God damn Matt Hardy for his feud with “Brother Nero”. Broken Matt Hardy is genius. WWE could never have made Hardy into this. He does not need one last WWE run. Vince would ruin like he ruined Bubba Ray.
Oh great we’re getting another Brand Split, it’s only failed three times. Wanna talk about it?
WCW/ NWO Failed Attempt:
Oh yeah this was attempted by Eric Bischoff in early 1997. The split would’ve been between the NWO and WCW. Throughout 1997, 10 million guys joined the NWO. In December, the NWO took over Nitro , calling it ” NWO Nitro”. This was supposedly the beginning of NWO running Nitro , while WCW would run WCW Saturday Night, or WCW Thunder. I never understood the idea of letting the NWO run an independent fed. Nobody, but NWO guys would win. It would’ve been Souled Out 1997 every Monday night. The NWO had their own refs, and the president of WCW, as their manager. How did Nitro keep our attention for 18 months? This was a reach to prove my point.
WCW Monday Night Raw:
In 2001 Vince McMahon thought he could run a WCW exclusive roster on Raw. Spike Tv hated the idea of having a failed wrestling federation being the focus of their top rated show. It turns out that Vince can’t run two feds anyway. It’s cool, Vince laid the blame on Buff Bagwell, who had a normal match with Booker T for the WCW World Title. The match was fines but Vince claims that’s when he decided WCW was sub par. This would lead to the WCW Invasion angle, that proved Vince likes being vindictive more than he likes money. Before WWE bought WCW, they had planned a brand split after WrestleMania 17, between Vince and his Wife Linda. Then WCW died.
2002 Brand Split:
This was the first brand split that actually happen. It worked well until around 2005, when WWE decided to put all the top talent on Raw, for money reasons. I believe had to look great because WWE was negotiating a deal with various tv channels? SmackDown would cycle in one or two main eventer, that’d would go back to Raw, after about a year. While SmackDown was getting the b-show treatment, WWE adds a third brand, ECW. (Just writing about this is confusing me.) The biggest problems of the brand split were that WWE would constantly break-up tag teams, and the rosters were only exclusive for a year. Also WWE made it clear that Raw was the show to watch. Like most wrestling ideas this turned into a giant cluster fuck.
Finally, its worth pointing out that the USA Network was a strong influence on this new brand split. They were also the ones behind Raw going 3 hours.
If any of you try to blame USA for this, you will have to wear a shirt that says , “Commie Douche”, go home meathead.
