In WWE, or any wrestling promotion for that matter, the different championships are an integral part of the programming. WWE’s titles hold an incredible amount of prestige and fans love watching the members of the roster fight over them. Some of the best programs in WWE history have centered around battles over the championships. But in recent years, many fans have become disillusioned with the state of the WWE titles calling them irrelevant and lacking in prestige because of the way they are booked or who is booked to hold them. Lets examine this line of thinking shall we?
A lot of people have had a huge problem with the Raw Women’s Title since the brand split. Those people say the passing of the title back and forth between Sasha and Charlotte hurt its prestige and made it worthless. Since the title’s creation on April 3rd of last year, Charlotte has held the title four times while Sasha has held it three times. Charlotte won it initially in a triple threat match against Sasha and Becky Lynch, then Sasha won it from Charlotte on the first episode of Raw following the brand split. Charlotte won it back at Summerslam while Sasha reclaimed the gold on Raw less than two months later. To the chagrin of many fans, Charlotte would win the title again at the Hell in a Cell pay-per view but Sasha would take it back from her less than thirty days later in a Falls Count Anywhere match on Raw. Charlotte would win the title from Sasha for the final time at the Roadblock PPV in December in an Iron Man match.
A lot of people had similar feelings towards the Raw Tag Team Championships last year. New Day held the titles for nearly the entirety of 2016. During their record setting reign, they defeated almost every team on the roster including The Club, Sheamus and Cesaro and the team of Kevin Owens and Chris Jericho. However, a lot of the New Day’s title defenses and match decisions came under dubious circumstances. Whether it was outside interference from a third member of the team, intentional disqualification or non-title match losses, many fans complained that The New Day’s title reign was devaluing the Raw Tag Team Championships because they weren’t strong champions.
Kevin Owens’s reign as WWE Universal Champion was also criticized. During his time on top, he often found himself on the losing side of matches on Raw week after week and every time his title was on the line, he retained with the help of Chris Jericho. Many fans felt that the prestige of the Universal Title was damaged during Owens’s reign because he didn’t seem to be able to beat anyone on his own. What kind of champion needs help to win all the time?
I personally have a different view of what makes a WWE Title prestigious. I am of the belief that a title’s prestige is directly related to the lengths to which a superstar will go to get and/or keep it. The titles are supposed to be prizes that are coveted by everyone. All the superstars should want that prize and be willing to do whatever it takes to get it, and they should be willing to do even more than whatever it takes to keep it once they have it.
Lets look at the Raw Women’s Championship. Charlotte won a triple threat match to become the inaugural Raw Women’s Champion. Triple threat matches are harder to win than one on one matches and the fact that all three ladies were willing to take that risk and absorb that disadvantage raises the prestige of the belt. The fact that Ric Flair helped his daughter win raised the prestige of the title even further. Ric Flair cannot hold a women’s title so he had no real reason to involve himself in the match. The fact that he stepped in to help his daughter secure the win shows how much he, a person who can’t even win the prize for himself, values the prize itself. Each time Sasha or Charlotte lost the belt, both women did everything they could to get a chance to win the title back because they valued it highly. They were willing to endure triple threat matches where their chances of reclaiming the title were lower. They were willing to endure a Falls-Count-Anywhere match which came with a very high chance of injury. They were willing to fight in a Hell in a Cell match which is known for its brutality. And they were willing to fight in an Iron Man match. All for the chance to hold the Raw Women’s Championship.
That is how you raise the prestige of a title. Unlike Charlotte’s feud with Natalya which was all about competing family legacies, Charlotte and Sasha only clashed because they wanted to be champion. They were willing to put their bodies on the line over and over again in brutal matches for no other reason than they wanted to be Raw Women’s Champion. The title was treated like the ultimate prize and both Sasha and Charlotte were willing to do anything to get it. It doesn’t matter at all how many times they lost and won it. The thing that matters is what they were willing to do to win it and keep it.
The Raw Tag Team Championships were elevated in a different way. New Day were in the middle of a historic title reign and they did everything they could to make sure that reign went on uninterrupted, but they were also much stronger champions than they were given credit for. Xavier Woods often provided distractions or interfered behind the referee’s back in order to ensure The New Day held on to the titles because the group valued holding the titles more than winning matches. They were okay losing a title match as long as they remained champions. That shows just how important the titles were to them. If they found themselves in a situation where a disqualification would not secure the retention of the titles, they did whatever they had to do to retain the titles because again, the titles meant everything to them. If you watched some of their backstage promos, they often talked about how holding the titles made them great. And then when their record breaking reign was on the line and DQs retentions weren’t an option, New Day overcame two teams in two separate matches on the same night to become the longest reigning tag team champions in WWE history. They used any tactics they could to retain the titles and they beat teams straight up when they had to in order to remain champions. That is how you raise the prestige of a WWE Championship.
Kevin Owens’s reign as Universal Champion was similar to New Day’s reign. Owens used Chris Jericho to his advantage at every turn in order to keep his hands on the Universal Championship. Owens was the crafty, slimy champion who used his friend to do his dirty work for him to ensure he remained champion at all costs. Owens didn’t need to beat everyone on his own to raise the prestige of the belt, he just needed to show that he cared about the Universal Title enough to do anything to keep it.
So how does a title actually get devalued? You do what Roman Reigns did when he was the United States Champion. Reigns rarely defended the title at all and the main problem with that was that it made it seem like nobody wanted the title. When you’re the champion, people should be lining up to take that title from you. Nobody stepped up to Reigns to challenge him and unlike Cena and his open challenges, Reigns never offered anyone a shot at taking the title from him. Secondly, while Reigns was champion, all he did was talk about how he wanted to win the Universal Championship from Owens. He never said he wanted to be dual champion, he only talked about wanting the Universal Championship which made it seem like he didn’t even care about the title he had. Actions like that lowered the prestige of the United States Championship.
[irp posts=”21916″ name=”Smackdown Live Gets An Unjust Pass Over Monday Night Raw – Fan Opinion”]
Brock Lesnar’s sporadic appearances on WWE programming seriously devalues the title. When he was WWE Champion, he literally had two matches on TV. He was the champion and he was on TV less than Bo Dallas. Now Brock is the Universal Champion and he will be absent from TV for several months. None of the wrestlers are talking about the Universal Title just as they didn’t talk about the WWE Title when Brock held it before. Its like nobody wants the title that Brock has and Brock isn’t even around to talk about how much he cares about it nor is he around to go to any lengths or take any risks to keep the title. During his entire program with Goldberg, Brock and Heyman never talked about Brock winning the Universal Title, they only talked about evening the score with Goldberg. Goldberg just happened to be the Universal Champion and Brock would become champion by default if he won the match but Brock never seemed to care about the title. At least Goldberg expressed gratitude and pride in being his age and being able to become a champion again. It mattered to Goldberg that he was Universal Champion.
When American Alpha won the SDLive Tag Team Championships, they hurt the value of those belts because they went an entire month without being on TV or anyone even missing them. Like Lesnar, nobody stepped up to express interest in the titles and nobody seemed to care that the Tag Team Champions weren’t around.
The way to build prestige for a Title is to make those titles matter to the superstars vying for them. If the title changes hands often it doesn’t matter as long as the superstars claiming the titles make the audience believe that nothing could mean more than holding that championship. The actions of The Miz and AJ Styles on SDLive last year are perfect examples, but so too were the reigns of Owens, New Day, Goldberg, Charlotte and Sasha Banks.
Written by @masterbearjedi!