Considering a possible brand split and dividing the roster

WWE’s Ruthless Aggression Era is possibly best remembered for its optimum use of SmackDown and Raw to their fullest, and having them as two completely separate entities. Raw would have its own roster, and SmackDown would also have its own, and there would be separate championships for both brands as well.With exception to the Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, SummerSlam and Survivor Series, every pay-per-view would be brand-exclusive. For example, No Way Out would usually be a SmackDown show, and Backlash would be a Raw show.In recent years though, this has faded away completely, with wrestlers now being able to compete on both Raw and SmackDown, and storylines also carry on between shows. There is no exclusive content or anything as such, they are both just weekly shows that follow each other up.But, it’s always possible to theorise, isn’t it?So let’s assume a brand split was possible, again. This article looks at wrestlers within the WWE (excluding NXT) and places them on SmackDown or Raw, and also divids the current championships between them.So first off is the Raw roster.

#1 The possible Raw roster

Raw could be made to be equally female-heavy as it is male-heavy

What I am going to be basing my rosters on is mostly balance and trying to even out the number of wrestlers for each wrestling style. I won’t be naming entire rosters, of course, just the main wrestlers on either one.

For the Raw brand, I would have the lead title as the WWE Championship, however, it will not be the main title in the entire promotion, as will be explained later. The mid-card title would be the Intercontinental Championship, and the women’s title would be the Divas’ Championship. The thing I would keep unique about Raw is that I would have women wrestlers featuring prominently, and if it were up to me, half the show would be women’s wrestling.

There would be no women’s wrestling on SmackDown, but that would be replaced with something else which wouldn’t be on Raw, which will be looked into later.

Because of this, the female roster would have to pretty vast, and the best possible thing to do, of course, would be to have all women on Raw. There would be stories outside the championship scene, numerous feuds, and Raw pay-per-views would heavily rely on female matches.

The difficulty comes in when drafting the male roster.

Off the bat, I would draft Seth Rollins to Raw, mostly because (and I know this is biased) I would like to see him around the WWE Championship for a long time. It should be noted that there would be a relatively small number of males on Raw, because of the higher focus on females, and for a reason I will clarify later, they must all be singles competitors.

So, keeping it balanced, I would also have Brock Lesnar, John Cena, Dolph Ziggler, Neville, Cesaro, The Miz, Randy Orton, Wade Barrett, Kevin Owens and Sheamus as the main male roster members on Raw. That would seem fairly heavy on big names, but the SmackDown roster would have its own say.

#2 The possible SmackDown roster

Tag teams could be big on SmackDown (in honour of Teddy Long, of course)

For SmackDown, the main title would be the World Heavyweight Championship, which would be of equal prestige to the WWE Championship, and the main mid-card championship would be the United States Championship, and unlike Raw, there would be no women’s title as there would be no women on the show.

Instead, SmackDown could be utilised to be heavy on tag team wrestling, which I will also justify in the roster, and so SmackDown would also have a Tag Team Championship, which will play a big role in the show overall.

The singles competitors, at least, the main ones, would be Dean Ambrose, Daniel Bryan, Roman Reigns, Kane, Rusev, Ryback, and even Zack Ryder (terribly under utilised).

But, the thing with SmackDown would be that there would be a lot of focus on tag teams and factions, with plenty of storylines revolving around them. The SmackDown roster would be free of women, but littered with teams. It would include The New Day, The Lucha Dragons, The Dudleys, The Prime Time Players, The Ascension, all in intense competition with each other, everyone could have an important role.

And that leaves the other things that need to be sorted out:

#3 Other things

The commentators would also be split across brands

Commentators would need to be divided, as they already are, but in any case, in my view it should be JBL, Jerry Lawler and Booker T for Raw, and Michael Cole, Byron Saxton and Tom Phillips for SmackDown.

For pay-per-views involving both brands, the commentary team should be Michael Cole, Booker T and Tom Phillips. But that’s just my opinion. I would reduce the length of Raw to two hours, instead of increasing SmackDown‘s to three, because then that may just be too much for the production team, wrestlers and the fans on the whole.

The last thing to be sorted out would be considering which of the current pay-per-views, other than the big four, would be represented by which brand.

This is where it is tricky, because a lot of WWE’s current day pay-per-views have a theme to them, such as Money In The Bank and Night Of Champions, and so making them brand-exclusive would be difficult. The best option, then, would be to have every pay-per-view have both Raw and SmackDown competitors, but then quite a few could miss out, which is another problem.

Perhaps that is why WWE cannot split their brands again. It would become too much of a complication, handling such a large roster which such limited time.