The Bloodline as an entitled yet brutal heel faction would be pretty great I think. Similarities to Legacy aside.

The Usos need something if they are going to be sticking around. I felt at the time that the heel turn was premature and should have been done more organically after a run as SmackDown Tag Champs. They've pretty much disappeared since their heel turn and being, like, fourth priority team. At least they're still higher than The Ascension and Vaudevillains.

I think they want to make something of Alpha vs. Usos and know that in order to do that they have to keep one/both of those teams "on ice" until the time is right to pull the trigger on the feud. That might've changed with The Hype Bros being knocked out of contention.

I think that is ultimately the plan too, but I think by keeping one/both "on ice" it's just going to be cold. I didn't really think they should have gone with Slater & Rhyno as first champs at the time, and I still think they should have gone with The Usos as babyface champions until they dropped the belts to American Alpha and then turned heel. It's just preference, but I think it would make things feel more "heavyweight" between the two teams.

At this stage, I'm expecting American Alpha vs. The Usos vs. The Revival vs. a fourth team on the Kickoff show, and that is exactly where The Usos have been forever.

If they weren't so hell bent on having two sets of belts, they could've just had the tag division be brand exclusive so as to run multiple feuds and storylines.

Both brands have enough tag teams to make it work if they try. If they went the way of one set of belts it should be open to all brands with the traveling NWA champion motif.

Vaudevillian puppets is one of the best things going.

Cracked me up with Sasha's husband.

I do kind of wish they just kept one World Title and maybe upped the prestige of the IC & United States titles by making them the top titles of their respective brands. Roman Reigns holding the US Title might mean something then, probably not, but maybe.

I liked how they did it at the beginning of the first brand split when the undisputed champ would defend against Raw on a PPV then SmackDown! the next PPV.

I guess they have enough teams. But do they have enough legitimate teams? New Day, Gallows and Anderson, American Alpha and the Usos are the only legit teams I can think of that didn't come after the brand split.

Orton and the Wyatts, Slater and Rhyno, Cesaro and Sheamus were all thrown together after the split, IIRC.

Hype Bros I guess you could count as a pre brand split team, but I was thinking of teams that have a shot at being the focus of the division.

If one division on one show was a thing, you'd have New Day on top, Alpha as the secondary face team, Gallows and Anderson as the top heel team, and even the Usos as the next heel team.

Then you add in the other guys who came together after the split and now you have this deep roster of tags to run stories with.

I think one world title, one tag title and one women's belt is best. Two mid card belts get elevated by getting put on guys who could main event but are pushed out because there's only one top spot.

World champ tours brand to brand depending on story and opponent.

Have one ppv per brand every other month. Champ doesn't need to wrestle every month depending on the story.

Use the IC or US belt to main event the brand exclusive shows when the champ is feuding on the opposite show.

Yeup, it would have made the IC and US belts a lot stronger and make appearances by the WWE champ feel more special whenever he appeared on a brand.

Vince and/or management not wanting their "flagship" show to be seen as weaker whenever the WWE champ wasn't around was the same reason why the original brand split also quickly had 2 main belts as well.

I'd like somehow for a team unify the title using some sort of trickery with a newly formed Tag Team Money in the Bank.

If the tag team division competition dies down they can unify them.

The Revival for instance could win Money In the Bank and then win tag team titles on either brand. They would then come out on the other show to cash in and win.

One guy would carry the Red Belt around and the Other Would Carry the Blue.

I do kind of like STDs tag unification idea. Agree with everyone else about only having one set of World, Tag, and Womens titles. Would make being g champion mean a lot more.

Perfect time to bring back the championship scramble.

Multiple world titles was always a ridiculous idea. What's done is done now though. Unfortunately it's more ridiculous how much they've unified and created new titles constantly over the years and re-unifying them again would just make it more clear how unorganized and scatterbrained they are as a company.

But it is Easy-Bake Booking to have more titles. When wrestling was its height in popularity they had European, Hardcore, Lightheavyweight, Contendership title shots passed around like it was a belt. Anything that could be defended was defended including jobs and ownership of the company itself.

Russo even booked a ladder match in TNA where the keys to Mick Foley's office were placed upon a pole.

The Roman Empire could defeat Goldberg, Undertaker, John Cena, Prince Albert, Mojo Rawley, Braun Strowman and Jushin Liger at the same time. Book it and find out.

What about The Great Muta?

Roman Reigns vs The Great Muta in the next "Best Wrestler" contest, please.

The one title thing doesn't work. Say there's one world champ going between shows, say it's Cena. He starts a program on RAW with say Kevin Owens. The finish wasn't decisive and Owens attacked Cena after the match. Instead of settling the score, Cena hops over to SDL to start a brand new program with Baron Corbin. In the meantime, Owens is waiting on RAW with a thumb up his ass. He's gotta do something for a month, so he gets into a program with someone else. Oh wait, now Cena is back, but that new program on hold, and remind the audience what happened six weeks ago. It just feel disjointed.

Plus from a house show booking and scheduling POV, it's very difficult to constantly changes guys schedules. It's much easier to just have each tour with their own set of championships.

