Photo: Courtesy of UFC.com

Since the news of a WWE Brand Extension, and accompanying WWE Draft, many wrestling fans have been wondering; what is the future for the WWE Title and the main event scene? Will there be a sole “floating” champion who will be featured on both RAW & SmackDown!, or will WWE revert back to the not-so-old days of having a WWE Champion, and a World Heavyweight Champion? Maybe there’s a third option.

The UFC have done a tremendous job of growing their brand. If you don’t believe it, just look at where the company has come from, UFC 1 to today, coming up on UFC 200; the company has never been stronger. One of the ways they have accomplished this, is by making the main event title fights feel ‘epic’. This in turn, makes the UFC Championships feel important. WWE does this as well, however, there is one very important thing that the UFC has going for them, that gives them an easier way accomplishing this; multiple UFC World Champions. The UFC doesn’t have one “guy” to lean on like the WWE has. Sure, the WWE has the Intercontinental Championship, and the United States Championship, and those are important titles, but they’re not on the same level as the WWE Championship, nor should they be. UFC Championships, on the other hand, are all on an equal playing field as far as importance, and significance. The UFC portrays a UFC Flyweight title fight, as important as a UFC Heavyweight title fight. This gives them many superstars, instead of one superstar to count on to sell tickets and pay-per-view buy-ins for a main event title fight.

The “third option”; we apply this same method of operation to the WWE. After the Draft, the WWE unveils a 2nd WWE Championship; 2 WWE Heavyweight Champions. Whereas the UFC Championships are all the same visually, yet distinctly separated by weight-class, the WWE could separate their identical titles by brand. One WWE Heavyweight Champion for RAW, and one WWE Heavyweight Champion on SmackDown!. If WWE wanted to, they could even nix the NXT Championship, and have a 3rd WWE Heavyweight Champion; since according to Triple H himself, NXT is no longer developmental, it’s a 3rd brand.

Photo: Courtesy of WWE

There are many advantages here; this allows you to lean on up to 3 main event champions instead of 1. It allows you to escape situations like we had with Roman Reigns over the past couple of years. If Roman Reigns weren’t to become the only, sole WWE Heavyweight Champion, would he have received as much hate as he’s received? The attention could at least be spread out to other champions if something like the Roman Reigns rejection happens again. It would also solve the problem of making each show feel as important as the other. Each champion is just as important as the other, so SmackDown! would truly become just as important as RAW, and who’s to say about NXT.

Of course there will be some confusion to the casual audience at first, all of these Heavyweight Champions running around on different shows, who can keep it all straight? Well, unfortunate news to wrestling fans, the UFC has a bigger audience than the WWE does these days. The good news though; this means the audience is already educated to seeing multiple World Champions, from watching UFC. If you’re WWE, this confusion also gives you a perfect opportunity to plug all of the other shows by having to educate the audience of the “New Era”; (i.e. multiple World Champions). If done tactfully, and stretched out over time, the casual audience would eventually catch on to the idea. The WWE has of course, done much more confusing things than this, and walked out of it unscathed… mostly unscathed.

Photo: Courtesy of WWE

Vince McMahon, we all know has a history of ‘borrowing’ ideas from other entities, just look at DX and the NWO. On the other hand, we also know that Vince is a strong-minded individual who tries, sometimes desperately, to create his own ideas and stars; just look at John Cena & Roman Reigns. However, the current business relationship between WWE/UFC has never been better than it is right now; we have Brock Lesnar returning with an unprecedented 2 contracts, one with each company, as well as CM Punk soon to make his UFC debut at UFC 203 (scheduled as of 06/28/16). This may be the perfect timing, for good old Vinny Mac to ‘borrow’ one of those ideas again, and this time, from the UFC.

Written By: Chris Wooton (chriswooton88@yahoo.com)