Hey Scott,
Well the problem is that titles actually meant something back then and it was tougher to just slot someone in for a few months, but clearly Ted Dibiase should have gotten something, and Jake Roberts for sure. If not for Honky, Jake would have had to get a cup of coffee with the IC title. With Orndorff it was pretty much the World title or nothing, I'd say.
I was bored watching my fantasy football team beat up Hollywood Fuj today, so I popped in my Greatest Stars of the 80's dvd. It got me thinking, there were several guys during that time who never got to wear a singles title in the WWE. Piper eventually got the I-C belt, but others didn't fair so well. One of my favorite guys, Paul Orndoff sticks out. That cage match with Hogan was one of the first big feel matches I remember watching and getting into. It seemed like he should have parlayed that into at least a transitional I-C run. Same with Jake Roberts and Bob Orton. These guys weren't really come in for 6 months and then leave guys, they had a good few years in the company. Anybody else from that period stand out to you as someone who deserved at least a brief title run ala Piper's three month run with the Intercontinental belt?
I think Bossman should have had a run taking the IC title from Perfect at VM VII and I think Tatanka should have taken it from Michaels at IX. Both of them could have had fine babyface storylines with the heels trying to steal the titles, end the streak etc. Dibiase should have had a legit world title run too. aside from that I think someone like Jake did just fine without a title, I'm not sure an IC-run really would do much for him.
ReplyDeleteahem, I notice that those are mostly 90's stars, my bad.
ReplyDeleteJimmy Snuka never held WWF gold. If only he had some family member in the organization who could try to burnish his family's legacy.
ReplyDeleteWhilst Jake Roberts definitely deserved a run with some form of gold, and was indeed lined up to take the strap from Honky at one point, I'm not sure he needed it. He was the brooding outlaw on the fringes and could play both heel or face and be taken as a legit threat whoever he was squaring off against.
ReplyDeleteEven before Russo's style took over the WWE Universe it was still not a given that a particular sports entertainer wins even a fucking mid-carder belt. If WWE was ran in 1995 as it is now, Jean Pierre Lafitte would have been a three-time Intercontinental champion and the British Bulldog would have main evented at least three IYH.
ReplyDeleteYeah guys like Jake always made me care about their matches, they didn't need a belt. Piper was the same way.
ReplyDeleteA daughter perhaps...
ReplyDeleteUm... British Bulldog did main event 3 In Your Houses....
ReplyDeleteIn Your House 4 (Bulldog v. Diesel)
In Your House 5 (Bulldog v. Bret)
In Your House Beware of Dog/Beware of Dog 2 (Bulldog v. Michaels)
He was also in the main event of In Your House 3 (though not advertised) and as part of the ten-man tag from Calgary Stampede.
Wow, I forgot I mailed this in, as my beating the Fuj was a 3 weeks or more ago. But, I'm glad to see it get posted, as I was curious what others thought about who deserved a title run but missed out.
ReplyDeleteI agree Bossman should have gotten the belt as it would have been a satisfying end to the story of him plowing through the Heenan family, though since it was originally Rick Rude who made the remarks that started it and he was gone, maybe they didn't see the same strong ending as they wanted in the beginning.
ReplyDeleteI stand corrected, but I was making an indirect reference to the "trilogies" we see with the world titles where they are defended three PPVs in a row.
ReplyDeleteYeah that ending always bothered me. I would guess that the issue there was that Bret was slated to get the belt and they didn't want a face vs face deal. Bossman and Perfect actually had an excellent match very early in the storyline, a match taped about a week after Rude left, that aired on The Main Event at the end of November 1990.
ReplyDeleteThank god the WWE stopped being so tightfisted with their titles. Now our children won't have to post one of these threads lamenting how Drew McIntyre, Ezekiel Jackson, Jack Swagger, Santino Marella, and so forth never received recognition in the form of gold for their contributions to the business.
ReplyDeleteUniverse and Sports Entertainer? Really?
ReplyDeleteJake could have easily gotten the big belt when he was super hot as a heel in 91. Jake beats Hogan at Survivor Series or Tuesday in Texas after Flair costs Hogan the title. And at WM8 Jake vs Savage for the title and Hogan vs Flair as double main events.
ReplyDeleteCall me crazy but Brutus Beefcake in the late 80s was as over as a face on that roster than just about anyone not named Hogan and should've won the IC Championship. He had top programs including a run with HTM, Savage and Mr. Perfect. Fans would've bought into him as champ.
