During the past year, WWE consolidated several of its titles around the waists of the Bloodline, turning the faction into the central focus of programming throughout 2022 and heading into WrestleMania 39.

Despite unifying both world titles with Roman Reigns and having the Usos hold both tag titles, all three men carried both championships with them, leaving it open to consider that despite both acts being bills as "undisputed" champions, they could defend one title at at time. Roman never did, but the Usos did defend the Raw and SmackDown tag titles separately.

But now, WWE has created a separate world title, making Reigns and his Undisputed WWE Universal Championship specific to SmackDown. This has given rise to the World Heavyweight Championship, which will be a Raw exclusive title, with the new champ to be crowned at Night of Champions.

However, WWE acknowledged during Backlash that the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championship, currently held by Raw superstars Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn, can be defended on either brand, meaning that KO and Zayn can travel to both shows and defend the title on each.

This throwaway line on Saturday night might have seemed innocuous, but it showed that the decision about the world title is less about the title and more about its holder. Owens and Zayn are there every week, so you can have them pop up on Raw and/or SmackDown each week so the tag titles are present. But Reigns is on a reduced schedule, so you rarely get the undisputed world champion on TV - he hasn't been seen for a month - hence the need for a separate title.

Of course, they could have just separated the two titles in any of a couple of different ways, but that's moot now. At least we now know that although we're getting a new world champion for Raw, the men's tag titles will remain unified (for now) and just travel between shows.