WWE Championships: Why the Current Number of Titles Is Just Fine

CM Punk is no doubt the man to beat in WWE for the most prestigious belt in all of wrestling.  The WWE Championship has the longest history of any title in the company, tracing its roots back to the World Wide Wrestling Federation in 1963.  It is known as the richest prize in the game. 

When you ask someone what the second highest championship in WWE is, the answer is no longer very clear.

For the B/R community members who may not have been watching wrestling for as long as others, I'll give you a quick history lesson.  When WCW was purchased by WWE in 2001, they acquired the entire video library and nearly the entire roster.  Along with the roster came WCW's championships, four of which remained active when WWE inherited WCW's wrestlers (The WCW Cruiserweight Tag Team Championship was only a week old before the purchase was completed and the WCW Hardcore Championship was never mentioned again).  

Therefore, in the summer and fall of 2001, WWE now had a WWE Champion, WCW Champion, WWE Intercontinental Champion, WCW United States Champion, WWE Tag Team Champions, WCW Tag Team Champions, WWE Light Heavyweight Champion, WCW Cruiserweight Champion,  WWE Hardcore Champion and a WWE Women's Champion.  That's 10 championships.

If you are wondering why people think a long title reign gives more credibility to a championship, go back and watch some episodes of Raw and SmackDown from that time period.  Tony Chimel, Lilian Garcia and Howard Finkel said "new" so many times it lost its appeal.

Eventually, the mess was sorted out and championships were unified at the conclusion of the "Invasion" storyline, the one exception being the WCW and WWE Championships.  Chris Jericho became the first Undisputed Champion by defeating both Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock, and it was not long before WWE had its "Brand Extension" to split the roster into two unique divisions: one on Raw and one on SmackDown.  At the beginning of this, the Undisputed Champion was the only one who would travel to both shows to defend his title.  This ended when Brock Lesnar signed exclusively to SmackDown, and then-Raw General Manager Eric Bischoff brought back the "big gold belt" from WCW and created the World Heavyweight Championship for Raw.

From the latter half of 2002 until this past summer, the World Heavyweight Championship and WWE Championship were meant to have equal prestige and value.  Because of previous draft lotteries, there are those who would say that whichever belt was currently held on Raw was the better one to have.  Regardless, the point of each title was to have a top champion on each exclusive show.

However, the announcement was made on August 29 that all WWE programming would now be known as "supershows" where anyone from Raw or SmackDown could compete on either show.  This has presented a conundrum for several months: Now that the World Heavyweight Championship is no longer exclusive to one show, is it necessary?

My answer to this has been and will remain "yes."  Despite all WWE TV featuring the entire roster, non-televised live events are still separated into two touring groups under the respective Raw and SmackDown brand names.  If fans want to go see a WWE house show, as they are known, they will want to see a top champion putting his title on the line against a challenger.  Because CM Punk and Sheamus both have the two world championships, this isn't an issue.  If the belts were unified, it would leave one tour without a huge drawing opportunity.

So, we arrive at the conclusion that the World Heavyweight Championship makes you "second best in the world," as CM Punk told Sheamus on the September 3 episode of Raw.  But, wait...what about the actual secondary championship, the WWE Intercontinental Title? 

For a very brief period of time since its inception in 1979, the Intercontinental Championship was unified with the World Heavyweight Championship in late 2002.  It was quickly re-designated to Raw in May of 2003, only to be matched on SmackDown by the former WCW United States Championship, which is still around as well.

Now we have a real problem.

Let's say we ditch the World Heavyweight Championship and have two tiers.  You have the WWE Championship, the Intercontinental and United States titles.  That doesn't work, because not only was the United States title never on such a low pedestal, you eventually will hear the same argument about a potential unification of the Intercontinental and United States Championships.  This would leave two belts for a huge roster, and although I am a fan of personal feuds between two wrestlers, there is no better rivalry than one over a belt.

With the developmental system of NXT brewing up a storm in Florida, there is going to be a massive number of rookies showing up and becoming stars in the next couple of years.  Not all of them are going to be great communicators along the lines of Punk and Damien Sandow.  A simple "I want your title" is enough to start a program between two men, and as long as Raw and SmackDown exist as separate groups when the cameras are off, the number of championships in WWE should stay exactly as it is.