Why WWE Needs to Unify Their Championships

A number of years back, RAW and Smackdown were two completely separate entities. But as of late, they’ve overlapped and superstars are no longer excusive to each brand. People may argue that with the upcoming 3-hour RAWs, WWE is going to need as much going on as possible, but I beg to differ. Because so many titles are circling through the business, they’ve ALL lost their prestige. Let’s start with the WHC.

The World Heavyweight championship has become the Intercontinental championship of the 1990s. I’d argue that the IC belt was more prestigious back then than the WHC is now. It wasn’t even one of the three main events at this year’s Wrestlemania! In fact, it’s been the first match at the last two Wrestlemanias and at several recent PPVs. Hell, the match at WM28 lasted 18 seconds! And I know the big guys backstage planned this for entertainment purposes, but this is a WORLD TITLE and it’s they’re treating it like an afterthought.

The WWE title is probably the most stable one here, but it has also lost prestige. Even though it’s the biggest title in the business, it hasn’t been a PPV’s headliner since TLC which was 7 months ago. WWE needs to stick with one world title that people actually care about. Oh, and this title is way too ugly. But that’s off topic.

I’d start ranting about the fact that the Intercontinental Championship is not what it used to be back in the day, but everyone knows that. And honestly, thanks to Rhodes’ redesign and his recent feuds with guys like Big Show, Orton, and Christian, it’s actually improved in the last year from what it used to be 3 or 4 years ago.

Don’t even get me started on the US title. It’s become a laughing stock of the company and as valuable as Zack Ryder’s Internet Championship (this is my opinion of course). I love Santino Marella, but even though he’s improved, he ruins the reputation of the titles he holds. The US title needs to go. It needs to get unified with and into the legendary Intercontinental Championship to give second-tier belts relevancy once again.

This goes without saying (due to my title unification blog), but I think the having two Money in the Bank winners every year is kind of redundant. I used to LOVE how it used to be. Just one briefcase. Not knowing on who it was going to be cashed in. “Mr. Money in the Bank” could have shown up on Smackdown or Raw or even ECW to cash in. You never knew, anytime any world champ was in the ring, you always had MITB in back of your mind. And now that excitement’s gone in my opinion.

Also, if you look at the title changes within the last couple years, way too many of them are MITB cash-ins. During a 7-month period in 2010, there were three cash-ins (Swagger/Kane/Miz). I think having one is way more exciting, whether the world titles were unified or not.

Anyway, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion and well, this is mine. What do you think?

~DLV