Reigns that really hurt or devalued a title

[jdw]

Goldberg is a special case. It wasn't an effect of a long reign. It was the effect of HHH being a cocksucker and not wanting Goldberg to become strong.

 

4 months out of AD's reign isn't too bad. Sounds like most of the reign worked, and then it just ran out of steam and Gabe neither picking up on it nor being ready/able to pull the trigger. Was there a specific match where it was clear the fans wanted the change, and then after that they never really got back into AD?

 

From what you say about Morishima, it wasn the 8 months that were the problem, but the wrestler who was. That's different, and what I was getting at with the Warrior/Savage comments. Savage worked. Two years later, Warrior didn't. It wasn't the length of Warrior's reign. It was Warrior. It was clear pretty early that things weren't super hot under Warrior, while Savage had been hot for a while.

 

Of course any bad / disappointing / not ready Champ is going to feel like their reign is too long. As can a poorly booked champ.

 

Babyface Stone Cold didn't have a single reign that got to 100 days. Is that a sign that shorter reigns work? Or that Austin in that time frame couldn't have held the belt for a year straight and sold tickest and PPV buys like crazy as a dynastic champ? We know what they did worked. Don't know if we could stretch it to say that WWF Fans / Stone Cold Fans wouldn't have bought him as a dynastic champ that Mr. McMahon lined challengers up against.

 

John

[jdw]

I agree that the problem was with Rikio. But, some of the blame has to fall on whoever booked the long reign. Kobashi beat every challenger thrown his way for two years. It reaches a point where the fans are going to need to see someone who has been built-up as being on a roll or built as a viable threat to the title. NOAH never did that. Rikio might have got some wins in some six-mans, etc., but it wasn't a thing where everyone was like, "Oh shit! When is he finally going to get his title shot? This could be the dude who does it."

Misawa beat everyone for two straight years.

 

Williams wasn't on a roll: he's last big match was the Carny Final job to Kawada, who in turn jobbed to Misawa on the prior Budokan. Williams lost his last challenge for the TC the year before to Misawa.

 

Williams beat Misawa for the TC. People bought it.

 

Was Doc a vialble threat? Fans thought so, but it wasn't exactly a mega build up.

 

Riko had issues. I think we all have covered this ground a ton. The only truly viable wrestlers in NOAH to the fans to take the belt from Kobashi were Misawa and Jun. Misawa wisely want to get the next generation over. They didn't execute it well, nor did Riko have the shit to make a good Ace. But it wouldn't have matted if Riko beat Kobashi back in 2003 or 2004: he didn't have the shit. Turning Riko into Goldberg with a similar push wouldn't have changed that. Misawa did make mistakes with Riko that didn't help, but having Kobashi hold the belt for two years wasn't one of them.

 

Sasaki didn't suck during his first reign as IWGP Champ because Hash dominated the IWGP "too much" from 9/93 - 8/97. Kensuke sucked because... he fucking sucked as a Champ at the time.

 

People want to find magic bullets for why Riko failed. There were booking issues. But the majority of the reason wasn't that Riko wasn't Misawa-Kobashi-Kawada level, he wasn't even Jun level, and NOAH Fans just didn't buy him as the Ace.

 

John

[Mad Dog]

I think the double hour long time limit draws with Colt Cabana and Nigel McGuinness in the same weekend is where people seemed to be tired of the reign and you could feel that they wanted someone else with the belt.

 

On a side topic with RoH. I think CM Punk's reign hurt the company a lot. I tend to think there was more value in Punk leaving the company having not achieved his ultimate goal would've made the title look better than a wankfest of a hot shot reign as a thank you. But really, if you look at RoH as a whole. They did Samoa Joe right and they kind of did Aries right the first time, past that most of their title reigns have sucked for the most part.

 

But my main point is that, I think ultimately someone holding the belt too long can be worse than not holding it long enough. I think the belt looks better when the title changes when the reign is still really hot instead of the reign completely losing steam.

 

I disagree about Morishima slightly. I think the 8 months were an issue. Had he held the belt for a month, he wouldn't have been as exposed as being a bad champion. I think someone not ready for the belt can survive short term with the belt. Had Morishima won the belt, had a defense or two and then lost it to someone else in the span of a month, I would think differently of the reign. When you put the belt on a bad choice and then proceed to run with it for 8 months, you really drive home how much of a bad choice it was.

[Tawren]

I think the main problem with Danielson's reign not it being too long but rather the booking for Homicide being pretty shitty towards the end. Homicide's return at the ROH vs CZW Cage of Death was awesome but then he got sidetracked in an awful feud vs Jim Cornette for several months. So when it came time for Homicide to win the belt he had lost a lot of momentum, and also he had such a weak reign losing almost right away to Morishima that it felt like Danielson's reign just kind of petered out even though as late as September he was still having matches like vs KENTA (9/16/06) that were spectacular.

