Times during the brand split where both champions felt equal

[ChitownKnight]

We have moment where one champ is more important than the other (like the past 3 years with Roman), or Cena in the majority of the mid-late 00s, but what about when they are equal?

-I think Eddie and Benoit were represented equallly when they were champs
-Cena and Batista in 05
-HHH/Goldberg and Brock/Angle in 03

[nickcave]

I feel like the champions felt equal until Rey Mysterio won it

[jivesoulbrah]

Drew and Roman at the time felt even.

Right now Gunther and Roman would feel close.

[Cry Me a Wiggle]

Not the brand split but more the precursor to it: When the WCW Championship was active alongside the WWF Championship during the Invasion, both were treated fairy equal. I’d argue title belts were the only things in that storyline given parity with their WWF counterparts.

To the point where the WCW Championship just stopped being a factor for the Alliance as exclusively WWF guys feuded over it.

[Gerard Gerard]

I'd say they were on pretty even footing until 2010 and Swagger's run, not helped by the fact Smackdown was a lame duck show that had been harvested while they waited for the MyNetwork deal to run out in late 2010. Even Edge's bounce-back reign was undercut by mixing it up with the likes of ADR and Ziggler and it started to feel decidedly midcard.

I think that's partly why they were so quick to move it to Orton, to sort of rehab it as top guy thing rather than even bother trying with Christian, but the wheels came off that in 2012 when they just straight up start treating it as a midcard belt as what was left of the brand split quietly drifted off into the sunset.

[Jindrak Mark]

Summerslam 02-Wrestlemania XX - I felt they were basically even at this point. Both were more than capable of main eventing the dual-brand PPVs.

April 04-June 05 - I think the World title pulled ahead. When lowcard tag guy just a few weeks earlier JBL won the WWE title Smackdown cratered a bit. HHH/Batista was a huge deal and nothing related to the WWE title at this time really came close.

June 05-early 07 - When the Batista/HHH feud ended, Batista went to Smackdown and Cena went to Raw I think the World title had a real rough patch with terrible feuds like Batista/Booker and weak and/or undeserving champs like Rey/Khali while Raw had better stuff with Cena/Edge/HHH.

Early 07-Wrestlemania 26 - The World title recovered with the Taker-Batista feud and Edge moving to Smackdown and I think for the next few years the titles felt pretty equal again.

Apr 10-Dec 13 - The moment Jack Swagger won the World title I think is when it became the clear number 2 title again and it stayed like that until the titles were unified.

[bob]

Jun 30, 2023 14:31:07 GMT -5 Jindrak Mark said:

Summerslam 02-Wrestlemania XX - I felt they were basically even at this point. Both were more than capable of main eventing the dual-brand PPVs.

April 04-June 05 - I think the World title pulled ahead. When lowcard tag guy just a few weeks earlier JBL won the WWE title Smackdown cratered a bit. HHH/Batista was a huge deal and nothing related to the WWE title at this time really came close.

June 05-early 07 - When the Batista/HHH feud ended, Batista went to Smackdown and Cena went to Raw I think the World title had a real rough patch with terrible feuds like Batista/Booker and weak and/or undeserving champs like Rey/Khali while Raw had better stuff with Cena/Edge/HHH.

Early 07-Wrestlemania 26 - The World title recovered with the Taker-Batista feud and Edge moving to Smackdown and I think for the next few years the titles felt pretty equal again.

Apr 10-Dec 13 - The moment Jack Swagger won the World title I think is when it became the clear number 2 title again and it stayed like that until the titles were unified.

part of the issue with the big gold belt being devalued in 2005-2007, iirc, is that Smackdown just dealt with a huge amount of injuries during that time and was dealing with the huge loss of Brock Lesnar, which led to the JBL experiment