Is the WWE Planning to Unify All of Their Titles Over the Next Year?

The Legend threw up a fanpost a few days ago in regards to whether or not the WWE plan on unifying all of their championship belts over the next year. He linked up to an article from Rajah that said this:

Creative plans as of Monday night was for WWE to unify all of its championships within the next year. There would be one World Championship, one Tag Team Championship, the Intercontinental Championship, and one Women's title. It is said that a WWE/World Title Unification Match will take place at next year's WrestleMania.

I commented in Legend's fanpost that this has been a long time coming, if it turns out to be true. They've already started the process along by booking the McCool-Melina match to unify the Women's and Diva's titles at Night of Champions, not to mention the fact that they unified the tag titles last month. It would make sense to start with the belts that mean the least and work their way up. I really hope that's what they are doing. It makes for intriguing matches at future PPV shows and having so many titles gives them all less meaning. Jim Ross agrees in his latest blog post:

I'm a proponent of unifying titles in pro wresting. Too many titles waters down the product in my view. When decision makers were still wrestling they would often create meaningless titles to appease egocentric performers or to enhance their own egos.

I can understand why the WWE decided to run things the way they've run things over the past so many years. The acquisition of WCW produced a serious lack of competition and an overload of talent with little time to squeeze everyone in. The natural decision was to split them over the two shows and work them separately. Of course, they couldn't sell Smackdown as it's own show without it's own titles. The whole thing was great in theory but they booked it wrong and it ended up bombing in practice. It appears that they are finally making the decision to absorb the titles into each other and likely with that merge the shows back together.

There are two reasons to do this. First, JR is right, too many titles really does water down the product and if everybody has a belt then no one does, right? Second, despite the fact that the WWE has gotten a lot younger over the past few years, they haven't built many stars. With HBK retired and the Undertaker also on his way out they're clearly trying to condense the amount of time they have to fill on television with some of these guys that aren't getting over. The more time they can give to the guys that sell, the better.

None of this is confirmed but I hope it turns out to be true. The Women unifying their titles is a step in the right direction. If they go through with it though that means we would likely lose the Big Gold Belt. I've always thought that was the best belt, even back when it first came about. No way does WWE get rid of their title and that's a shame because I'm sick of the spinner belt that doesn't spin. Too bad it sells so damn well.