Top Ten Cases: WWE 2010 Year-End Awards - Will the WWE and World Championships Be Unified?

Realizing that I offered 10 categories for you to vote on for my Year-End Awards, I thought instead of revealing the results in one exceptionally long post, I'd draw it out over 10 days in the latest edition of Top Ten Cases. Today, I reveal my thoughts (and yours) on whether the WWE and World Heavyweight Championships will be unified.

My Pick: No
When the Tag Team titles and the Divas and Women Championships were unified, this naturally led to people debating whether the WWE and World Heavyweight Championship would be reunited. Proponents for the unification argued that two championships only resulted in constant title changes and the general devaluation of the title. They believed that there was nothing wrong with having one champion appear on both shows. These arguments are flawed, of course. John Cena held the WWE Championship for over one year, and Batista’s first World Heavyweight Title reign had the potential to last a long, long time were it not for his injury. Further, the Tag Team and Divas Championships should only prove that the powers that be struggle to place the attention anywhere other than Raw. How often do the tag team champions appear on Smackdown (admittedly, Santino and Koslov are better that this than past champions)? Take a look at this past Raw – the build to a feud between the champion and the challenges – who are Smackdown Divas – happened on Raw. And even if they did evenly distribute which brand challenged the champion, the early days of the brand extension shows that both the writers and fans struggle with booking an entire brand without a World Championship storyline carrying it.

But that’s beside the point, really. The question wasn’t whether it’s a good idea to unify the titles, it was about whether they will. And honestly, I don’t think they will, the main reason being that it would be the beginning of the end of the brand extension (and for what it’s worth, I don’t think they ever will unify the titles unless they decide they want to end the brand extension). And for that matter, having two champions right now works on a business perspective – they have two title belts to sell, and two champions to market – and from a writing perspective, it makes things easier – they have a “crutch” to use for at least two main event feuds. Plus, it’s an easy way to pull the trigger on a Superstar on the rise. And, conceivably, there’s double the intrigue with specialty matches like the Royal Rumble, Money in the Bank, and to a lesser extent the Elimination Chamber. To be honest, the only conceivable reason they have for unifying the titles is to add some prestige to the concept of the World Championship – which, truthfully, only hardcore fans seem to notice or care about.

What you said – No
Looks like most people agree with my pick here, as only one person said “yes.” I do firmly believe, though, that if they were to unify the championship it would have to happen at WrestleMania (the only other conceivable idea in my view, believe it or not, is Night of Champions). And the build would have to be epic, with two larger than life characters. That means more than a month build up, and with all due respect to both Superstars (one of which is my favorite wrestler), that means something bigger than Edge vs. The Miz. For what it’s worth, my pick would’ve been John Cena vs. Batista, although that match has lost a significant amount of luster since they fought so many times last year. It actually would have been quite fitting too, as it would have been the first two individuals to truly break out due to the brand extension. But as far as 2011 goes, nope, don’t think it’s going to happen.