Trish Stratus has lived through one brand split, and completely advocates WWE's call to create a second one.
Stratus was WWE Women's Champion for over 400 days during her run on the Raw brand. In a recent interview with Total Wrestling Magazine, Stratus said that Smackdown going live will help raise the profile of the show and make it more 'can't miss.'
“There’s nothing like a live show, that’s why Raw was always known as the A show and Smackdown was known as the B show when I was there. With a live show there’s a feeling that anything can happen and of course the internet has changed everything with the way we watch TV now. When the show is taped and you can read about it, it’s missing that spontaneity and element of surprise when you watch. It’s a really good move and it’s exciting. When I was around you were always glad you were on Raw excited to be on a live telecast, but also, it was a great challenge and a good learning tool to have the pressure to have to perform live with no editing to help your performance – or audience reaction, you had to earn it," Stratus said.
The WWE Hall of Famer also noted that the abundance of talent in NXT facilitated the change in the WWE, and said it reminded her of WCW.
“I think the brand split is a great move. There is so much talent right now, it’s a good way to divide them up and be able to give each character more time to develop with the focus they need," said Stratus. "You can only highlight so many characters on one show and with so many NXT talent coming in, which is somewhat of a parallel to back in my day when we had the WCW talent come in, this gives the audience two separate platforms for storylines to unfold. Having new talent come in is obviously a plus, new faces is always good to keep the product fresh. It’s especially good, the fact that the audience is familiar with the current crop coming in, as opposed to a brand new persona they need to develop.”
You can see the full interview at this link.
