"Everytime You Lose, You Make The Title Look Bad"

[themind]

I'm all for a long title run, but there is absolutely nobody who deserves to be pushed to the moon like that right now who is not named John Cena or CM Punk.

Back in the day WWF had one taped TV show per week, one monthly or bi-monthly NBC Main Event special (wrestling on NBC, unbelieveable to think that was real, lol) and four PPVs. The biggest stars rarely wrestled on TV, you may seen Piper in his pit or Hogan on one of the many talk-show style interviews (Paul Bearer, Brother Love, The Genius, etc) but the biggest stars were a rare occurance on TV... and the biggest stars *never* wrestled each other on TV.

Today every conceiveable match-up has already been done, and the match-ups that haven't been done aren't that intriguing. I could care less if Dolph Ziggler feuds with Evan Bourne or Jack Swagger or whoever is on the program these days... but in 1986 Junk Yard Dog vs Jake The Snake or One Man Gang vs Big John Studd was a cause for the highest level of speculation not only because it was so rare to see big names square off, but to my knowledge neither of those feuds ever came about in the WWF.

WWF used to get by on feeding jobbers to their roster talent, but the hotshotting of wrestling in the 1990s has destroyed that business model. No one is going to tune into RAW to see Otunga vs Jow Independent in a squash match every week... but in 1988 people would tune in to see Haku vs Joe Jobber in a main event TV match.

So until WWE can build up its next new megastar, we will never see a year-long title reign. WWE creative doesn't seem to have enough ideas to stretch out a program that long. WWE would need about 3-4 times as many ideas for the same length of a championship reign, and they don't have it in them to do it.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

To me, this basically sounds like a "Well back when I was a kid..." thread that complains about how much "better" things were back in the old days compared to how things now. That's not to say that there isn't some merit to that but, at the end of the day, I think we sometimes tend to remember things back in the day as being better than they used to be.

Back when I was growing up, one reason why championship matches felt more special was because we simply didn't see them as often. When I was 10 years old, WWF and WCW both had only one show per week and we'd maybe see a total of 3, maybe 4 title matches on television a year. We almost never saw a World Championship match on television. House shows were far more important then than they are today and simply carried more relevance than today. That's where most of your title changes took place before the mid to late 90s. Even then, however, every title match wasn't some grand classic.

A huge reason of why things, especially title runs, seem so grand back in the day is because we were just kids. It didn't necessarily take much to impress us when we were kids in all honesty. Not every match was a classic, not every promo had you on the edge of your seat and not every champ was particularly great. However, as I aluded to earlier, we've romanticized those days in our head and remember them as often being better than they truly were. A lot of guys can't "compare" to greats of the past because those are the guys we loved and cheered in childhood. Nostalgia often can be a powerful force in wrestling, though it's quite often not a very accurate one. A perfect example of that is the Attitude Era. The greatness of the AE, and it was a lot of fun, is tremendously exaggerated due mostly the the fact that it produced a small handful of guys that we truly loved like Austin, The Rock and a few others. Back when we were kids, it was the same way. We had Hogan, Flair, Savage, Sting and a few others. There were a lot of great wrestlers going around then as there were during the AE and as there are today, but we really almost always only talk about those certain, small handfuls of wrestlers. Another good example is about wrestling quality. Watching wrestling on tv during the 80s and 90s, most of the matches really weren't all that good up until about the mid 90s in most cases. Usually, what you'd see was a star come into the ring and beating the piss out of a jobber for about 3 or 4 minutes and that was it.

As far as a champ losing, it needs to happen every so often. As I said earlier, it wasn't often we saw the champ wrestle on television back when I was a kid. If we did, it was usually in a squash match against a jobber. However, when someone wound up beating the champ in a "real match" on television, it had a bigger feel about it. Not necessarily because it was so much better than today, but because we simply didn't see it happen very often whatsoever. A champ losing can help bring a boost to whatever feud he was in. This past Friday on SmackDown!, for instance, we saw Christian cleanly pin Randy Orton in the middle of the ring. It was in a tag match, but Orton still lost and it built up some tension for the ppv next Sunday. It showed that Christian can beat Randy Orton, he has a legit shot of retaining his title even if it is in a street fight.

