WWE News: Stone Cold Steve Austin Weighs in On WWE RAW-Smackdown Brand Split
The recent announcement by the WWE that the two flagship shows of the company in RAW and Smackdown are going to have a brand split in order to give the two shows two distinct identities and needless, it has created a lot of chatter among ardent WWE fans all over the world. WWE legend Stone Cold Steve Austin weighed in on the burning issue in the latest episode of The Steve Austin Show and shared his thoughts on the direction that the shows are going. It seems that Austin is not exactly convinced with the idea of the brand split simply due to the fact that he believes that there are not as many star wrestlers to support such an operation in spite of what WWE Chairman Vince McMahon had to say about the whole thing.
Austin said, "I'm quoting Vince from the SmackDown stuff. It says, 'WWE's flagship programs will both leverage the incredible depth of our talent roster, distinct storylines, and the unpredictable nature of live TV.' Okay, lets go back to the 'incredible depth' of the talent roster. I don't see 'incredible depth'. It is a lot of bodies, a lot of people, and talented people, but I don't think you can say your roster's necessarily deep. But you do have a lot of players or people they're going to try out and we'll see how they do. Are they going to make the all-star team by getting over or are they just going to be bodies that go out there and occupy time on the television screen?"
In addition to that, Austin also stated that the brand split might result in the creation of two separate WWE championships but he said that the WWE Heavyweight Championship should be the ultimate prize and the holder should be part of both shows. "I absolutely think that the world champion ought to travel back and forth [between RAW and SmackDown]. If the champion is on RAW, Reigns, who has the championship, goes to SmackDown, to me, that in and of itself creates something that I want to see."