The other benefit is it allows more guys to be elevated. Taking about the tag teams, on SDL, you get to see upwards of six teams getting TV time. On RAW its more like four. Still, combined, that's ten teams. If it's all one division, you won't see that many teams featured. Same with the girls. On SDL you go down to girls like Natty, Naomi, and Carmella. If Charlotte was going between shows, she would take up a segment every week, and you wouldn't see as many girls total.

Scatterbrained = highest revenue year ever.

I think they'll take that.

The brand split itself was an impulsive idea. They probably should have tried to make SmackDown good before they tried to make it "unique." There are real problems with having two World Titles. If the WWE want their fans to watch both RAW and SmackDown (which they clearly do), then having a "World Champion" and #1 Contender on each show means that at the very most you can say a guy is fighting for #3 position in the company as a certainty. Well, even that may be a stretch. The World Champion on SmackDown isn't necessarily better than a mid-carder on RAW.

You can create a Global Championship, Planetary Championship and Earth Championship while you are at it and call the guys who help it "World Champions" all you want. When you ask someone "Who is the best wrestler in the world?", a question that a World Heavyweight Championship is supposed to answer, you cannot answer it in WWE. By having two "World Champions" you literally have no World Champion.

I think there are similar problems with the Tag Team Championships and Women's Championships too. Who is the best women's wrestler in WWE -- Charlotte or Alexa Bliss? In fact, you can probably widen them up to the immediate challengers too. Who is the best women's wrestler in WWE -- Charlotte, Bayley, Sasha, Alexa, Becky or Nikki? See how it becomes really murky? When you put both Women's Championships on, say, a WrestleMania card, Joe Fan is going to watch and think "Hang on, why are there two Women's Championships?" The idea that the Women's Championship is the answer to a question is thrown out the window and as a result neither belt really matters as a tool to get someone over as anything resembling any sort of star.

If you want to go beyond the literal sense of what a World Champion is, and instead focus on who the biggest star and most credible wrestler in WWE -- the answer to "Who is the best wrestler in the world?" -- you have to go with either The Rock or Goldberg. John Cena, Brock Lesnar and The Undertaker are also in contention. The World Championship divisions aren't really the elite class of wrestler. Your real World Champion has an invisible belt that they can't exactly take off and hand to another wrestler. They're also part-time and, in at least one of those cases, not even signed to the company.

Having two separate "brands" isn't really an effective storytelling device for WWE at this point. It's exciting at first, because people associate it with change, movement, classification, and conflict. Is a guy going to be RAW or SmackDown? Who are their peers going to be and who are they going to be kept away from? It's build in a larger sense akin to what building to a match would be. But it doesn't actually create more opportunities for guys. Curt Hawkins and Jinder Mahal are just "there." Kevin Owens could have done his shit with Seth Rollins without a belt. Go back to SummerSlam -- the main event doesn't even have a belt involved (exactly what I mean about an invisible World Championship being there anyway). Nothing is really different except that SmackDown is now better than RAW because RAW is even more tedious than it was six months ago.

The Monday Night Wars was a fairly successful time in the history of the business, each group had their own set of champion. Football leagues is Europe are each wildly successful and have their own champions, while still participating in joint events. Nobody gets confused that say Man City is the champion of England while Barca is the champion of Spain. Those respective countries leagues still do pretty well I would say. I didn't hear a lot of complaints when Pride had world champions while UFC had their own. All these things do is create water cooler talk about who is better. The nature of WWE allows them to create this type of talk but then deliver on "dream matches" as they see fit.

I don't think having multiple world champions is an issue. To me if you have a brand split, each brand needs champions. The going back and forth just doesn't work from a storytelling point of view our a scheduling point of view. It's easy to say oh just have John work Friday to Monday one month, and then Saturday to Tuesday the next. But for those talents, and for the people who need to advertise them ahead of time, it's a nightmare. At best what they could do is say each champ is on a brand six months at a time. This would give them a chance to start and finish storylines, and scheduling would be easier. But that's a long time for one brand to go without a champion.

If anything, maybe they consider doing something at Mania where its champion vs champion for all the titles. The winner either gets an additional belt, or just some type of trophy. And it just becomes another accolade to brag about. But each respective title stays with their brand. That gives it a little more of a sports feel, where its like Mania is the Super Bowl where the NFC champ battles the AFC champ. Problem there is it hurts The Rumble, because if it's champ vs champ at Mania, how do you get the Rumble winner in the championship match? Maybe one solution would be to rotate SDL and RAW title has to be defended at the Rumble, like what Roman had to do.

Get Cyinick to tell you how the unifying and splitting of the world title was a brilliant idea that created awareness and breathed new life into a product that was already damn near perfect.

wow l just saw his post after writing this and to think I was being sarcastic.

Nothing is ever perfect, but for me personally I find both shows more entertaining post brand split. The IC title means more. More tag teams are being featured every week. Virtually the entire SDL women's division is getting time whereas with one title, I would say only two of the girls would have regular TV time.

