What has happened to long face world title runs?

[Deoxyribonucleic A.C.I.D.]

But in the day, you had Bruno holding the belt for 8 years. Hogan always had lengthy title runs. His first one lasted 4 years. Savage had a 1-year reign. Hart and HBK also used to have long runs as faces. Then came Cena and Batista who also had some long reigns. Cena had a 385 days one and Batista's londer was 280 days. And that was it.

The next person to have a long reign was CM Punk, but he turned heel on the 246th day. Not a small face reign as it was 8 months.

Ever since, WWE has been struggling keeping a face champion for a long time. Orton just lost his belt to Jinder. Cena kept the title for two weeks. Ambrose had a very forgettable 3 month reign. Balor got injured. Goldberg held it for 1 month. Reigns was never a face in his reign. Lesnar wasn't also a face and even if you count him as a face, you never felt that Lesnar kept the belt for 8 months, since he was never there. Bryan got injured. The longest run by a face after the Punk era, came from Cena, who held the belt from WM to Summerslam in 2013.

So, what's going on? Heels have been running this place ever since 2014. Rollins, Lesnar, Styles and Owens. It seems like no face can get over as a megaface right now.

 

[Fire Marshall Bill]

I'd say "booking" but we all know that's going to be said about a dozen times by others in this thread.

A) Faces are better as the chasers, and B) if you're a face champion in today's environment for longer than about 4 minutes, you're going to start getting booed. It's how today's "fans" are. Even Punk started getting booed as a face champion. There are rare exception like DB, though he started getting small amounts of haters even around here. It's the machine. They're evil. Gotta boo the machine.

 

[Azane]

Because WWE can't book a face champion without them being the same, and there's just so much more TV exposure nowadays, that we get sick of champions faster. Hulkamania wouldn't of even gotten started in today's world, because by the end of the first 6 months, Hogan would of overcame the odds over 120 times. 30 on Camera.

The demographic during the attitude era also shifted up a bit, most fans were Teens then, and now its a beautiful mix of 50/50 kids and young to middle-aged adults.

There's also the huge problem right now, that Roman has stopped WWE from having a face. They put way too much resource into him, hoping he'd be this generation's Hulk Hogan or Cena, and the fizzle out, is that there's no clear ME faces in WWE.

 

[Makaveli31]

there's just so much more TV exposure nowadays

That's it in a nutshell. I think the change started to happen in the late 1990's with the Monday Night Wars and continued into the 2000's but it is REALLY prevalent now with all the options kids have as a far as entertainment. They need something NOW not a year down the line.

Back in the day the big draw was house shows. So you needed a popular champion to go from town to town selling out houses and the lack of TV exposure meant he would not be over exposed. Through most of Hogan's first run from '84-'88 WWF had just 2 PPV's and a syndicated "highlight" type TV show. The same thing with Savage and Warrior etc....until Austin and Rock. Then we started seeing the title change more frequently with the RAW's and Smackdowns and PPV's every month.

I also think the WWF is having trouble getting that "torch bearer." Cena was really the last to carry that mantle successfully. They are looking and trying different guys out hence you get multiple title changes.

 

[Psykohurricane55]

The big problem why you don't see long face title wins nowadays comes up to 2 things.

First, they're way more hours of programming to fill nowaday the you had back in the 70's and 80's. Back them you could book tv and have jobber matches and have fans except the fact that your champion wasn't wrestling on tv every week. This was more of a live show era so when you saw a guy like hogan or savage or even flair for nwa fans on tv, it felt special because you didn't see them every week. Then the monday nights war happened and with that the mentality of the fans change so you needed to see your champion on t.v more often which lead to shorter title reigns.

Secondly, i think the fans mindset have change. While you still have you younger fans that like wrestling for the sake of wrestling and enjoy watching a john cena or roman reigns in the ring every week, their another section of the fans that just want to criticize everything WWE is doing. So when a babyface gets a long title reign, at first they're happy to see it but as the months start to pill up on the face title reign, they start hating him because he's holding that title for to long and they want a change. the attention spend of those fans are a little bit shorter and they always need something to happen to make them happy. They lack the patience that he need to have somebody have a long title run.

The thing is, you really can't compare the era of wrestling, thing we're different back then and you had more fans that wanted to believe that this was real compare to today were everything is expose. it's a completely different era and that'S why long title reigns worked back then and they don't right now.

 

[The Perfect Max]

I see a lot of discussion about booking and how WWE cannot create good enough faces, but I think there's an entertainment value to having the good guy chase the bad guy, so to speak. When you think about the big blockbuster movies, the good guys have to go through dark times and face up to adversity before they can win the day at the climax of the film. Arguably, nobody is actually THAT interested in the story of the hero once they have won the fight, they just want to see them win that fight.

