A championship belt should be something preserved, respected and a symbol of excellence in wrestling. Every champion should want to hoist their title up high, being proud of the years of blood, sweat and tears that have led to that moment. It’s the ultimate dream of a wrestler to proudly say that they are the best in the world at one point in time. It’s the ultimate dream of a fan to look at a championship and dream about one day holding the title themselves. Unfortunately, due to many different factors, it is becoming seemingly impossible for these aspiring wrestlers to fulfil these dreams. The main reason for this is simple… these championships that they grew up watching are nowhere to be seen.
Think about all the championships that were around when you started watching wrestling. Think about the titles that you’ve loved seeing and always wished that they were brought back in some fashion. How many of the titles are actually with us at the moment? Where’s the winged-eagle WWF Championship? Where’s the big gold belt that were held in WWE, WCW and NWA by a number of greats? Where’s the Undisputed Championship, the title that I grew up loving as a kid? Why, they are nowhere to be see. They’ve remained in our memories to make way for newly designed belts.
Now I know that sometimes you have to let go of the past and move forward to the future, and a new title can help the image of the company. However, let’s actually think of all the championships that WWE currently have at the moment? How many of them have been around for a long period of time? The United States Championship is the only one that has constantly been active and featured the same design for more than a decade. The WWE Tag Team Championship has also been around since 2010. Even the Intercontinental Championship, redesigned to match the classic Intercontinental Championship of the past, was only re-introudced by Cody Rhodes in 2011. The WWE World Heavyweight Championship only gained its newest design two years ago. Every other championship design, as shocking as this is to believe, was introduced this year.
The WWE Women’s Championship was introduced at WrestleMania 32 in April. The WWE Universal Championship was introduced at SummerSlam in August, to a hugely negative response. The SmackDown! Tag Team and Women’s titles were both introduced in August as well by Shane McMahon on the same night. Even the Crusierweight Championship was re-introduced with a new title design this month. That’s more than half of the current titles on the WWE main roster.
The most painful thing about this observation is that it’s not like all of these titles have vastly unique designs. At least four titles have the exact same look, inspired by the WWE World Heavyweight Championship design. The Universal title is the same belt but in red. The Women’s titles have the exact same design too, with one being in white and red while the other one is in blue. Even the SmackDown! Tag Team Championship is just a blue version of the regular tag team championships from RAW.
From a marketing standpoint, isn’t it better for the company to have championships that all look different? Isn’t the whole point of having multiple belts to have each of them being marketable and different? Why would a fan want to buy four replica belts with the exact same design? I’m sure the big counter-argument to this is UFC, with all of their many different weight titles all having the same design. The difference is that UFC is a legitimate sporting organisation. The UFC won’t go out of their way to give new designs to all the different weight titles, as it doesn’t mean a thing to these fighters. Having the gold belt, no matter what division you are in, is the most important thing in the world to a MMA fighter. Everyone that trains at a boxing gym or a karate class in preparation for MMA dreams about the day that they can stand in the middle of the Octagon as the champion, with the gold belt that everyone on top holds. It symbolises excellence, as all the belts mean the same thing to the champion. WWE is not like UFC.
WWE is a company which supposedly encourages creativity in their line of work. It is well established that WWE is entertainment and features storylines and unique personalities. If that’s the case, and you’re more than willing to get your creative juices going, why not just go all the way? If this is a sport, and all the belts have similar designs, then that’s fine. It’s not like the FA are going to change the design of the FA Cup or anything, as that’s the trophy that’s been around for years and symbolises English football. The issue with WWE though is that they’re not in a legitimate competitive environment and embraces it, which I’m all for. With these designs however, it’s almost like they still want to go down the UFC route of having an established image for WWE. At the same time, they’re also telling us that all of these titles are new. If you’re going to try and convince us that these titles are new, at least try to make them look different.