ReplyDeleteHow many PPVs and prime time TV show hours did they have in the 80es? How many do they have since 1997/99? It's just logical, that the more shows, the more title changes.
ReplyDeleteHis son held the tag belts.
ReplyDeleteThe number of shows has nothing to do with the amount of title changes. See Cm Punk.
ReplyDeleteHe was supposed to beat the HTM and get the belt I believe, till his accident. Ultimately, despite the flameout at the end, giving Warrior the belt was the better option for business.
ReplyDeleteDoes Jimmy Snuka have a daughter? I don't think he has a daughter. A daughter? I daught it.
ReplyDeleteHe was supposed to beat Perfect for the IC title but then the accident happened. The thing with HTM at SS was a bait-and-switch..
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. Honkeytonk was primed to lose to him, but I think the WWF made the right call by switching in Warrior. It's too bad there used to be so much dead time between Summerslam and Royal Rumble (Survivor Series was really committed to the 5 on 5 format back then), because Beefcake could have built a ton of momentum by avenging himself in a 1 on 1 blood feud blow-off match against Ron Bass at a PPV for costing him the title.
ReplyDeleteBeefcake certainly would have taken the IC from Perfect, but that tragic para-sailing really ruined his career. Who know what the future held for him if not for that. Maybe he would have continued to improve as a worker and found himself in a red hot angle when he eventually turned on Hogan. Then again, he was never particularly charismatic after his return so he might have reached his ceiling as a Hogan sidekick.
Thinking about now, I think part of what got Beefcake so far over was the barber gimmick. It created a stake in all of his matched--the heel loses, he might end up with a new look. This condition actually made the Sleeper into a suspenseful spot. It was a perfect gimmick for combating vain heels like Honkytonk and Perfect because their hair was integral to their ego. Remember how mad Honky used to get if someone just messed up his hair?
ReplyDeleteYeah, Honky's hair was precious to him.
ReplyDeletePart of what made the titles elite, and impressive, was that even guys who were good, and over, and around a long time, never got a run.
ReplyDeleteYou had to be REALLY good to capture a belt. Or really lucky in the odd case.
Prime Time Wrestling was two hours and the Wrestling Challenge was an hour. They had one fewer hour per week to promote PPVs.
ReplyDeleteI loved Beefcake in the late 80s.
ReplyDeleteI remember him beating Honky on Superstars.. I wanna say a non title win, but might have just been a DQ, and literally jumping up in excitement thinking that he'd won.
I don't even remember McIntyre or Zeke with a belt.
ReplyDeleteI get 5 cents from WWE when I type those words. They have a terrific SEO strategy.
ReplyDeleteburn
ReplyDelete'Rematch clauses' are one of the many things killing the product. They formalise feuds and result in endless repeat matches.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXhRFnUn72E
ReplyDeleteBoth recent desecrants of the IC title. McIntyre actually ended what was shaping up to be a good reign for Morrison...with a terrible finish where JoMo got distracted because his belt (pants belt) came undone. Zeke brought a completely unmemorable reign by Wade Barrett to a close. Barrett, a guy they've been willing to push since he debuted, did nothing with and gained nothing from the title.
ReplyDeleteThings started to shape up with Rhodes, but then the Big Show came calling. They gave him the belt back just to start passing it around former World Champs who don't need it at all again (Christian and The Miz). And now it's back home with Kofi so he can wear it to all his losing non-title efforts. It's a championship, not a belt dammit.
Why was there an 11 month span between Rick Rude's last WWF match and his debut as the Halloween Phantom in WCW?
ReplyDeleteyou'd think Big Bossman or Bam Bam Bigelow would have been champs
ReplyDeletealso main evented a KOTR against Michaels & Summerslam 92
ReplyDeletethat stuff is so painful. It takes the life out of everything when Cena vs The Miz headlines 3 consecutive ppvs.
ReplyDeleteI don't even remember McIntyre or Zeke with a championship.
ReplyDeleteMcIntyre pinned Kane on ppv to defend even. He was actually pushed at a time!
ReplyDeleteWell, I beat THE MAN! So, by simple math, Iam now THE MAN! WHOOOOOO!
