When did the US Title became a joke

[Pimpin]

I've looked all around the Smackdown section of this forum & couldn't find a topic that's similar to this but if any of y'all find another topic on this then do whatever is best in your minds.

We all know that the US title has become nothing more than a joke for a while now but when exactly did it become this way. Well I think that it became a joke when Matt Hardy beat MVP for the title nearly a year ago & had a bad title reign. The same thing could be said for Shelton Benjamin's long ass reign cause he hardly defends it & is hardly in feuds anymore(except for his current rivalry with Chavo & MVP for the title).

So when do y'all think the US Title became a joke?

 

[klunderbunker]

This one is easy form me. It was when MVP held the title and had all those pointless competitions with Matt. Stuff like basketball, pizza eating, racing etc. What was that supposed to prove? It made all those things seem more important than the title. I get that MVP was sick or injured or something like that, but that's the best they could come up with? I remember begging for that angle to be over. It made no sense and was a waste of time.

 

["Cool Guy" Jensen]

The title was awesome until M.V.P. held it. Before M.V.P. won the title from Chris Benoit, there were many feuds over it and it seemed like everyone was vying to get their hands on the title. You had Benoit, Lashley, J.B.L., Booker T, Cena... all of them helped to bring the title to the top. M.V.P. won the title and ended Benoit's 7+ month, I was disgusted by that title change. M.V.P. held the title for over 11 months and only had one major fued over it, with Matt Hardy. Sure, he defended it against people like Ric Flair, Kane, Rey Mysterio, and Batista, but he only had one feud. The feud was okay, but that 5-month hiatus really killed all the momentum it could have had. So, the U.S. Championship, with Shelton Benjamin as the champ is not a bad idea, but with him only defending it only twice in almost 8 months, that's a problem. It's not hard to help the title out, have Shelton defend against more people besides M.V.P. and Chavo, such as Umaga, Kennedy, and others... that could easily help bring the title up the charts.

 

[TheOneBigWill]

A rough guess? 2003, when the W.W.E. decided to bring it back. But that's just me.

Seriously though, the title was never going to be put over to be as serious as the Intercontinental Championship, and it would yet at the same time be used as an "equal" mid-card title. The only problem with that is, when the I.C. title seemed to start failing, they quit pushing the U.S. title at around the same time.. just so it wouldn't over-come the Intercontinental title. (again, my opinion)

KB said he felt it was around the time M.V.P. was doing all those stupid contests with Matt Hardy. While I agree to disagree, he makes a slight point.

I disagree because M.V.P. was the best Champion it had, in recent memory. Yet I agree that they over did it with all the outrageous contests, when the fact was.. M.V.P. didn't actually defend the title from what seemed like July of 07 to April of 08. While I'm sure he defended it, the shear fact that it doesn't feel like he did.. is just as worse as if he didn't at all.

 

[AnthonyMango/NoFate007]

MVP.

Don't get me wrong. I like the guy. And I think he had the potential to be a great US champ. But the fact that he wasn't defending it made it seem useless really hurt it. Then his #1 greatest threat was MATT HARDY of all people, who was basically still just a Cruiserweight/tag team wrestler in terms of credibility, and has never really been able to carry a feud nor is he that particularly entertaining in the ring (and atrocious on the mic). They beat around the bush and wasted lots of time with the feud, trying to stretch it out as long as possible and it just got really annoying. Then with MVP's injury scare, Matt's injury, and everything else, it just seemed like what was already a shitty feud didn't even amount to a match in the first place. When you have a champion like MVP who isn't really defending the title as it is, and then he's placed in a non-wrestling feud, where they defend tag titles more often than anything else, it hurts the credibility of the US title. In fact, the tag title switch was one of the things that hurt it even more, because that still beat down the idea in our heads that these guys were not that much better than the tag team division and only slightly better than Deuce and Domino...two guys who were absolute jokes and jobbers that never defended their titles either. And MVP and Matt lost their titles to John Morrison and the Miz...two guys that were feuding and never tagged together and won it on a Smackdown episode after a stupid looking "wtf" type of pin.

Then it became Matt's responsibility to try to upgrade it from that point...but he's Matt Hardy. He failed miserably.

Shelton hasn't had as many title defenses as I personally think he should've, but he's had a lot more than Hardy and MVP did it seems, and he's actually being booked as a guy who can beat people. Adding him into the Scramble match, as well as having him look strong against the Undertaker, were good little nods. Of course, feuding with a newbie and terrible R-Truth and a ring-rusty Gregory Helms didn't boost it up that much.

One of the main reasons the IC and US titles seem to devalued is because the WWE has devalued their midcard wrestlers in general. Look at the list of who we have. Most of the faces are jobbers and most of the heels have no personality because their whole gimmick is "go out, look angry, beat up one of the jobber faces like Jamie Noble or Jimmy Wang Yang, go back up the ramp, leave". The IC and US titles would look a lot more important if we had important people feuding for them, rather than guys who can never win a match (Santino/Regal)...or the alternative of people who could win matches but just never defend the title (Jericho/Umaga).

 

[Splinter]

imo, it ist not a joke. it's just not as prestigious as it used to be, but the same thing can be said for the intercontinental title.

the problem is, that there are already two world titles in the wwe, plus that wired new ecw belt which isn't a world title but still seems to be more important than the us and the ic belt because it is the top belt of wwe's c brand. since there are two imo absolutely unnecessary women's titles in the wwe, there is not much space for the us titles on ppv events. this fact of course doesn't improve the title's popularity.

i'm looking forward to shelton or mvp feuding with umaga or kennedy for it, that would be great.