I will say the main event scene on SDL is a little short in terms of depth, but it's giving guys like Corbin the opportunity to step up. Even a guy like AJ is able to carry the brand, whereas with one title, I don't think his run would have big as long. And what's great, is as a fan, I'm getting more PPVs for the same price as pre split. It's hard to complain IMO.

You can never go too over the top when you parody a troll.

Always think of the worst thing, then take it one step further.

The main thing I keyed in on is you saying you like RAW but law of averges says somebody had to like going to a wrestling show that opens with 20 mins of talking drags in the middle an then just kinda ends with no real reason given why you should tune in the next week.

I would suggest you find something else to do with your life if you feel that way about the show. Seems odd to complain about a show week after week, only to continue watching and/or discuss it on a message board. But maybe you don't value time as much as I do.

You ever seen MST3K you know how you probably wouldn't watch the terrible movies if they didn't come with snarky commentary? There you go.

There is the one off chance of Alicia wrestling thats really the only good thing I can say about RAW.

I have no idea what that is.

Lots to enjoy on RAW.

Dirtsheets sponsored by The Conqueror of the US Roman Empire ... Chris Jericho:
https://68.media.tumblr.com/527a242e...ykaxo1_400.gif

Small drop compared to last week but 3rd hour was among the worst ever for the 3 Hour Era. In terms of comparisons, same show last year had around 500k more viewers.

Link to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7gN...KOTR0LbY04s_bp

Omega's current contract with NJPW ends at the end of this month.

According to PWI, he's currently planned to join the NXT commentary crew.

Pretty much adds another break planned for Cena to join his pile for 2017.


Some other sheet news includes:

• WWE recently released the bracket for their upcoming UK tournament. http://www.f4wonline.com/wwe-news/ww...bracket-227991
• Observer had a recent article about how the WWE helped a boxing event be possible due to both shows being booked on the same date. WWE helped MSG by moving their own event to a later date so the boxing event could go on as scheduled. http://www.f4wonline.com/wwe-news/ho...ked-msg-228051
• Recent episode of the Steve Austin Show podcast had Observer's Dave Meltzer as the guest. https://www.podcastone.com/pg/jsp/pr...42&pid=1699889
• Kenny Omega was revealed to be the guest for Friday's episode of Talk Is Jericho podcast show. Episode itself was supposedly taped a couple of weeks ago though due to Omega being busy preparing for Wrestle Kingdom 11. https://twitter.com/TalkIsJericho/st...33229133254657
• According to the Observer, Finn Balor is currently targeting early March for his return from his injury. https://twitter.com/davemeltzerWON/s...12418759774212

Dirtsheets sponsored by The Return of the Queen of Craziness:
https://media.giphy.com/media/RhqAwMkpIE9Da/200.gif


Spoiler tags used since its related to the rumored list of WWE Hall of Famers for this year's class.

Obama's Farewell Address ended up hurting Smackdown more than the NCAA football title game did for RAW. Only real bright spot is the Live Era is paying off for Smackdown since this week was higher compared to the same week last year.

According to PWI, UFC is getting sued for being purposely aware Hunt's recent oppoents were cheating, put his welfare and rep at risk by not finding him clean opponents, and purposely underpaying him both for fight purses and post-fight compensation. Lesnar is getting sued mainly for cheating his way to a huge paycheck at Hunt's expense.

Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WbirNi9y4M


<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XZC8Cct61Rk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


Some other sheet news includes:

• For those interested, PWI is currently offering a free 3 day trial of their Elite subscription service.
• Rolling Stones had a recent article about Baron Corbin and their feeling of him becoming a huge star in the WWE very soon. http://www.rollingstone.com/sports/b...-thing-w460546
• In a "WWE Did You Know" type fact, Alexa Bliss' current Smackdown Women's reign has lasted longer than all of Sasha Banks' combined RAW Women's reigns. Bliss has held the belt for 37 days while Sasha's combined total is just 28 days (3 reigns).
• In another "WWE Did You Know" type fact, Cena is actually one reign away from tying two of Ric Flair's all-time championship records. One involves World-tier belts and the other involves the US title (Cena has 5, Flair has 6 for the record).
• In a third "WWE Did You Know" type fact, today is the 18th anniversary of the Corporate Rumble which was won by Chyna and later allowed her to become the first women ever to wrestle in the Royal Rumble match.

Where does that erroneous 's' come from when they report about Rolling Stone magazine? Every time they refer to it as Rolling Stones.

From the band.

Alicia Fauuuuuuuuuuuuuux is amazing lol

Good god Alica that was some really really bad acting

But it's incorrect. Mick Jagger is not writing articles about wrestling.

The Observer is all but confirming that Hogan is coming back.

On what I'm sure is a TOTALLY UNRELATED NOTE, Vince tweeted this yesterday:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">My hero. <a href="https://t.co/0oTT6DVcQG">pic.twitter.com/0oTT6DVcQG</a></p>&mdash; Vince McMahon (@VinceMcMahon) <a href="https://twitter.com/VinceMcMahon/status/819290460053241856">January 11, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Good job The New Day look to be recruiting.

Look for American Alpha to be rebranded "Real American Alpha" and wear red and yellow from now on. You heard it here first.