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| He had a long reign, but was it necessarily a good reign? Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein |
Between the time Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara signed with World Championship Wrestling on October 5, 1999 and the time the company had its final show on March 26, 2001, the World Championship was vacated or changed hands a whopping 32 times. In the final 538 days of the company's existence, the belt was tossed around only six times fewer than it was in the previous 2,834. A lot of people point to that as a huge reason why WCW is no longer with us as if a rock steady title reign from anyone they had on their roster at the time would have righted the ship. That was never going to be the case, even if Sting never relinquished the title.
The bouncy-bounciness of that title, or really any Championship in particular, was a symptom of the problems plaguing WCW at the time. Basically, they had too much turbulence in its front office because they were owned by a parent company that gave few to zero fucks about wrestling. So when they went from Vince Russo to Kevin Sullivan to Vince Russo and Eric Bischoff to Vince Russo to who the fuck knows, there was no real time for a full narrative to develop. Worse off, when Russo was in charge in any capacity, he'd start stories and then just forget about them like a hyper child moving from one toy to the next.
Title belts are a tricky thing though. They're definitely more important than what Russo, who publicly said they were props, thought of them, but are they as important as what some old school fans and traditionalists think? We're seeing the pendulum swing the other way on length of the average reign. In WWE, CM Punk has skewed the average upward with his 15-month run as WWE Champion, but gone seem to be the days where anyone holds a title for just one pay-per-view cycle anymore. In the indies, the pattern has always remained somewhat similar. If you have a title, you're probably going to keep it for more than a couple of shows. Of course, there are exceptions, but when two of the three remaining national independent Championships are tied up in guys who have held them for so long that they had to turn heel to stay fresh (with a third, Eddie Kingston, only being disqualified because technically, the Chikara Grand Championship is defunct), then it's hard to refute that notion.
However, have the long title reigns themselves made the Champion or the Macguffin better, worse, or indifferent? I can't really judge either Masada as Combat Zone World Champion or Johnny Gargano as Dragon Gate USA Open the Freedom Gate Champion that well because I've only caught bits and pieces of their reigns as a close observer. But I can say beyond the shadow of any doubt that Punk's reign was mostly a success with a few bumps in the road, while Kingston's reign pretty much died for awhile before he turned rudo.
A title's prestige isn't tied to how long the holder has it. If we're supposed to believe that anything can happen and that anyone who actually gets a title shot gets it because he or she is seen as someone who can beat the Champion and hold the belt credibly, then why would it be such an icky concept that a belt can change hands more frequently than once in a blue moon? I don't want to play amateur psychologist and make broadly based assumptions on why people think that way. I just want to argue against the concept that length of reign has anything to do with a Championship title's credibility.
Because wrestling is not a shoot, prestige isn't earned through wins and losses. It is a function of story and interest. I've always maintained that the simplest way to convey effectively the art of storytelling is using the belt as a prop for someone to chase. When no one is chasing it, or really is able to chase it in the case of Kingston, then it loses luster. When the stories told around it make no goddamn sense at all, like they rarely did in the post-Russo years of WCW, then it loses luster. When the Champion is more interested in calling John Laurinaitis a goober than worrying about Dolph Ziggler, like in the case of Punk in January of 2012, then the title loses luster. It's all about the story in wrestling, and it always has been.
I think the sooner the consensus shifts to that mindset rather than the intense scrutiny on calendar watching of the titles that seems to happen within our community (or even outside of it), the better the analysis around it and the enjoyment of it will get. While I grew a little bored of Kingston's title reign sometime before the Tim Donst feud happened, I never thought he should have dropped the belt to him at Under the Hood because the story moment wasn't really right. I thought there was more to build in that feud, especially since it had only been kickstarted a few months prior, which in Chikara parlance, is about two weeks of television in WWE. But there are people whose opinions I respect on wrestling who would vehemently disagree with me on that opinion, that Donst not winning the Grand Championship was a failure of storytelling.
