The most common thought about championships in wrestling is that there are too many. Because there are too many, they lack meaning. It takes away from people just beating each other up over personal issues like:
- NWA Hollywood Wrestling's Roddy Piper versus the Guererros in the 1970's
- WWF's George Steele versus Randy Savage in the 1980's
- WCW's Chris Benoit versus Kevin Sullivan in the 1990's
- WWE's Mick Foley versus Randy Orton in the 2000's
- ROH's Kevin Owens versus SCUM in the 2010's
- WWE's Rusev versus Bobby Lashley 2020
With 2020's first prominent personal issue being a cucking angle, I think we might want to step away from personal issues. Were the feuds listed above the best of each decade? No (I cannot actually judge Piper's [which did involve trophies and bets...research].), and I know that. Because most feuds need a championship to create the personal issues or further emphasize how important it is for the challenger (in most cases) to dethrone a champion. The latter being the basis for ECW's Raven character.
Raven made it a point to ruin Tommy Dreamer's life for alleged past indiscretions. ECW's fans knew that whoever the summer camp bully was, it was not the Dreamer they knew. To make matters worse for Dreamer was that Raven had become the heavyweight champion, so Raven reigned the Land of Extreme as a tyrant and it fell upon Dreamer to come up with a way to save the promotion. Raven's most heinous actions were at the expense of Dreamer's best friend, The Sandman. He stole his wife and child in order to make it nearly impossible for him to win his title back. The belt elevated one feud and was the center of the drama for the other.
You can argue that the championship's sole purpose is to instruct the fans which feud is suppose to be the headliner. That was definitely the case in the organizations that did not belong to the NWA, but in the NWA, every territory needed their own sets of belts. The fans needed to know who the best were when they went to the smoke-filled venues, and the promoters needed something to kick off the feuds.
It also promoted the wrestlers who had the belts on the national stage. A title reign just looks great on a resume.
As roster sizes grow, more championships give wrestlers more to do. Bookers cannot come up with a personal issue for every pairing. If somebody has a championship, they motivate wrestlers to become challengers. This is a play on the original premise of professional wrestling. Two would fight just to get the winner's purse. There is no reason to take it personally, until someone takes shortcuts to secure it.
The Wrestling Compadres Slamcast started to lose my interest after Wrestle Kingdom 13. Two of the current three host (only one of which was a founder) complained about eight of the nine bouts being for championships. They thought it was poor creative. They also failed to do the research to understand what the Kenny Omega entrance was, so it was not like they had a clue about how personal some of the issues were. Eventually, the cracks in the pod eventually made it Jake Lloyd's WWE-schilling opportunity as the year went on. Should someone remind Jake that Peter Rosenberg already does that?
If you want to say WWE has too many championships, you should be focusing on the lousy creative. People forget about championships because writers are told to do the same. With five belts of meaning (WWE/Universal, IC/USA, Womens', Tag Team, Women's Tag Team...sorry 24/7), should we not have at least one title defended each week? If not a title defense, than a number one contendership match for a secondary championship? This will let people remember them and it allows you to save your primary titles solely for pay-per-views.
And when you have two rosters (sometimes three), what makes more sense about who should be on the card? The one vying for the biggest prizes or those trying to resolve a wife-swap angle?
If bringing back honor into wrestling is too novel an idea, then what about the merchandising? With a little market research, you can figure out the toy replica production numbers and you have more products to sell. Do I ever visit WWE? No. Do I visit WWE Shop? Well, I only have so much content to write when the customers are not about.
If you do not want to have more titles, then why not introduce a new belt design after each WrestleMania? If the new look gets a backlash, your sells for overpriced replicas of the old belts will increase. It makes more sense than Superstar Highlighter sets.
You may say that all my ideas only apply to major promotions, and you are right for the most. If there are indie promotors out there who can mass produce belts, how the hell are you still indie? This does make me reminisce about my early days in the indies when there were NWA affiliates, but that is now studio wrestling's acronym. But for the aspiring indie promotors, the more belt designs out there, the easier it is to pass them off as your own instead of "wasn't that the" remarks from the marks. It is definitely more affordable than Dave Millican.
I guess I have just discovered the fault to my idea. Vince McMahon is not out to help the fans or the indies. What he produces is solely to get his name out there.
This has been an exercise for an audience of 900 when the wrestling world is an audience of one. It is great to know that my blog is doing better than wrestling is. If you want to increase my influence send an email to russthebus07@gmail.com and ask for a treatment of my pro-wrestling zombie comedy, "Main Event of the Dead". I would love suggestions on how to get this product out of development hell to development purgatory.
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