If that’s not what you’re going to do, that tells us one of two things. What this tells us is either you’re really blatant liars or you’re really lazy creators. You’re not trying hard enough and none of these belts look authentic or important to a fan, especially when all they’re doing during a Seth Rollins/Finn Balor match is chanting about how awful a belt look. They booed the Universal Championship design at SummerSlam because it is not an authentic attempt at creativity by WWE. They’ve got a brand split and their idea to make these brands separate is to make the belts red or blue based on what brand they’re on. If this were real, why would Shane and Stephanie McMahon go and make designs that are hugely similar to each other? Isn’t the point of a brand to make both shows different?
I’m actually going to tie this into the Dragon Ball Super anime, believe it or not. Dragon Ball, with this new series, changed their introductions of new Super Saiyan forms in this anime by giving them hair with just different colours. This led to names like Super Saiyan Blue and Super Saiyan Rose being introduced, really losing the prestige of achieving such a form for one of our heroes as it is reduced to just a colour. All of these belts are designed to look like each other and there’s nothing different them other than the colours. Why would a fan care about this championship?
This isn’t really just about the designs of the titles themselves, as those sort of things don’t really bother me when it comes to WWE. I’d gotten to a point where I don’t expect a lot out of the title designs anyway, which is pretty sad when you take into account that this is the WWE of all places. It’s not really about the titles’ design. It’s also about these titles not being given enough time for the viewers to grow attached to them.
The WWE title is the biggest victim of this. In 2013, The Rock introduced a new WWE title to replace John Cena’s spinner WWE Championship that had been around for about eight years or so. The fans were getting sick of this championship design, so they went with something different. They had this new belt and suddenly decide to unify the WWE and World titles together at the end of the year. This leads to both titles being carried around by the champions, which is confusing enough. Then after SummerSlam 2014, they give the champion a newly designed single belt about 18 months after the The Rock’s title was introduced.
The reason I bring this up is because the constant designs are making it impossible for a fan to get connected or appreciate any one of these belts properly. All the former WWF titles represented different eras of wrestling, that the fans connected with and recognised as a symbol of that era. The classic WWF Championship represented the Golden Era of wrestling and the new generation of wrestlers like Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart. The winged-eagle championship represented the Attitude Era, a time where wrestling was at its peak from a business standpoint. The Undisputed WWE Championship represented the Ruthless Aggression Era, as Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle battled over this title for many years. These new titles don’t have that appeal, due to the lack of attachment that any fan can get to them.
Nobody will look at that title introduced by The Rock and consider it an important title. It’ll simply go down in history as that belt that was around for a little bit. Nothing of value, especially when they combined the two titles and the belt couldn’t stand out on its own merit. Few people will look at these belts and hold them with such high regard as they did with belts of the past. That basically results in Vince Russo’s analogy of world championships becoming more truer by the minute. It is essentially becoming a prop, with no value as it is merely there as plot-moving device in storylines. That to me is the most worrying thing of all.
I’m truly amazed at myself for writing this much about championships in wrestling. I really shouldn’t be that invested in the look of a championship or how well it’s received. The truth is, however, is that I believe that the championship is one of the most important aspects of wrestling as a whole. I refuse to believe that it is merely a prop. Yes, WWE is entertainment. However, it was built on sport. It was built on the dreams of fans wanting to someday reach to the top of the world and having the championship to prove it. I think of it as the culmination of a career, rewarding a wrestler for their hard-work and struggle to reach the pinnacle. Wrestlers like Eddie Guerrero, Daniel Bryan and Chris Benoit, that put their bodies on the line, eventually reach the promised land. The title is a representation of that struggle. That’s why Benoit was in tears when he won the World title in 2004. He saw that title being carried around when he was younger and now he was the one with it. That emotion is what a belt should give you. I believe it is one of the MOST important aspects of all of professional wrestling, possibly the most important. My only concerns is that WWE doesn’t replicate my passion for the legacy of a championship.
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