WWE Needs to Eliminate Some Championships to Make All of Them More Valuable

Much like in 2001, WWE currently has too many championships on the main roster. It’s past time to start eliminating some titles to put more worth in what remains.

In 2001, WWE made a huge acquisition that basically doubled the size of the company. With their purchase of WCW, there was a huge influx of talent. And with that talent came a number of new championships that the larger roster could challenge for. Within a year, some of the championships merged with others or were retired — the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, the WWE Hardcore Championship, and the WWE European Championship among them.

But after a few years, several titles were resurrected with the first brand extension. Despite initially having a single world champion and a single women’s champion, those titles would eventually split. Tag team titles existed on both shows, and besides title lineages being a mess there were way too many prizes available. It cheapened each title thanks to dilution of the talent pool.

When the brand split ended, many of the titles were again merged, but in 2016 the draft and brand extension returned. And we’re right back to two world champions, two women’s champions, two sets of tag team champions, an Intercontinental Champion, and a United States Champion. That’s eight major championships on the main roster. And I’m not even counting the Cruiserweight Championship or any of the NXT Titles.

When Raw and SmackDown Live each had exclusive pay per view events, the title picture didn’t seem so bad. You could think of each show as almost like its own company, so the excess of championships wasn’t super obvious. But now, WWE is heading back to co-branded pay per views for every show. And an extra hour isn’t enough to fit every title on the card, plus other non-title matches.

Take a look at the Backlash card to see what I mean. The main show featured eight matches, five of which were for a championship. But the Universal Championship (surprise, surprise) and both Tag Team Championships were absent from the event. True, Backlash was a traditional “three hour” pay per view. Although, with a near-thirty minute overrun, it may well have been one of the new and “improved” longer shows.

If this is the case moving forward, how do you fix the situation to make every title important enough to warrant inclusion on a pay per view? Sadly, you have to trim the fat. There’s no reason for so many championships to exist within a single company, even one as large as WWE. If titles are meant to be prestigious, they shouldn’t be handed out like goody bags at a toddler’s birthday party.

With the amount of time Brock Lesnar shows up, the Universal Championship is basically worthless at this point. So let’s figure out a way to unify it with the WWE Championship — maybe Survivor Series? After all, it’s the “only” time a year that superstars from Raw and SmackDown compete against each other. There’s one down.

If there’s only one world title, there should only be one women’s title. Same goes for the tag team championships — especially with the uneven state of the tag divisions on both rosters. Again, use Survivor Series to set up matches to unify these titles. And after the unification, it’s up to the losing shows to foster competition to potentially take the championship back at a future pay per view.

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Even though the United States and Intercontinental Titles basically serve the same function, keeping both isn’t so bad. They could almost function as a “Television Title” sort of championship associated with each show. Looking at what Seth Rollins has done with the Intercontinental Championship on Raw as a template, it’s possible that a weekly title match could be highly beneficial to WWE programming.

So now we’ve narrowed things down to five championships (plus the Cruiserweight Title, even though the 205 Live crew hardly ever feature on Raw anymore). That definitely seems more manageable, and the remaining championships have more value. Greater competition leads to greater desire.

And with new television deals set to begin for WWE in fall 2019, a cross-network rivalry over the more “major” of the championships could be the fire that gives the brand split meaning. Say AJ Styles remains on SmackDown, but loses the WWE Championship to, oh, I don’t know, Roman Reigns on Raw. You don’t think that would put a hurt on Team Blue and lift the spirits of everyone on the flagship show? The whole next cycle could be about SmackDown trying to regain the company’s top prize.

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Of course, this is just a thought that’s practically straight from the brain of Thanos, and the odds of WWE eliminating half their championships at this point seem very low. But ultimately, it could be the best thing for the company, as it would help focus competition. And it could also lead to some rivalries over prizes other than championships. What do you think?

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