raw-centric angle. The problem was that this angle ate up so much time on ECW and Smackdown, that their own angles and roster were pushed to the side. Then the Benoit murders occurred and it became clear that it would be unwise to continue such an angle in this light. Good thing this was a Raw angle, so that only Raw will be hurt and the other two shows can continue on smoothly. Oh wait, the death angle swallowed ECW and Smackdown whole, they need regrouping too! What should have been an issue of replanning the next month of Raw's turned into an issue of replanning all three brands. This should not have happened.

Vince waited for a few weeks before returning to Raw. He quickly wrapped up the death angle, briefly explaining that he faked his own death to see how his family would react. On the same show, it was revealed that Vince had an illigitimate child. Another high profile Raw angle was born!

Oh, but wait! This angle ALSO spilled over to ECW and Smackdown. Vince and Coach started visiting all the brands in search of the illigitimate child, and the angle was now consuming ECW and Smackdown's angles as well! I suppose this is good and all, since absolutely nothing could happen to disrupt this angle... except that there was. The common understanding across the internet community is that the bastard son was going to be Mr. Kennedy, which would have been a great way to elevate him up the WWE ladder. This angle was going to make a new main event star, one that would likely take the WWE Championship and become a strong heel heading into Wrestlemania 24. It would have worked, except that a lengthy list of WWE superstars were busted of having been customers of an online steroid ring. This list decimated all three brands, as John Morrison, King Booker, Umaga, and Mr. Kennedy were included on the bust. So now, not only was the prime candidate for the bastard son role in need of a suspension, but so were many of the alternative ideas.

Once again, a high profile angle that engulfed all the shows had been disrupted greatly. WWE tried to salvage the situation by having the bastard son turn out to be Hornswoggle, so they could run a comedy angle rather than have it be an out-right flop by having the son turn out to be some unover midcarder that would not work in the main events. Again, this is something that should have only hurt Raw, but it hurt Smackdown as well. Hornswoggle was the Cruiserweight Champion, and had been associated with Finlay and feuding with Jamie Noble. Since he's been a McMahon, Hornswoggle has been cut off from both almost completely.

The hits just keep coming for WWE, as now the WWE Champion, John Cena, is hurt and needs 6-12 months to recover. Now there is a huge void at the top, and the No Mercy main event is up in the air. How can this be? Are there not two other brands besides Raw? Surely, Smackdown has a main event worth headlining? Oh wait, the Smackdown main event is Batista vs. Khali in a Punjabi prison match. This match has disaster all over it, when it was booked it was assumed that Cena/Orton III would be the main selling point of the show. Nevermind. Okay, so how about that ECW brand? Do they have a main event worth headlining No Mercy? Actually, they have CM Punk, who is doing the best he can with what they give him, against Big Daddy V. Never heard of Big Daddy V? He used to go by the name, Viscera. Yes, that Viscera. The unover, worthless, slug of a 90's burnout who has somehow managed to keep a job in WWE for the past three years. But this is typical of the ECW brand. On the last pay-per-view, Unforgiven, the ECW title match opened the show, and the challenger didn't even get a televised entrance. The ECW title is below midcard status now.

What makes matters even worse about the John Cena situation is that again this is something that should only be hurting Raw. But it isn't. The WWE is making sure that if Raw goes down, all the other brands go down with it. They've been heavily addressing how screwed they are over Cena on both ECW and Smackdown this past week. Lovely.

So, with three brands, isn't there some way that these problems could have been avoided? The death and bastard son angles should have stayed on Raw. There is no reason why ECW or Smackdown had to get involved. They would have acknowledged the loss of Mr. McMahon, but did we really need an episode of Smackdown where all the feuds were thrown to the side in favor of interbrand "tribute" matches? Then when the bastard son angle started, it should have been stated that the son was a Raw superstar, leaving the other two brands out. This is not a case of boosting the other shows because they have the aftermath of Raw's "grand" events. I don't see the Teddy Long heart attack incident all over Raw and ECW (aside from Smackdown rebounds, etc). If the same thing had happened to an authority figure on Raw, an entire episode of Smackdown would have been devoted to it.

In the case of John Cena's injury, the time used recapping it and fearing what the solution would be, they should have turned up the heat on ECW and Smackdown. They needed to let CM Punk cut a kick-ass promo over how he would step up as ECW champion and make No Mercy a night to remember. They should have allowed Tommy Dreamer to get the title shot instead of Viscera. There is invested emotional interest in Dreamer, because he's an original who just wants to be the ECW champion again. That would have been appealing, and the most credible ECW main event in months. On Smackdown, they should have tried harder to put Batista over as a mighty world champion. Instead, it was the same old shit.

So there you have it. There are three brands, but it seems that every storyline disruption on Raw has to hurt the other two. And at the same time, they keep Smackdown and ECW in such ruins that they cannot rely on them to step up when something goes wrong on Raw. If this is really how they plan on running the company, then it's time to just unify the roster again. Do Raw and Smackdown, and turn ECW into Velocity (keep Heat on WWE.com) with the same roster. It wouldn't look that much different now. Book a CM Punk/Batista/WWE Champion triple threat match where the winner gets all the titles and unify them at once. Either do this, or start being smart with the brand extension. WWE has had five years now to get it right, and they haven't, so something needs to change.