Tag: blets

Stating the smarky obvious

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

On this past RAW, John Cena cut a promo where he basically said everything smarky wrestling fans like me already knew: the United States championship is way more valuable than the World championship.  The thing is, up until last night, those are the kinds of things that the WWE, much less the wrestlers themselves aren’t necessarily supposed to acknowledge, especially on live television.

Needless to say, I found it very amusing, and one of those “Oooh” moments, but the formula doesn’t change; if the WWE is allowing it to happen, then it’s very much no longer breaking meta, it’s now a storyline.

The thing is that everyone knows it’s true, be it fans, the wrestlers, and the WWE organization itself.  The U.S. title is way more prestigious than the World championship is right now.  It’s just more amazing that they’re acknowledging it so blatantly on live TV.  It’s almost as if the WWE is trying to one of those preemptive power plays, where bringing the awareness to the forefront strips the power of it in the background, where an opinion like this would typically ferment.

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When winning titles is a bad thing

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It was once said that the WWF Intercontinental championship was given to the best worker in the company.  This was a very easy thing to declare when the context behind it was talking about the late great “Mr. Perfect” Curt Hennig, who is widely regarded as one of the strongest performers in the modern era.  However, in a prior wrestling era, there was some merit to the statement, because when you look at the list of names of guys who held it prior to 2000, it pretty much has been nothing but stars who have achieved success in the business.

WCW’s take on the United States championship was that it was again, for particularly standout talents, but also a means of declaring a potential number one contender for the more prestigious World championship.  And again, like the Intercontinental championship, with few exceptions (David Flair), the list of names of guys who held the US title are pretty noteworthy.

What I’m getting at here is that the Intercontinental and United States championships, the second-tier titles that were once no-less important and prestigious to hold, are pretty much worthless in today’s dynamic wrestling industry.

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WWE Power Rankings going into Wrestlemania season

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Apparently, it’s a good thing I didn’t see the Royal Rumble, because the general consensus from scuttlebutt is that it was pretty much the worst show on the planet, worse than last year’s Wrestlemania, the fans were unhappy all over the internet, and from the sounds of it, the fans at the venue were none too pleased either. Thinking back to the results, the heel(s) won every single match, and piggy backing onto the notion that HHH cronies always benefit, it’s a valid complaint seeing as how the New Age Outlaws took the tag belts, Randy Orton retained the World titles and Batista won the actual Royal Rumble. Hell, even Kevin Nash made a little appearance coin by being a surprise entrant in the Rumble. From the smarky perspective, it makes sense why there’s a lot of unrest amongst “the Universe.”

But I’m not here to talk about the unrest, or Mick Foley’s (IMO worked shoot) Facebook post that is taking the smark interwebs by storm. I’m here to be a little more backhanded and indirect, and I’ve got nothing else to write, so this seemed like as good as anything to write since it’s intriguing to me today.

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#9

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yeah, that lasted what, two weeks?  Despite my declaration that I wouldn’t get any more belts, I actually did happen to stumble upon the last belt that I was remotely interested in.  And much like the Big Gold Belt, it was priced for more than I would be normally willing to pay for it, but it had the option for a Best Offer, and floated a lowball offer that required very little negotiating over ten bucks to come to a selling price.  And here we stand: championship belt number nine.

It’s the ECW Television Championship belt, which was made famous when Rob Van Dam won it from Bam Bam Bigelow, and held it for just under two straight years.  He never actually lost the belt, and it was stripped from him when he suffered a legitimate broken ankle, and it was apparent that the company couldn’t afford to keep the title off of television when there were storylines to be moved along.  But it was 23 months of mostly excellent Rob Van Dam matches of him in his prime, having classic bouts with guys like Jerry Lynn, Lance Storm, Sabu and each of the Dudley Boyz, giving some good legitimacy to it.

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#8

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Considering I had the World Championship belts for the WWF and ECW from the late 90s into mid 2000s era, it was inevitable that I would need to get the WCW World Championship belt eventually.  An opportunity arose when I saw one for sale on Ebay with an egregiously high Buy It Now price and an unknown reserve attached to it.  I knew what I had wanted to spend and I honestly didn’t think it had a chance to break the reserve considering that the Buy It Now price was almost twice what I had in mind, but it turns out that my Hail Mary bid ended up nicking the reserve by three cents, making me the winner to a Big Gold Belt.

And the thing is this is actually a WCW belt and not one of the replicas from WWE after they had acquired all of the WCW assets.  Nowhere on the belt is a WWE logo or emblem anywhere, and even still had a Bill Goldberg nameplate attached to it.

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Setting the value of today’s WWE titles

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Watching wrestling these days, I can’t help but think about how much has changed throughout the decades I’ve been watching this crap. I’m amazed and aggravated at just how over Ryback is, considering he is the verbatim second-coming of Bill Goldberg, but somehow worse because he has an even more limited arsenal of moves, speaks too much during matches, and has the annoying habit of bobbing his head to his own music.

I’m also concerned for the WWE in regards to just how many shows they have now. Off the top of my head, they have RAW on Mondays, Smackdown on Fridays, and I believe they have shows on Wednesdays occasionally and also a Saturday morning program. I don’t know if they have any reality television shows at the moment, but they have developed a fairly prominent YouTube channel, which now puts the onus on WWE performers and personnel to provide content for, while they’re not being pressured to engage the “universe” with their seemingly mandatory Twitter accounts. The level of saturation they’re reaching at this point is enough to kill WCW twice over at this point, and I know the WWE is very adaptable and a smart-operating company, but it still heeds an orange-level warning as far as I’m concerned.

But anyway what this post is about is in regards to the seemingly excessive number of titles that are circulating throughout the WWE at this point. And I guess this would be useful for an older fan hoping to pick up watching wrestling today, despite the fact that I’m pretty sure nobody reading this would fit that criteria, but it seemed like a good idea to write at the time. But what I’ll basically be doing is taking today’s current array of WWE championship belts and achievements, and appropriately providing an equivalent from an older generation, to help provide perspective for today’s viewers.

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#7

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I once said that I would stop at five, since my shelf only carries five.  But then my best friend got married, and nothing other than a WWF Tag Team belt seemed like an adequate gift for the occasion.  So I said I would stop at six, but then Cody Rhodes began brandishing the old school WWF Intercontinental Title belt, and it was at that moment that I decided that I needed to have one too.

Although I would have loved to have gotten the snazzy white strap IC belt like Rhodes’, when I came across this black strap belt on eBay, the price was too difficult to ignore.  In the end, I sniped this Intercontinental Title for roughly $100 less than what a typical white strap belt goes for, so I don’t really feel like I settled.  This sets things up more adequately if I ever want to do any gaudy wrestling costumes for future DragonCon/Halloweens, like the Macho Man or Honky Tonk Man.

So the question is, will I stop at seven belts?  The answer is likely no.  Although it’s never necessarily been my favorite belt of all the options, the WCW World Championship belt (AKA The Big Gold Belt), or any of it’s WWE-version reincarnations would have to be number eight.  With that, I would feel as if my collection could be complete.  And the best part is, The Big Gold Belt is fairly common, therefore the general cost of one probably wouldn’t be more than any of my existing belts.  But I’ve spent enough money over the last few weeks now, and will put such a notion on hold for the time being.  Maybe if I bank enough winnings in Vegas, I can take a gander.