 

Morishima's reign was too long, and felt like it had too many rematches even if compared to other reigns it really didn't. Nigel McGuiness got beat twice before winning the belt, and after also losing several title matches to Danielson it just seemed like ROH was scared to pull the trigger. And then McGuiness' reign was WAY the fuck too long, especially with Tyler Black losing 4 title matches when the ROH fans really wanted him to win the belt. And then losing it to fuckin Jerry Lynn...ugh. ROH still had good matches but the booking really fell of a cliff after 2006.

[MikeCampbell]

The problem with the American Dragon reign, toward the end, was that Gabe was spouting off in every news wire that Homicide vowed to win the belt by Final Battle '06 in his hometown. So, everyone knew that every title defense before NYC was just filler before the big payoff. And this was when ROH started running a lot more shows.

 

I agree with John about why Rikio failed, but in NOAH's defense, it wasn't like they just decided on the spur of the moment that Rikio would be the guy. He had been built up a little bit. Rikio and Marufuji had won a tag tournament in November '04 with Rikio pinning Kobashi in the finals, and the January Budokan show semi final match was Misawa/Rikio going over Tenryu/Koshinaka, with Rikio getting to look dominant and getting the pin. So, Rikio had been built up, he just needed to built up a whole lot more to be seen as a GHC material.

[Guest Slickster]

John Morrison as ECW Champion, 2007

Not his fault, as it was after the Benoit murders that the entire ECW brand was downgraded to be inferior to Raw and SD. At least in January 2007 Lashley got to stand with Batista and Cena as the 3 choices for Undertaker to face at WrestleMania. By 2008 Chavo was ECW Champion and also competing in the Royal Rumble.

[Dooley]

It wasn't the length of Warrior's reign. It was Warrior. It was clear pretty early that things weren't super hot under Warrior, while Savage had been hot for a while.

I've said this elsewhere on this board but it's also worth noting that Warrior's title reign was so terribly booked that I don't know if even Hogan and Savage could have transcended it. Warrior also fell into the same trap Diesel did years later, that being Vince knew only one way to promote a babyface champion and "face" of the company. Warrior went from supernatural psycho to a guy who went on Regis and Kathie Lee smiling and bringing toys for fucking Cody. Diesel went from badass to grinning corporate moron. Both of those guys were basically stripped of what made them popular when they reached the top.

[Loss]

I've always wondered why that's less of a sticking point for Bret than it is for Warrior, Diesel and even Shawn. Bret wasn't a huge draw for the most part, but people also don't really look back at his time on top as a missed opportunity or failure in the way they do for the others. For whatever reason, they did less to try to change Bret than they did the other top babyfaces post-Hogan and pre-Austin. Vince really just let Bret be Bret. Maybe I just answered my own question.

 

At the same time, during all of his time with the title, Bret never really had a big program with someone who was already an established name. Razor, Yoko, Owen, Shawn, Diesel and Austin were all guys who made their name facing him.

 

I think the bigger issue with Warrior was that Gracious Loser Hulk Hogan at Mania created a setting where everyone felt sorry for Hulk losing his belt and wanted him to get it back.

[JerryvonKramer]

I think with Bret there were a hell of a lot of other things that led to the company not drawing. I listed them about two years ago over on another board

 

First of all let's be honest about something: WCW only really became a threat to WWF in about 1996 when the Monday Night Wars started. So you can't really blame the poor attendance figures and ratings on WCW between 1994 and 1996. I'm not entirely sure about the situation in the US, but here in the UK it was certainly the case that after Hogan (and a whole load of other talent) left the WWF in mid-1993 most wrestling fans didn't turn over to WCW, they simply turned off. I'm talking about people who actually WENT to Summerslam 1992. For us at the time, going to WCW might as well have meant semi-retirement -- it just wasn't in the map as far as we were concerned (this is untrue for ME even back then, I mean "we" as in average marks who liked Hogan and Warrior).

 

Alright, to a certain extent you can say that Bret and HBK were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. There were a combination of factors:

 

1. to some extent the big wrestling explosion of the 80s had naturally come to the end of its run and the novelty had worn off for most casual fans -- and for a lot of the kids who marked out in the late 80s and early 90s wrestling just wasn't cool anymore. In short, it had gone out of fashion.

 

2. people had already seen Hogan vs. Andre, Hogan vs. DiBiase, Hogan vs. Savage, Hogan vs. Warrior, Hogan vs. Slaughter, Hogan vs. Undertaker, Hogan vs. Sid, and Hogan vs. Yokozuna so his run at the top with that gimmick had naturally exhausted itself but there was no star of that magnitude to replace him -- Vince's effort to artificially make Bret and HBK stars was too much too soon (i.e. not their fault)

 

3. The steroid scandal of 1994 hit the WWF's public image harder than most people care to remember.

 

4. Vince was taking the company in a horrible horrible cartoony gimmicky direction the likes of which we had not seen before -- Doink, for example, would have been unimaginable in, say, 1988. I see that period as the WWF's first real "dark age".

