The WWE ID Championships are a disaster waiting to happen

When Triple H announced the company's independent wrestling feeder program, WWE's past was instantly considered prologue. Many called those fears premature at best, but not any longer. The WWE ID Championships' disaster is very likely to prove the skeptics correct.

The idea that WWE will exert influence on the booking decisions of indy promotions or that a WWE future is rapidly becoming the only one with sustainability is on the table now. That will only serve to hurt the industry in the long run. It may not be WWE's concern if that happens, but the fans should be wary even as the content will undoubtedly be entertaining in the short term.

WWE ID and the WWE ID Championships in summary

For context, the WWE ID tag is a designation given to both wrestlers and performance centers. For the wrestlers, it denotes prospects WWE is investing in as future stars in the wrestling industry. For performance centers and schools, it indicates a quality place to learn and enhance your skills, with resources and connections from the biggest brand in the wrestling scene. WWE will also promote matches between ID talent, which, while happening across other promotions, will result in opportunities on WWE Evolve and exposure on WWE social media accounts.

The program's newest wrinkle, the WWE ID championships, are titles affiliated with the program's talents. There is one for male and one for female superstars, and they are set to be defended across the independent wrestling scene. It was rumored that WWE would not have creative control over these talents and would allow them to appear for any promotion and against any opponent. This new direction poses problems for that.

The WWE ID Championship complicates booking

The first WWE ID Champions will be determined through tournaments featuring matches across the independent wrestling scene. The matches will probably stay connected to the promotions most closely aligned with the program, like Memphis Wrestling, or ones with designated WWE ID affiliation, like Reality of Wrestling, for the initial tournament. That isn't a terrible way to launch the titles. You allow these matches to play out on friendly turf to get the stars you like most to the end and crown your winners of WWE Evolve. It is after the inaugural tournament ends that the possible conflicts begin.

Once a WWE ID Champion is crowned, who will determine the next one? Is every match between a prospect and a WWE ID Champion going to be a title match? Can it be defined against, or even one by, someone that is not in the program? These are just a few of the questions brought up by the announcement of the WWE ID titles. While fans do not officially know the answer to this, the truth isn't hard to decipher. No, WWE wouldn't allow their guy to lose it, especially to somebody not also in the program. Also, unless every match is automatically a match for those titles, booking decisions from one show will impact other future shows hundreds of miles away. The only way to book a champion is to have a central body police that title, which calls into question WWE's influence on events.

Answering the AEW question for WWE ID

The biggest question posed by fans online has been, "What about AEW?" The AEW question seemed overblown at first, with stars like Jack Cartwheel appearing on Tony Khan's television show before accepting a WWE ID designation. With WWE ID looking like a system for trusted schools to launch talent they train and a right of first refusal, it should have worked fine. Now that two independent wrestlers will have a championship with a WWE logo on it, the likelihood of an AEW/WWE ID crossover will go down.

The first issue is WWE will likely want to avoid their WWE ID Champion losing to wrestlers under big-money contracts with a rival promotion. That will functionally cut off AEW's recruiting stream. Sure, it may be possible to appear on AEW as a WWE ID prospect. However, your matches won't count, and WWE is not going to risk putting a title on someone who may ultimately decide not to sign with them. That means fewer opportunities and less time featured on WWE's social media streams, negating the purpose of the program. With a title now being the top prize for prospects and WWE Evolve playing host to many of those matches, rival promotions are losing a competitive edge to the ones WWE has an affiliated status with.

Can they avoid the WWE ID Championships' disaster?

Is WWE interested in preserving independent wrestling and making the industry better for everyone? Fans and critics alike will debate this for decades to come. Can the WWE ID program live up to its intent even with the WWE ID Championships? That is a definitive yes. The title can't be a real championship, "defended on the independent scene," for obvious reasons. It can, though, be an actual title that WWE hands to the top two prospects right before they find themselves on NXT.

This would require marking a time on the calendar, maybe the week after the WWE Draft, where the two champions get NXT contracts in exchange for the WWE ID belts. Then the tournament happens again to crown two more. This system all but announces that WWE is highly interested in a prospect, and WWE can "book" those two talents on affiliate shows only, allowing the rest of the prospects to travel around and be booked however they need to be. It provides talent with the freedom they were promised while allowing those new titles to work as WWE expects, altogether avoiding the WWE ID Championships' disaster scenario and a redux of the territory system demise.