I translate that to WWE, who are purely more entertainment than anything else nowadays. There's a story to be told, no matter how good or bad they tell it. Sure, we have seen some of the biggest faces ever have those long title runs. All the way from Hulk Hogan to John Cena. But people change. Arguably, people are more invested in a good heel, a guy that they can really sink their teeth into and boo the hell out of. When you look on these sites and whatnot, it's usually the heels or old school guys getting much of the credit. I know you've got guys like Seth Rollins who are good at what they do, but maybe that is what made his feud with Triple H so good. Not that it was about a title, but it was the hero coming after the villain for revenge. In the context of title reigns, I can kinda see the similarities. And in terms of the sort of guys who get the credit from people like us, it tends to be heels. That's just my observation though, I'm not claiming it to be concrete fact. And what I mean by all of this is that heels may end up having longer reigns to produce these kind of feuds where it is the face chasing the title, and eventually, the face claims the title for a short period.

I'm not saying this is why WWE book the things the way they do. I know there's criticism that they employ "Hollywood writers" who don't know anything about wrestling blah blah, but perhaps WWE sees more potential in promoting its bad guys? I don't know, this is all just a thought that sprung to mind. I know I find myself thinking this way a lot.

 

[Makaveli31]

I'm not saying this is why WWE book the things the way they do. I know there's criticism that they employ "Hollywood writers" who don't know anything about wrestling blah blah, but perhaps WWE sees more potential in promoting its bad guys? I don't know, this is all just a thought that sprung to mind. I know I find myself thinking this way a lot.

It won't change until Vince leaves the company. Vince has ALWAYS been of the belief of the "babyface World Champion" even to the financial detriment of his own company. He learned that from his dad who kept Bruno as champion for eight years then Bob Backlund for six years. We talk about the successful ones like Hogan and Cena but remember he turned Macho Man from a very successful heel to babyface for his run, he turned HBK, he turned Diesel from a massive heel to white meat babyface in one his more infamous decisions, he tried to shove the All-American Lex Luger down our throats and fans as the same thing with Roman Reigns.

Nash had this discussion with Vince and he SEEMED to get it during Austin's first reign but by the early 2000's he was back to doing what he knows works. Or what he THINKS works. Obviously, it doesn't.

One of the most successful angles of the "Monday Night/TV" era was Sting's pursuit of Hogan for the WCW title. It was a ratings and money making cash cow. Nash tried with Goldberg when he took over but Goldberg got hurt so we would never know how that angle would've played out. I think it would've been a major shift for pro wrestling booking going into the 2000's but WCW went down in flames and now Vince has free reign to spread his vision.

 

[THTRobtaylor]

.

Once PPV's went to monthly rather than quarterly, the idea of long title reigns became very difficult to make work. When Hogan first had that belt, he would be seen on TV rarely, on PPV once a year at Wrestlemania and on talk shows... that'd be it. They added Survivor Series and Then Summerslam... but that's still only 3 events a year he was "nailed on" to appear at.

Bear in mind at Summerslam and Survivor Series he wasn't usually defending the title either... so it was easy for him to get to 4 years on his title reign and it not seem like a long time.

Try doing that with 52 weeks of a 3 hour RAW and 12 PPV's at least and it becomes a harder proposition... a three month reign now has the same impact as a 9 month one back in Hogan's time and a 6 month one in the Attitude Era.

The other major consideration is that back in those days of long title runs like Bruno, Backlund and Hogan... being the champ was a VERY exclusive club, for a long time even into the 90's you could still count the number of WWF champions in the modern era on two hands... Backlund, Sheik, Hogan, Andre, Savage Warrior, Slaughter, Taker, Flair and Bret make 10... but that covers 15 years. IC champ still only had 17 people hold it by 92... it changed hands more often, but often stayed within the same workers until they really started mixing it in 1990.

Once the Attitude Era came and title changes began happening on TV, that club rapidly expanded and it means that to make the title credible, they had to change it far more often to create legit stakes and challenges... no one wanted to watch the same guy with the belt for a year, any of the belts.

Once they got into the habit of using the IC to launch people to the World title then it killed the long title run off as you needed movement on both titles regularly.... Diesel needed the IC gone so he could be moved up to the World and then Shawn needed rid of the IC to move up...rinse and repeat. Multiple reigns became the way to denote a "great" champion rather than holding it for a period.

Can they truly go back now? not really... they tried with Punk and it did kind of work, but he was there... Brock isn't and it feels much more artificial than when Hogan was used sparingly on TV and PPV. Some are claiming the Universal has more prestige but I can't see it... it needs to be defended regularly, even if not on TV to make the belt matter... having it for a long time is meaningless without the belt being visible... Brock is basically Gillberg with the Light Heavyweight title right now...

