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| Pictured above, left: A wholly sabotaged IC Champ Photo Credit: WWE.com |
It doesn't matter whether you hold a bauble that the cacophonous sounds from the broadcast booth will say emptily is prestigious. Look at every wrestler who has held the United States or Intercontinental Championship for the last, I don't know, forever. Most recently, the meme has been that RED BELLY was the worst wrestler on the roster because he had been the poster child for the guy who'd lose a non-title match to set up a defense later on. The funniest thing was that there were instances where he'd take the loss and then not have it followed up on. Sin Cara actually holds non-title wins over recently deposed Champs from both secondary titles - Barrett and Antonio Cesaro - without ever getting his owed-to shot. The narrative is so murky and nebulous that any belt that isn't the WWE Championship might be considered cursed, squeezing the waist until it has sucked all life and talent from you like some booby-prize of an item from 8-bit JRPG lore.
The scuttlebutt from those same WWE sources that I would not trust completely no matter what is that the writers wanted to get those belts on guys that they were pushing at the time so as to raise their profiles. That would explain why Dean Ambrose and Curtis Axel currently hold those secondary titles. It might also explain why the WWE Tag Team Championships reside with The Shield and why AJ Lee has procured the Divas Championship (although with the Tag Pennies, one could argue their renaissance began the moment Daniel Bryan and Kane won them). They bottomed out with nearly the entirety of Barrett's Intercontinental Championship run, and while Cesaro's United States Title run started out spectacularly, that reign ended as one might react to a wet fart in the middle of dinner.
While the current crop of non-Cena titleholders might feel new and fresh, it feels like it's just a matter of time before they're in similar situations to the other failed Champions. I can't see them making Axel or Ambrose lose to everyone and their mothers (if Shelton Benjamin comes back, obviously), but you know as well as I do that when you have the kind of track record that WWE has, it's impossible to see them rejecting regression back to things that they're most familiar with and using the non-title loss every month to set up the title match, or, y'know, just forgoing title matches altogether like they did for most of Marella's United States Championship reign. I used to be a lot more hardline in my stance against the Champion losing in any situation that didn't involve shenanigans or tag team partners, but Ring of Honor's "Proving Ground" system seems to work well enough, mainly because they don't have their Champions lose every time out. When a team like Hallowicked and Jigsaw came along and beat the Briscoes in a Proving Ground match, it was special because it didn't happen much. The same could be said for Green Ant's non-title victory over Eddie Kingston earlier this year in Chikara.
The point is that it can be done, but I also do not trust WWE's booking staff to be able to do it on a regular basis. It's easy to say that they should treat the belts with respect, but at this point, it's like telling little Joey not to stab his sister Suzy with his Shredder action figure but convincing yourself that if you tell him enough times, he'll stop doing it. The only way it works is to take the toy away from Joey until he learns his lesson. IN the same vein, WWE continuing on the path with a grand total of seven people holding hardware is just not going to cut it anymore, no matter how much they tell themselves that they can book all of them strongly and still be able to create compelling stories. They need to have some playthings taken away from them.
As I said above, I'm not really a hardliner in most respects. I don't think all the belts should be taken away. As it stands right now, with the brand split not existing anymore and guys appearing on both shows with regularity, does there really need to be a World Heavyweight Championship or a redundant set of secondary titles? If you have two of something that signify the same thing, then why keep both around? You've only made more work for yourself than what you really need. They can't handle building up and protecting seven people at a time to keep the belts important and more importantly, the people holding them seeming like they belong in the upper echelon. Could they do so with five wrestlers after unifying the WWE with the World and the US with the Intercontinental? I'm not entirely sure, but the odds would be better.
It's not so much that the title belts are these mythical creatures that deserve protection by their very existence. Wrestling at heart is a story-driven medium, and the chase for the belt is the easiest story that you can tell when you're that deeply embedded in the sports ethos. When you've got a guy like Barrett holding the Intercontinental Championship, but it's nothing but a glorified prop, it's a missed opportunity. The belt doesn't elevate him. He has to elevate the belt, and when the narrative doesn't call for that to happen, then it's not a wonder why the joint isn't jumping for EVERYONE on the show like it was in the salad days. You know, the ones everyone seems to long for nowadays.
The Attitude Era was notorious for how "badly" titles were treated, and to a point, those criticisms seem fair. I can't fathom the idea of putting the Big Gold Belt on David Arquette. Hell, I don't think I could ever be on board with Vince Russo as WCW Champ or Vince McMahon as WWF Champ, two decisions that didn't get as much play as Arquette but that were on the same or even worse level. The hot potato switches though? The more I look back on them, the more I think they may have helped the narrative come along, mainly because at least if you lost a match, you lost the title. It doesn't matter if you're Champion for a week or a year, really. The cache is in the title match itself, and how coveted those belts are.
One thing is for certain though, no matter how many Championship belts WWE has now, it's clear they're not really being used for anything but accessorization, outside the WWE Championship, of course. It almost seems futile for them to try and focus on all the title belts they have, so maybe the answer is to lessen the load. If they insist on not doing anything to change their outlook on Champions, then maybe they should scrap a couple of belts and call it a day. Sure, some among you might weep for the loss of a "historic" bauble for a hot second, but if it made them less likely to put a belt on someone like Barrett whom they have no real regard for other than "warm body with opposable thumbs to hold leather and gold," then y'know what? I'm willing to make that sacrifice.