Why the World Heavyweight Title Should Be Unified with the WWE Title

When World Heavyweight Championship matches open pay-per-views, it doesn’t start the show off with a bang, it makes the belt seem irrelevant.

When one of the best technical wrestlers in the world loses the World Heavyweight Championship to a talented, but overall average, brawler at WrestleMania, it makes the belt look irrelevant as well.

Indeed, the Heavyweight title is currently struggling to find any relevance at all.

Despite WWE claiming the belt’s legacy traces back into WCW and the NWA, the reality remains that the championship was created in 2002 after the retirement of the WCW title, which was at the time, half of the Undisputed Championship.

As of September this year, the World Heavyweight title will be 10 years old. Not only that, but Sheamus currently holds the belt in its 49th reign.

If ever there was a nicely rounded time to end the Heavyweight Championship, it is rapidly approaching.

Although the Heavyweight title in WWE is not the same one once held by David Arquette, it has been held by the Great Khali for 61 days.

For wrestling purists, that’s just as bad as Arquette.

At a time when not even the WWE Championship manages to be the main event, the Heavyweight title struggles to be anything more than just another minor belt.

Once upon a time it mattered, but not anymore.

Being contested as the main event of WrestleMania XX makes a belt significant. Opening WrestleMania XXVIII with an 18 second match makes it insignificant.

With only 10 years of history, the Heavyweight title is far from integral to the WWE. The WWE Championship’s lineage can be traced back to before even WrestleMania began, albeit with a different name.

We shouldn’t pretend to know what’s best for WWE Creative, but right now there are plenty of options for unification storylines.

The first Undisputed Champion, Chris Jericho, and the last Undisputed Champion, Brock Lesnar, are both currently under WWE contract. Triple H was also the inaugural Heavyweight Champion after the belt was established.

Although there’s no need to make a modern unification full of blasts from the past, having notable wrestlers from both the Heavyweight title's and Undisputed title’s history would serve very poetically in any modern unification plot.

At this point in time, there isn’t necessarily a need to retire the Heavyweight title, but unification is becoming ever the more necessary.

The brand extension is over, and with both champions appearing on RAW and Smackdown, one is all that is required.

Whether that means holding two belts or one, a unification plot would serve as the perfect big summer angle for 2012.

Especially now that the chance is gone for it to be “the end of the world as you know it”.

Besides the term being tossed around in the John Cena and CM Punk feud for the WWE Championship last year, there has not been a true undisputed champion for a decade.

The Heavyweight title and WWE title have never been unified, remembering that in 2001 it was the WCW and WWE titles that formed the Undisputed Championship.

With the brand extension now dissolved, the opportunity for unification has now returned.

Regardless of what happens to the Heavyweight title belt afterwards, a unified championship makes for an interesting story and, in turn, draws ratings.

These two very things are exactly what the WWE needs right now.