 

[stingray11214]

You do not need the long face runs because WWE made themselves a scripted TV show, rather than a pro wrestling show. The House shows mean bupkis now. You might as well let Kenneth Feld run the House shows. You will not see a different outcome. You see the Champ wrestling on TV every week. You RARELY saw that back in the day. I remember Ric Flair wrestled a non-title match against Barry Windham on the old CWF broadcast in like 1979 or 1980. But, in those days, Flair would be "Stylin and profilin", letting the public know that he will be 'rasslin Hiro Matsuda or El Gran Apollo at the Sportatorium in Ft. Lauderdale, bell time 7 PM. ANd, the house would be packed.

Why Brock Lesnar does not do that today is anyone's guess. But, if you REALLY want a long face run, except to promo the next UNTELEVISED event, he should not be on RAW/SD PERIOD, and kept to work the House shows.

 

[ShinChan]

Bunch of reasons that have already been mentioned.

More exposure is one of those. With all due respect, Bruno Sammartino wouldn't have been a champion for so long in this era. Faces being better chasers is another reason. The record made by CM Punk isn't good to be broken anytime soon.

Also, I believe that too long reigns affect some other wrestlers badly.

 

[BestSportsEntertainer]

Faces are better at chasing the title.

Heel champions are also much easier to book. They can get themselves disqualified or some other non-finish.

Oversaturation is another reason. 5 hours of TV each week. 2 PPVs nearly every month. People don't want to see the same guy with the title so long.

 

[Slash-LN]

A) Faces are better as the chasers, and B) if you're a face champion in today's environment for longer than about 4 minutes, you're going to start getting booed. It's how today's "fans" are. Even Punk started getting booed as a face champion. There are rare exception like DB, though he started getting small amounts of haters even around here. It's the machine. They're evil. Gotta boo the machine.

This is the correct answer.

If a heel has a title it's better for a face because the fans get behind the face and want him to take the title off the heel. And the payoff tends to be better. It's like watching a movie. Not a lot of people want to watch a movie where the bad guy is chasing the good guy the whole time and then wins in the end.

And the B part is true also. A face gets a good run and gets momentum and then people whine they're getting shoved down our throats and turn on them.

The reason it worked for faces in the days of Bruno and such was because you weren't seeing them as often and because wrestling was so different back then. There were very few "smart" fans and everything was presented so differently.

Even Hogan fell victim to boos once wrestling started to go a different direction. More entertainment and less physical competition.

 

[Wildcat66]

I think it's safe to say the reason long face title runs aren't as common as they used to be is that the business ultimately evolved.

Go back to when Hulk Hogan was running the show, or even Bret Hart. They were basically running the show for months upon end.

And hell, go look at a few more modern reigns with Eddie Guerrero, Batista, John Cena and even Sheamus.

That's not to say long face title reigns are dead, The New Day lasted a whole year as tag champs. But at the end of the day, as the industry became more character oriented rather than work oriented and as smarks became more educated in the behind the scenes world of wrestling; long face title reigns became a lot harder to pass off as legitimate.

 

[Radical]

Long face title runs have been long gone for a while now. Of course, that depends on what your definition of a long title run is and if it changes based on the times we are in.

I think everyone can agree that the days of a Bruno Sammartino or Hogan 4-8 year title runs are long gone, mostly due to massively increased exposure.

Obviously, fairly long title runs are still possible in relatively modern times. Cena had a over-a-year long title run and CM Punk did too, except, Punk actually turned heel at one point through that title run, which seems to indicate to me, that even a character mostly beloved by fans still needs a character change to keep people interested while on top.

And, New Day had a over-a-year Tag Team title run, which was pretty impressive for today's wrestling era.

So, sure, longer face champion runs are still possible, but they are going to be very infrequent, as they should be.


However, I go back to my previous statement as to whether the definition of a 'long title reign' should change with the times?

Even in arguably the most popular time for pro wrestling, the Attitude Era, with the most popular face champions, the title reigns weren't overly long very often. A lot of Austin and Rock and especially Mankind's reigns were about three months or shorter. That was probably due largely because crash, bang, and intense storylines were the key driving force for the popularity and title's changing hands made more sense to keep people's attention because it usually meant some serious events went down, some vindication, some betrayal, or other wild circumstances.

I think in today's era of wrestling when almost all of the veil of kayfabe has been seriously lifted off pro wrestling and WWE that if a face champion can get a good three month title reign it should be considered a fairly long run and any run 6 months or more should definitely be considered a long run.