DeMarco: WWE Needs To Rebrand The Women’s Championships

Greg DeMarco has a strong opinion on a topic he thinks is being overlooked–the branding of the women’s championships in WWE!

Women’s wrestling, especially in WWE, has come a long way. A looooooooooooong way. So long that you can’t even recognize the division today as compared to that of the Attitude Era and before. We have the likes of Nikki Bella, AJ Lee, Beth Phoenix, Natalya, Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks, and Ronda Rousey (and others) to thank for the division we have now, even if there are days fans don’t appreciate it.

Thanks to #GiveDivasAChance, the Divas Revolution, and the Women’s Evolution, we’ve seen women:

• Main event a WWE pay-per-view for the first time
• Compete in their own Royal Rumble
• Have their own pay-per-view
• Main event WrestleMania
• Main event Survivor Series
• And most recently main event two straight pay-per-views thanks to TLC

Here’s the best part: those last two bullet points are HUGE, and no one batted an eyelash. To have women main event two straight pay-per-views and no one makes a big deal out of it means it’s commonplace now, we have come so far that it’s not viewed as something we need to shout from the mountain tops.

This is all amazing, but there is one glaring issue I see, and one I am surprised no one is really harping on.

WWE Needs To Rebrand The Women’s Championships

This is a big deal to me, honestly. Let’s take a look at the top two championships in WWE for both the men and the women on each brand:

• WWE Championship (Brock Lesnar, Raw)
• Raw Women’s Championship (Becky Lynch, Raw)
• Universal Championship (Bray Wyatt/The Fiend, Smackdown)
• Smackdown Women’s Championship (Bayley, Smackdown)
• NXT Championship (Adam Cole, NXT)
• NXT Women’s Championship (Shayna Baszler, NXT)

I can’t be the only one who sees this as strange, right? We just saw the WWE and Universal Champions change brands, and one of them (Brock Lesnar) did it because “I wanna beat up Rey Mysterio!” Meanwhile you have the brand name attached to the Raw and Smackdown Women’s Championships. The Intercontinental and United States Championships don’t have a brand association. The Women’s Tag Team Championships don’t have that, either. NXT I can understand, even as a main roster brand, it’s treated differently.

Let’s take a look at the “like-branded” championships on Raw and Smackdown:

• Raw Tag Team Championships
• Smackdown Tag Team Championships
• Raw Women’s Championship
• Smackdown Women’s Championship

Do you mean to tell me that the tag team championships are on the same level as the women’s championships? The tag team championships haven’t main evented a WrestleMania since John Cena faced Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 23 and they both happened to be world tag team champions. The women’s championships just main evented WrestleMania, and only have one more “Big 4” pay-per-view left to go before they have main evented all of them.

So Greg, What Do You Want?

Well, that should be obvious! I want the women’s championships to be branded to be as important as the men’s:

• Women’s WWE Champion
• Women’s Universal Champion

I don’t want a “WWE Women’s Champion,” I want the women to have a WWE Champion. Same with the Universal. I want them to be able to change brands in a crafty scenario like the men just did, and the current branding of their titles makes that impossible. I want the women’s championships to be just as special, just as transcendent, as the men’s. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, and to me it’s one of the final steps in legitimizing the movement.

And while we’re at it, can we get a Women’s Intercontinental Championship? I wanted that more than I wanted the Women’s Tag Team Championships, honestly.

Pro wrestling, along with sports entertainment, is a fun ride. Enjoy it! Follow me on social media @ChairshotGreg and drop me a line at gregdemarco@thechairshot.com.