WWE News: WWE To Bring Back More Enhancement Talent For Brand Split

There is still plenty to determine in regard to the WWE’s upcoming brand extension that officially goes into effect this coming Tuesday. The hope is that the decision-makers, led by Vince McMahon and his top officials, have most, if not all, of those questions sorted out so that the second coming of this brand split is executed better than the first time around.

At this point, it should be expected that the gap between what Vince knows and what the WWE Universe knows about the brand split, is pretty wide. All the fans know about the extension (or at least what has been presented on television) to this point is that the roster will be divided in half, Stephanie and Shane McMahon will act as Commissioners of their respective brands and will be appointing General Managers this coming Monday on RAW.

Backstage reports have indicated that there will be two world champions, one representing each brand. It’s also been reported (not televised, but no reason to) that each show will have its own dedicated creative staff and that outside of the top four shows of the year, each brand will have a pay-per-view every month. And then there’s been all that talk about bulking up the entire WWE roster in order to adequately stock each show with a sufficient amount of talent.

That still appears to be the hope, where the company is recruiting former WWE employees who can still go, while also feverishly scouting the independent promotions. But there’s another avenue the WWE has begun exploring. According to Ringside News, the WWE will begin featuring a lot more enhancement talent, aka jobbers, on both R AW and Smackdown beginning in two weeks.

The thought process behind this decision has one major pro and one major con according to many backstages. No longer will full-time talent on the lower end of the card have to put over other rising superstars on a weekly basis, piling up their losses and rarely winning on a show other than Superstars or Main Event. However, a win over an enhancement talent won’t likely have a huge impact on their character development until it leads to a meaningful feud where they go over. Some performers, however, value television time over wins and losses altogether.

WWE largely did away with using enhancement talent, or local wrestlers booked the day of the event, during the height of the profession in the late 1990’s. Because they were locked in a ratings war with WCW, they could ill afford to waste valuable television time on a jobber that no one has ever heard of. Even more recently, and with floundering ratings, the goal is to put the best possible product on the air in every segment. But even so, we have seen two recent examples of enhancement talent being used on RAW, both in tag team matches.

Back on the May 16 episode of RAW, the Shining Stars made their repackaged debut with a win over two local talent billed as Scott Jackson and Brian Kennedy. What was interesting about them is that Jackson and Kennedy are actually regularly used NXT enhancement talent who go by the names of Corey Hollis and John Skylar. Regardless, the win for Primo and Epico did nothing for their careers moving forward, as their debut flopped and haven’t been used in a match since.

Arguably the hottest tag team in the WWE is Enzo & Cass, but they too were booked against two unknowns back on June 27. The realest guys in the room beat Carlos Hershey and Mitch Walden, an extremely subtle nod to two Philadelphia Phillies prospects who play for the organization’s Single-A affiliate which happened to be right down the road from Tampa, which is where RAW was that night.

So it looks like we’ll be seeing more of the likes of Jackson, Kennedy, Hershey, and Walden. The question is, however, is it a good move or a waste of valuable tv time?