Regardless of who was more right in that instance, there's one thing that I think most sane wrestling fans can agree upon. A title reign has to end sometime. Whether it's a week after victory or three years, to me, is irrelevant. Just give me the right story, and a title belt, no matter what level in the pecking order of a promotion, will feel important.
The bouncy-bounciness of that title, or really any Championship in particular, was a symptom of the problems plaguing WCW at the time. Basically, they had too much turbulence in its front office because they were owned by a parent company that gave few to zero fucks about wrestling. So when they went from Vince Russo to Kevin Sullivan to Vince Russo and Eric Bischoff to Vince Russo to who the fuck knows, there was no real time for a full narrative to develop. Worse off, when Russo was in charge in any capacity, he'd start stories and then just forget about them like a hyper child moving from one toy to the next.
Title belts are a tricky thing though. They're definitely more important than what Russo, who publicly said they were props, thought of them, but are they as important as what some old school fans and traditionalists think? We're seeing the pendulum swing the other way on length of the average reign. In WWE, CM Punk has skewed the average upward with his 15-month run as WWE Champion, but gone seem to be the days where anyone holds a title for just one pay-per-view cycle anymore. In the indies, the pattern has always remained somewhat similar. If you have a title, you're probably going to keep it for more than a couple of shows. Of course, there are exceptions, but when two of the three remaining national independent Championships are tied up in guys who have held them for so long that they had to turn heel to stay fresh (with a third, Eddie Kingston, only being disqualified because technically, the Chikara Grand Championship is defunct), then it's hard to refute that notion.
However, have the long title reigns themselves made the Champion or the Macguffin better, worse, or indifferent? I can't really judge either Masada as Combat Zone World Champion or Johnny Gargano as Dragon Gate USA Open the Freedom Gate Champion that well because I've only caught bits and pieces of their reigns as a close observer. But I can say beyond the shadow of any doubt that Punk's reign was mostly a success with a few bumps in the road, while Kingston's reign pretty much died for awhile before he turned rudo.
A title's prestige isn't tied to how long the holder has it. If we're supposed to believe that anything can happen and that anyone who actually gets a title shot gets it because he or she is seen as someone who can beat the Champion and hold the belt credibly, then why would it be such an icky concept that a belt can change hands more frequently than once in a blue moon? I don't want to play amateur psychologist and make broadly based assumptions on why people think that way. I just want to argue against the concept that length of reign has anything to do with a Championship title's credibility.
Because wrestling is not a shoot, prestige isn't earned through wins and losses. It is a function of story and interest. I've always maintained that the simplest way to convey effectively the art of storytelling is using the belt as a prop for someone to chase. When no one is chasing it, or really is able to chase it in the case of Kingston, then it loses luster. When the stories told around it make no goddamn sense at all, like they rarely did in the post-Russo years of WCW, then it loses luster. When the Champion is more interested in calling John Laurinaitis a goober than worrying about Dolph Ziggler, like in the case of Punk in January of 2012, then the title loses luster. It's all about the story in wrestling, and it always has been.
I think the sooner the consensus shifts to that mindset rather than the intense scrutiny on calendar watching of the titles that seems to happen within our community (or even outside of it), the better the analysis around it and the enjoyment of it will get. While I grew a little bored of Kingston's title reign sometime before the Tim Donst feud happened, I never thought he should have dropped the belt to him at Under the Hood because the story moment wasn't really right. I thought there was more to build in that feud, especially since it had only been kickstarted a few months prior, which in Chikara parlance, is about two weeks of television in WWE. But there are people whose opinions I respect on wrestling who would vehemently disagree with me on that opinion, that Donst not winning the Grand Championship was a failure of storytelling.
Regardless of who was more right in that instance, there's one thing that I think most sane wrestling fans can agree upon. A title reign has to end sometime. Whether it's a week after victory or three years, to me, is irrelevant. Just give me the right story, and a title belt, no matter what level in the pecking order of a promotion, will feel important.