Hey Scott,
When do you feel the 2ndary titles became worthless?
My own feeling is that both titles has been meaningless since Cena was US champion the first couple times. For myself, at least, I kept a pretty hold on who was IC and US champ at any given time. After that point, it all became a blur. I know it's a subjective point but considering all titles are really just smoke and mirrors (since it's a fake sport and all), it's always amazed me that they're even able to create any legitimacy over an imaginary title, let alone an title that basically says, "in this imaginary world, you're still only second best."
Thoughts?
Vince Russo. Ironic since everyone praises his treatment of the midcard during the Attitude era, but treating the titles like props and playthings killed them. As a lifelong superfan I was able to, at the time, recite all the IC champions from Pat Patterson onwards, but once you hit 1999 I'm done. The whole Godfather/Jarrett/D-Lo/Edge/Goldust era is a confusing blur for me and many others.
Meh, I'd agree that the Russo era definitely saw the belt lose a lot of *prestige* from the days when Savage/Warrior/Hart were holding it, but using it as a plot to drive stories in a pretty thin midcard isn't really the same thing as making it meaningless, and it was rehabilitated enough to be feuded over bitterly by Benoit and Jericho.
ReplyDeleteIt basically stopped mattering after Triple H got it as part of the Power Trip angle, right?
I disagree. Yeah Russo switched it around a lot but he still focused the story around wanting to be the champion in a lot of cases and made it a big deal when Chyna was going to be the first woman to win it. Of course we also had the 2000-2001 era of incredibly awesome IC champions like Benoit and Jericho. It mostly went to shit when HHH beat RVD to unify it on a random Raw with a SLEEPER and after realizing "Oh shit we dun goofed" lets bring it back because reasons. That's where it really started to go bad. Oh, and A-Train as IC champ. Fuck that shit.
ReplyDeleteI always liked how WCW would use the "the U.S. Champion is the #1 contender to the World Title" rule. It actually gave some reason for wrestlers to fight over the belt.
ReplyDeleteWas watching Clash of the Champions 12 where after losing the World Title to Sting, Ric Flair goes after Lex Luger and the U.S. Title, because winning that will make him #1 contender and give him a re-match with Sting. Makes the U.S. belt seem important enough that even Ric Flair still wants it.
Ken Shamrock->Val Venis->Road Dogg->Goldust->Godfather->Jeff Jarrett->Edge->Jeff Jarrett->D-Lo Brown->Jeff Jarrett->Chyna->Y2J->Chyna and Jericho as co-champions
ReplyDelete::drops mic::
Sure there were bad periods during the IC title days, but the bad usually followed with something good so for every Billy Gunn winning the IC title we had Benoit/Jericho fighting over the title straight afterwards. I think WWE/Vince finally decided that the title didn't matter was when they brought it back from the dead in 2003. After that it was essentially treated as a prop with the champion losing more matches than he won.
ReplyDeleteI think part of the problem is they don't use those secondary titles as a stepping stone much anymore. It seemed like it used to be the thought process was "This guy could be something. Let's give him a run with a secondary belt first and if it goes well, he can move up to the World title". Nowadays it seems like it's "Oh, this guy needs something to do... Let's make him IC champ!"
ReplyDeleteSo if it was back in the day, Reigns would have been given a year long run as IC champion to build him up to be ready for a World title match. Now he's just thrown straight into it. I understand there's a difference when you've got 6 hours a week, every week of the year to put TV on, so the whole process gets sped up to hyperspeed, but sometimes they just need to slow things down a bit.
One the secondary titles start headlining RAW and Smackdown, then we can start talking about renewed prestige.
ReplyDeleteChyna? Who's that?
ReplyDelete*Googles her*
OH MY GOD! MAH EYES! THEY BURN!