From late 2010, through to the end of April 2011, the WWE Title enjoyed a period of relative stability thanks to The Miz’s Title reign, a wrestler who from a historical standpoint was perhaps not the most likely of candidates to provide such stability. However, since The Miz lost the WWE Title to John Cena at Extreme Rules the Title moved to CM Punk, was won in a tournament by Rey Mysterio, who had a reign which lasted less than two hours, before being regained by John Cena, whose version was won by CM Punk to re-unify the two versions of the Title, after which Alberto Del Rio lifted the Title from Punk, before loosing the title, and winning it back from, John Cena, before Del Rio ultimately lost the title to CM Punk at Survivor Series. While Punk looks likely to add some stability to the Title by holding it into 2012 that is certainly a lot of title changes – and potential confusion. There have been multiple times this year where if you had missed a few weeks of Title changes and come back to the product with the Champion being the same as the last time you watched, you’d be none the wiser to who had held the title in the interim. Not that this is the first time this has happened, in 2009 the WWE Title changed hands nine times as well. As a comparison, between 1963, when the then WWWF Title moved from Buddy Rogers to Bruno Sammartino, the first change of the new Title, through to Hulk Hogan lifting the WWF Title from The Iron Sheik on January 23rd 1984, there were only nine Title changes during that 21 year period. Oh how the times have changed.
Things are little different with the World Title in WWE, which too has changed seven times this year. We started 2011 with Edge as Champion, followed by Dolph Ziggler’s utterly meaningless minutes long reign, before the Title moved back to Edge, who vacated the Title due to retirement, to be followed by Christian and Randy Orton holding the title twice each, finally with Mark Henry unseating Orton for the Title. Henry’s run with the title is somewhat surprising, with many, including your writer, expecting it to be a short, token World Title reign to close the ‘World’s Strongest Man’s’ career, whereas the reality is Henry has somewhat stabilised the belt. Indeed, Henry is now the longest reigning Champion of the year so far. All in all, in WWE this year to date there have been some 16 changes of their World Titles, all seemingly in a bid to pop ratings and increase interest in PPVs.
In TNA things are very much the same. If we turn the clock back to 2009, the TNA World Title changed three times, the year after in 2010 just twice, while up to the end of October this year the title has changed eight times. Jeff Hardy started the year as Champion, before loosing the Title to Mr Anderson, who returned the Title to Hardy, following which Sting won the Title, with Mr Anderson regaining the Title from Sting, who lost it to Kurt Angle, before depositing the Title with James Storm for a mere eight days, after which Bobby Roode finally lifted the Title. TNA, much like WWE, is using Title changes as an attempt to pop ratings, with four of the last six changes being on Impact Wrestling.
This pass the parcel nature of World Titles is nothing new. Neither WWE nor TNA has reached the point which the WCW World Title did in 2000, which changed a ridiculous 19 times during its last full year of existence. Just to give an idea of how absurd the Title situation was that year, Jeff Jarrett amassed a total of four World Title wins in the space of just 43 days. Kevin Nash added three Title Reigns to his career in 2000 too, one of which lasted less than two hours. Ric Flair had his last two World Title reigns as well, one at seven days, one less than two hours much like Nash. Such outstanding non-wrestlers such as David Arquette (An actor) and Vince Russo (Yes, that Vince Russo) even had Title reigns during this period. Out of the 19 title changes during the year, six reigns lasted one day or less. Thankfully the current promotions under analysis here have not resorted to such drastic numbers of Title changes in a bid to pop ratings and generate interest. As WCW showed, such frequent Title changes did more harm than good for the promotion, which went out of business the following year.
The question we need to return to is whether this pass the parcel nature of World Titles is a benefit to the Title and holders or not. It appears that due to this frequent movement of Titles, which has been going on for some years now, the Belts have become more and more devalued, regardless of the range of main event calibre talent to hold them. As history has shown, long title reigns by credible Champions adds value to those titles. What would benefit each title is a long, nigh-on year reign by a credible Champion in an effort to reverse the trend that Title Belts are mere worthless props to the biggest wrestling promotions. Like him or loathe him, John Cena’s 2006-2007, 380 day WWE Title reign, the longest since Hulk Hogan’s first Title reign, was one of the best things to happen to that title in recent years. More reigns like that would be much to the benefit of any wrestling promotion.
