WWE: The Brand Split gets a little closer to ending at Money In The Bank

The WWE brand split’s second incarnation first arrived in July 2015, with Seth Rollins announced as the first draft pick and the arrival of Finn Balor from NXT as highlights of the event.

Since then, we have seen the advent of a new Women’s Championship, new Tag Team Championships and a new Universal Championship. Since then, however, a lot has changed and today we took another step towards the end of the brand split.

Since WrestleMania, when Becky Lynch won both the Raw and SmackDown Live Women’s Championships, and even before that when Lynch was appearing on both shows to feud with Ronda Rousey and Charlotte Flair simultaneously, the lines began to blur. This year’s SuperStar Shakeup saw a lot of people switch brands only to switch back, or to switch later than expected. Some talent, such as Bray Wyatt and Sasha Banks, are still technically un-allocated.

Due to falling ratings on both shows and supposedly under pressure from host TV networks, WWE decided to introduce the Wild Card Rule, wherein stars from both sides can cross the imaginary brand barrier. This is a stark reminder of the end of the previous brand split, where Raw Super Shows featuring shows from both sides became the norm before the whole thing collapsed.

Tonight, during the Money In The Bank Kickoff Show, The Usos – a Raw team team – defeated the SmackDown Tag Team Champions Daniel Bryan and Erick Rowan. This, is of, course after losing to the same team when competing for the championships on SmackDown.

During the match, the WWE Twitter was seemingly unsure whether or not the titles were on the line. During separate tweets they hyped the match as titles on the line and titles not on the line. Nobody seemed entirely sure what was going on.

After the match, the SmackDown announce team posited several possibilities. Does this mean that Raw talent can challenge for SmackDown titles? Does this give much of a future to single brand titles?

What’s next for the brand split is hard to say but tonight, at Money In The Bank, it looks like we took another step towards the reunion of the rosters.