 

HOWEVER, none of those things can mask the fact that HBK was loudly booed at Survivor Series 1996 despite being very very firmly booked as a face. Point being: if the WWF had fallen on hard times, HBK was NOT the man to help them out of it. I don't think he was helping them to draw and he was having trouble getting over as a legit main event champ. Bret Hart is a similar case in that, while his in-ring work was good, the crowds didn't take to him like they took to Hogan because of his lack of charisma. That's why they had to turn him heel in 1997 because people would cheer Austin over him, even if SCSA was booked as a heel.

 

I'm not saying Bret or HBK weren't decent workers but you just can't compare them as main eventers to Hogan. In fact, I'd say that anyone who thinks you can is just plain blinkered. I realise they have a lot of fanboys, but you have to admit that when they were given the torch to carry they both failed dismally.

[Frankensteiner]

I don't know about that. I think Warrior's biggest problem as champion was they couldn't really give him any good opponents (not unlike what happened to Bret). He worked a little with Perfect, who was coming off a program jobbing to Hogan. Then there was Rude who Warrior had beaten the previous year. Not really fresh or exciting matches. He then tagged with LOD against the Demos.

[Dooley]

I think the bigger issue with Warrior was that Gracious Loser Hulk Hogan at Mania created a setting where everyone felt sorry for Hulk losing his belt and wanted him to get it back.

That, and throughout Warrior's reign whatever he was doing was presented as less important than what Hogan was doing. Warrior wins the title and on the first SNME afterwards Hogan's blow-off against Hennig gets the prime slot while Warrior's first title defense against Haku (sigh) goes in the last half hour of death spot. Hogan also gets double the time. Then we have Hogan's "comeback" against Quake being treated as more important then Warrior feuding with Rude, who he spent most of the last year feuding with anyway. I could go on. Warrior's reign really was a booking disaster.

[Victator]

Shane Douglas ECW title reign in 1998 did serious damage to the ECW title. He was injured most of the year and made at most five televised title defenses. You have Taz calling Douglas a paper champion and being nearly 100% correct in this. He creates a bogus title and headlines PPVs and house shows defending it. Meanwhile the TV title is gaining more and more value. Douglas should of beaten Taz cleanly at Guilty as Charged. At least then when Taz eventually got the belt it would not be by beating a paper champion.

 

Or better yet have Taz or Sabu win the belt in May instead if dragging it out. I think the biggest flaw with ECW's booking then was dragging shit out.

[Mad Dog]

I was always under the assumption that Bret didn't draw but he never really hurt the gates either. He was just kind of there and wasn't a good or bad thing at the time for the WWF. On the other hand, the company took a giant dive with Michaels as champion in 96. That was always how I saw things.

 

I'm going to defend Diesel as champion though. His reign worked when he was facing guys like Hart and Michaels for the belt. It was when they started throwing "generic fat guy of the month" at him that his reign really derailed. I kind of feel like he gets a really bad rep on the internet. I feel had his challengers been more compelling that his reign would've done a lot better. He has over, he had good matches with capable opponents and I think he was a sensible face champion. I think he got screwed over with having to face Mabel on the third biggest show in 1995 as no one was buying Mabel as a challenger. The Sid feud didn't help either.

[Victator]

Bret drew better than anybody else did on house shows between Hogan and Austin.

[Loss]

Bret was a draw on international tours, and it gets forgotten, but the Hart Foundation stuff in '97 did start the ball rolling toward a rebound that led to the Attitude era. Diesel probably did get screwed in how he was portrayed, but I'd say that applies far more to Michaels than Diesel. He seemed like a guy with all the momentum in the world at the beginning of the year, but the Vince love killed him. You could argue that the announcer fawning hurt both Diesel and Shawn I think.

[Log]

You could argue that the announcer fawning hurt both Diesel and Shawn I think.

That, and the fact that they really started to play up the stripper aspect of Shawn's gimmick really put him in a bad spot. Playgirl, the little strip-teases after matches, etc. They may have been trying to appeal to female fans or something, but in the process they totally alienated a lot of the male fans.

[Bix]

I know I've talked to Loss about this but I don't think I've mentioned it here before. It can't be stressed enough how badly Michaels was damaged by Vince McMahon not knowing how to push a blowjob face. The announcers fawning to the point of sounding sexually aroused (the worst being Dok Hendrix screaming "YEAH! WORK IT!" as Michaels danced), the stripping including flashing his pubic hair on camera, Playgirl, etc. Thank God they didn't show him stripping naked after his first PPV as champ went off the air. Only the brawls with Diesel and Mankind worked, because they made him a tough guy, like how Jerry Jarrett booked the Fabulous Ones.

