High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment (WWF/WWE) Brand Extension was a process first used in 2002 by the professional wrestling promotion as a means of providing separate brands of wrestling through its two top shows, Raw and SmackDown!, with the addition of ECW in 2006. After acquiring the remains of World Championship Wrestling (WCW), its main competitor throughout the 1990s, in March 2001, the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) sought a way to split itself into two separate promotions, because of the numbers of talent that it had acquired as part of its purchase. On March 18, 2002, Linda McMahon announced the "brand extension" in which the company would be split into two distinct brands.