WWE: Brand Extension

The 2002 World Wrestling Federation (WWF) Brand Extension Draft took place at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania on March 25, 2002. The first half of the draft was televised live on TNN for two hours, apart of WWE (known then as the WWF)'s flagship program, Raw. The second half was conducted over the internet on WWF's official website, WWF.com. There were thirty draft picks, with sixty superstars drafted overall by co-owners of the WWF, Ric Flair and Vince McMahon, onto their respective brands, Raw and SmackDown!.For the televised half of the draft, ten brand selections were manually made by Flair and McMahon. The remaining superstars were divided randomly in a draft lottery, with each brand receiving a grand total of thirty superstars.

On the March 18, 2002 episode of Raw, Vince McMahon won a coin toss to determine who would receive the first draft selection.

Aftermath

On the June 10, 2002 edition of Raw, McMahon became the sole owner of World Wrestling Entertainment (after the WWF was court ordered to change their name) when he defeated Flair in a No Holds Barred match.

ECW

Background

After World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) bought all of Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW)'s assets in 2003, the company began releasing DVDs promoting the original ECW. Soon afterwards, the company promoted two ECW reunion shows for ECW Alumni entitled, ECW One Night Stand in 2005 and in 2006.

On May 26, 2006, WWE announced a launch of a new brand, ECW, a revival of the 1990s promotion. The new brand debuted on its current network, the SCI FI Channel on June 13, 2006.

Superstar selections

The 2006 World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Brand Extension Draft took place from the Tacoma Dome in Tacoma, Washington on May 29, 2006, where ECW representative, Paul Heyman, drafted two superstars, one from SmackDown! and one from Raw onto the newly created ECW brand.

Aftermath

In late 2007, SmackDown! and ECW superstars began to appear on each others shows as part of a (kayfabe) deal between ECW General Manager Armando Estrada and SmackDown General Manager Vickie Guerrero.

Impact

Interbrand competition

Interbrand competition was kept at a minimum, with superstars from all brands competing together only at pay-per-view events. However, in 2003, all pay per view events became brand exclusive, leaving the "big four" pay-per-views (WrestleMania, SummerSlam, Survivor Series, and the Royal Rumble) as the only interbrand shows.

Starting in late 2006, in an attempt to add more star power to the shows, interbrand matches became more common. Most notably, MNM and The Hardys reformed, despite the fact that the teammates were on separate brands. Bobby Lashley is also notable for his interbrand action, who was involved in a storyline with the WWE Chairman, Vince McMahon. The return of Saturday Night's Main Event to NBC has also lead to more interaction between the brands.

Starting in April 2007 with Backlash, all pay-per-views now feature all the brands as they originally were in 2002.

Pay-per-views

The separation of the WWE roster between two brands also intended to split the pay-per-view offerings, which began with Bad Blood in June 2003. The original idea had the "major" pay-per-view events at the time (Royal Rumble, SummerSlam, Survivor Series, and WrestleMania) would contain the only instances where wrestlers from different brands would interact with each other, and even among the four shows only the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania would have wrestlers from different brands competing against each other. Wrestlers, as a result, appeared only in two-thirds of the shows in a given year, and thus appeared in fewer shows compared to before the brand extension. With single-brand PPVs in place, WWE was able to add more pay-per-view events to their offerings, such as Taboo Tuesday/Cyber Sunday, New Year's Revolution, December to Dismember, and The Great American Bash. Eventually, WWE abandoned the practice of single-brand pay-per-view events following WrestleMania 23. December to Dismember and New Year's Revolution were cancelled following the announcement.

Championships

Initially, the WWE Undisputed Championship and WWE Women's Championship were available to both brands.The other championships were exclusive to the brand the champion was a part of. With several specialty championships being exclusive to one brand, numerous wrestlers were left with no title to fight for.

This issue was corrected in September 2002 when the Undisputed Championship became the WWE Championship again and was moved to SmackDown! while Eric Bischoff created the World Heavyweight Championship for Raw. Shortly thereafter, SmackDown! created their own Tag Team Championship, revived the United States Championship, and became the exclusive home of the Cruiserweight Championship. Meanwhile Raw became the exclusive brand for WWE's original World Tag Team Championship, the Intercontinental Championship, and the Women's Championship. The end result was each brand having four championships. When ECW was revived in 2006, the ECW Championship was re-established and is thus far that brand's sole title.