[Strummer]

on the last Shawn DVD released Shawn was adamant that he hated the boyhood dream angle and how the announcers fawned over his looks and dancing. He wanted more programs like Diesel and Mankind to get him over as a tough guy. In fact even back in 92 he didn't want to do the Boy Toy character but portray a tough guy heel. It's like Vince just pushed him how he thought a promoter would push a smaller "pretty boy" wrestler instead of just using common sense

[artDDP]

on the last Shawn DVD released Shawn was adamant that he hated the boyhood dream angle and how the announcers fawned over his looks and dancing. He wanted more programs like Diesel and Mankind to get him over as a tough guy. In fact even back in 92 he didn't want to do the Boy Toy character but portray a tough guy heel. It's like Vince just pushed him how he thought a promoter would push a smaller "pretty boy" wrestler instead of just using common sense

I love that DVD. I love Triple H saying Shawn wasn't going to get over as a tough guy coming to the ring looking like the cop from the Village People.

[cm funk]

The Shawn Michaels push was so weird because it was at a time when the promotion was still heavily aimed towards kids, but was trying to transition to more of an adult product (less cartoon character gimmicks, tweener Diesel, Goldust, Mankind, Sunny pushed as a sex symbol, introduced "RAW Magazine" which featured risque pictorials of Sunny and Marlena, Livewire which was aimed at smart fans, Stone Cold, Shotgun Saturday Night etc.). Shawn got caught in the middle and was simultaneously pushed as the kiddie hero living out his boyhood dream and the stripper sex symbol, and it was just a confusing mess of mixed messages.

[Bob Morris]

I agree that a reason a lot of other attempts to push certain WWF title holders didn't work because they were turned into what amounted to being "the next Hulk Hogan."

 

Bret was allowed to be a bit cocky but not enough of an edge to him. That being said, he did draw well overseas and the feuds he was booked in generally worked well.

 

Diesel was immediately turned from being the cool, cocky and confident tough guy into a squeaky-clean wimp. I don't know how well he would have done overall given a lack of good opponents to work with, though, but they should have done his feud with Sid as a blood feud, in which it's clear Diesel is out to kick his ass and hold no regrets about it. And Mabel was a bad choice for a SummerSlam opponent.

 

Michaels suffered from the same problem... he wasn't squeaky clean but they sure made him look like a wimp. The Bulldog feud had good matches but the premise of the feud was so unconvincing. And I know Michaels didn't like working with Vader, but Vader was the right opponent to allow Michaels to prove how tough he was.

 

I don't think Warrior quite related to WWF fans the same way Hogan did, but it didn't help that Warrior tended to be second fiddle to Hogan.

[cm funk]

Mabel was one of the worst big event title challengers ever, without question.

 

If you look at the booking of the time, Yokozuna would have clearly been the best choice. He and Owen were dominant tag champs managed by Cornette and at the PPV after SummerSlam they would do Diesel/HBK v. Yoko/Owen. They even had Davey Boy Smith turn on Diesel on the last RAW before SS and join Camp Cornette. It's like everything was in place for Yoko have been in the SummerSlam match but they changed course last minute and went with Mabel. I have to think they were too worried about Yoko's weight to put him in a singles main event, but it's not like Mabel was in that much better shape, and at least Yoko had the experience.

 

Also lending credence to them changing plans last minute is that everything was clearly pointing towards Michaels winning KOTR that year, and instead they had him eliminated via a crappy draw with Kama in the first round.

[Guest Slickster]

The Shawn Michaels push was so weird because it was at a time when the promotion was still heavily aimed towards kids, but was trying to transition to more of an adult product (less cartoon character gimmicks, tweener Diesel, Goldust, Mankind, Sunny pushed as a sex symbol, introduced "RAW Magazine" which featured risque pictorials of Sunny and Marlena, Livewire which was aimed at smart fans, Stone Cold, Shotgun Saturday Night etc.). Shawn got caught in the middle and was simultaneously pushed as the kiddie hero living out his boyhood dream and the stripper sex symbol, and it was just a confusing mess of mixed messages.

This is why to this day I wince whenever I watch any Shawn Michaels matches from before 1997. It was awkward enough being 11-12 years old and trying to fit in at school, but having a male stripper as the #1 babyface meant I had to keep my wrestling fandom a secret for a while.

[Marty]

I'm trying to think of the first (heel) WWE title reign that was decent/solid in length, but also where it was clearly obvious the champ wasn't treated as equally/strongly by the company alongside other main eventers. Angle's in 2000, maybe?

[JerryvonKramer]

I'm not sure I understand the second part of your criteria there, but isn't it Yokozuna?