Welcome to another eWrestlingNews Question of the Day!

With last night’s episode of WWE RAW, we now have two midcard champions for both the men’s and women’s divisions on all three brands, all being named the same across the board. By that, I mean Raw has the Intercontinental Championship and the Women’s Intercontinental Championship, SmackDown has the United States Championship and the Women’s United States Championship, and NXT has the North American Championship and, you guessed it, the Women’s North American Championship.

The world titles aren’t quite the same. While the NXT Championship has the NXT Women’s Championship, Raw’s top title is the “World Heavyweight Championship” along with the “Women’s World Championship” without mentioning the heavyweight aspect. Likewise, Cody Rhodes is holding the Undisputed WWE Championship (sometimes referred to as the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship, and it still technically is both belts not fully unified) while Tiffany Stratton is holding the WWE Women’s Championship that just so happens to have the word “undisputed” written on it, yet never spoken.

My question for you today is “Do you think WWE has an obligation to start saying the Men’s Intercontinental Championship, Men’s United States Championship, and Men’s North American Championship, or should it stay that unless you specify women’s, it’s just assumed the men’s?”

Remember to answer with your response in the comments below.

As far as my answer…

I’m of mixed opinions about this. In the interest of equality, I 100% see an argument for why the male titles shouldn’t just be the default. When there aren’t women’s titles, and something is intergender like the 24/7 Championship was, then there’s no need to specify. But when something is strictly for the men’s or women’s divisions, if the women’s title has this going on, the men’s arguably should, too.

Think of it like the Men’s Royal Rumble match and the Women’s Money in the Bank and so forth. It’s done for everything else, so why not for the titles?

Yes, at this point, if you were to just say the Intercontinental Championship changed hands, people would assume you’d mean the men’s and would be confused if you were referring to the women’s. But that’s just something that can change over time with people becoming more accustomed to how there are 2 to distinguish. It really isn’t hard when you have context clues. Nobody gets confused in a sentence like “Asuka is a former Royal Rumble winner” and thinks that she took out Randy Orton and Seth Rollins to do it. They just know you mean that since she’s a woman, she won the women’s match. Likewise, if you said Solo Sikoa won the United States Championship, you wouldn’t picture that he destroyed Chelsea Green, would you?

What’s interesting to me is that this is the direct opposite of the reaction I had back when WWE was trying to refer to Rhea Ripley’s NXT Women’s Championship as just the “NXT Championship” for a few weeks. They tried that out, theorizing that everyone would just fill in the blank, but I wasn’t down for it. To me, it should be specified on the belt and the graphics and such, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be spoken by the wrestlers in the promos.

For example, if Michael Cole is referring to a match card, he should say Rhea Ripley is defending the Women’s World Championship against so and so, not that Rhea Ripley is defending “the world championship.” But if she’s cutting a promo, she doesn’t have to always spell it all out, as when she says she’s going to retain her world title, we know it’s that belt she has. LA Knight doesn’t need to say he’s gunning for a shot at Shinsuke Nakamura and will win back his “Men’s United States Championship” title, but Joe Tessitore should say “On tonight’s episode of SmackDown, the Men’s United States Championship will be on the line…”

Like with most things in life, I think there’s a happy balance that sees some changes without being too drastic about it, and I’d like to see WWE implement this going forward, but it’s not a topic that I’m ultimately going to lose sleep over, either.

What do you think? Drop your thoughts below!