But, it's true that the WWE does sometimes have its champs lose too much. Ezekiel Jackson, Kofi Kingston & Wade Barrett are three perfect examples of that. Barrett's run as IC champ was completely unremarkable as was Kofi's third run. Zeke's hasn't been much better and I find myself wishing that they just put the IC title on Cody Rhodes and be done with it. He's more than ready, he's got the skills on the mic and inside the ring. He's come a long way since he was Orton's flunky in Legacy.

As for the tag titles, I honestly think things have botten slightly better over the past month or so. It's far from being great but McGuillicutty & Otunga have done a decent job when you consider the time they've been given. They've won some matches, racked up some victories and have looked good doing it. They're actually somewhat relevant at this point and The Usos are coming along nicely. There's still a lot of work to do but, let's be honest, it's better now than it's been in quite a while.

As for the WWE & World Championships, well it's all the same really. All of us here live in an age in which the mystique surrounding wrestling has been stripped away. It's not often that anything happens that's a legit surprise. A lot of people claim to want to be surprised, to see things "shaken up". You'll read posts all the time about how wrestling is so predictable and all that. However, when something actually happens that genuinely surprises people, most of the time, it results in even more criticism. Why? Because a lot of those fans that dump on it do so because whatever the surprise happened to be was something that they themselves didn't think should happen or wasn't what they themselves would do. LOTS of armchair bookers on the internet that think they can honestly do a better job. I can honestly say I've got no major complaints about the WWE Championship or WHC right now. Over the course of this year, both have had great programs that've resulted in great matches. Both have had feuds and champions that've kept people talking and interested in what happens. Even if you haven't liked certain guys winning the strap, you've tuned in to watch said guy's matches or promos. You wanna see what happens next. To me, that's the most important aspect of a World Championship scene. If you don't give a damn, then the champions & challengers haven't done their jobs.

 

[Hollywood Naitch]

I think Rhodes was right. Someone who is the Intercontinental Champion should not be losing on a regular basis, it completely devalues the title and the man holding it.

The IC belt used to be the second most prestigious belt in the industry. Wrestlers used to grow up dreaming of holding that belt, and would be satisfied with that as the World Title was so rarely swtiched. Today, wrestlers are given the IC belt far too soon, often as a way of getting them over, rather than fighting up the card to win the belt which again put forward the fact that it was a big deal.

The Intercontinental title switching hands used to be a big deal, now I often forget who is holding the title, which emphasises how much it has fallen in prestige. The last title reign I can remember that really had an impact on me was the Randy Orton reign, where he held it for months and made the belt mean something. His reign was so well booked it made him ready for the jump up to World Title level (even though that push was a bit of a flop). Orton was the perfect IC champion at the time.

I would be more than happy to see Cody Rhodes win the Interncontinental title and then have a good, long term run which would bring back some prestige to the strap and stop the title from bouncing around like a hot potato as it has over the last few years. He could defeat all challengers and that would emphasise that the IC belt is something that other wrestlers aspire to, and that they are all desperate to beat him to win a belt that has prestige and importance.

 

[Hulk Hogan's Brother]

While I would say that Ezekiel Jackson has had one of the worst midcard title reigns that have ever been seen, the way the IC title is generally treated is more of a representation of the changing times more than anything else.

When the IC championship first started out, there was no Royal Rumble, there was no MITB, there was nothing. The Intercontinental Champion was automatically the number one contender to the WWE Championship. All that has changed today, not because there is some conspiracy to devalue the belt, but because better ways have evolved. A midcard belt is usually won by a superstar only a few years into his career. Earlier you had to show some promise to be awarded the IC belt. Nowadays the IC belt has become a platform for you to show that promise. Now that, has also happened more by the arrival of new and better stuff, more shows and so on rather than anything else. And I do not see much of a problem with that.

There is no need to cling on to history just for the sake of it. IC title reigns are not that long because the midcard has gotten bigger these days and winning the IC title has become a way of testing out the potential in a new talent. In the earlier days you would find that most IC title winners went on to become World Champs. Because in those days the IC title was seen as just below the WWE Championship. This place has since been taken by the winner of the MITB and the Winner of the Royal Rumble and therefore logically, the IC belt has moved down the card.