ReplyDeleteI thought Dolph Ziggler did great things for the IC title by losing awesome matches against Rey Mysterio and John Morrison. In defeated he added value to the championship by showing how hard it is to win it. Of course now he's a multi-time IC and US champ (and World Champ if you accept his sham of a credit) so that credibility is pretty much spent. They really need to pick one or two solid midcarders and use them to establish the title, rather than every midcarder to spend a week with the title. The IC title is not the classroom hamster.
ReplyDeleteI think it's more how they're applied; if they pushed the automatic rematch, two weeks after the title switch - basically, the 2nd episode on TV after the change - you can close or augment the issue and introduce a new No. 1 contender on the same show to keep things moving forward.
ReplyDeleteHogan chasing Orndorff for the WWF title wouldve been big money.
ReplyDeleteIt was never made 100% clear whether Rude quit but had a non-compete clause in his contract or if the WWF suspended him -- but in either case, his contract wasn't up until late September 1991. At the time the speculation was that he'd actually return after sitting out several months.
ReplyDeleteIf memory serves, I believe WWF fired Rude while he was out with an arm injury.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet he'll be more famous as an incognito cameraman who nearly killed the Undertaker at WM25. Between that and his dad wrestling a match earlier that night looking like a mummy wearing a Wilma Flintstone dress, it wasn't a good night to be a Snuka.
ReplyDeleteUpvote if you want the new nickname for the IC title to be "The classroom hamster".
ReplyDeleteThis thread leads me to wonder: would WWF in the 80s have benefited from a tertiary title? The Euro title before there was such a thing, or a TV title or something? People laugh at those titles but even as late as 98 in WCW it still signaled that someone was on their way up the card rather than just milling around the undercard. A TV title for random spots to put on a middle babyface like Beefcake or even Jake would have added a little hair of pizazz to random TV squashes and one off nothing matches. There would have been repercussions of course: I could imagine the Hart Foundation breaking up sooner if there was a lower card title to put on Bret, for instance. What say yall?
ReplyDeleteAlso part of the main event of International Incident (Shawn/Ahmed/Sid v. Vader/Owen/Bulldog).
ReplyDeleteI dunno. It doesn't really fit in with what WWF was at the time. That seems way too NWAish for them.
ReplyDeleteIf they'd been serious about McIntyre and stayed behind him, his might have shaped up to have been a decent reign. But they changed their mind and let him slide into a virtual JTTS position. That's the problem with using the title to see whether or not a guy deserves a bigger push; if they decide that he doesn't, the belt is devalued by his association. With guys like Savage, Hennig, Bret, and Shawn, there was no 'maybe' about it. Their potentials were blinding. Guys like Honkytonk and Marty Jannety may not have been main-eventers, but they suited hot angles and storylines. Guys like Carlito and Val Venis were gambles at best and if the company had vetted them just a little more, they would have figured that out before they'd wasted perfectly good title reigns.
ReplyDeletePersonally I liked the fact that so few guys held titles. With fewer ppvs and a different style of TV, there was no need to hotshot titles all over the place. When Honkytonk Man lost his IC title, it really meant something. When Hogan kept that title for 4 years or even Savage for a full year, it showed made that title ultra important. And back then, for whatever reason, WWF was better at making people care about feuds up and down the card. Fans had a vested interested in non-title feuds like Jake/Rude or Piper/Orndorf or Andre/Studd. No title was needed. Plus you had such a vibrant tag scene. Again, when a team finally got the belts, it was BIG. Or when Demolition finally lost. I don't think the period would have been as special if they hotshotted the tag and IC titles all the time and certainly not if they had 6 or 7 champions from 84-90 instead of 4 (Hogan, Savage, and arguably DiBiase and Andre).
ReplyDeleteBased on how booking changed in the 90s through today, I get the argument for putting the belt on Orndorff for a month or something, but the feud was selling out everywhere. I'm not sure it would have increased business. Remember this was in the one ppv a year time. Any title change and subsequent rematch would have been on a house show, tv taping, or SNME. Maybe the feud could have made it to WM3 (saving andre for WM4, although that would be yet another year of his body breaking down before pulling the trigger on the huge money to be made) and Orndorff could have taken the belt at the SNME leading to WM3, with Hogan getting it back at the show, but I don't think it was needed and Orndorff was already having physical issues.
Vince was still a big believe, like his dad, in the face superhero champ knocking down heels that were built up for him. While Bruno and Pedro (and Backlund to a lesser degree) had a certain ethnic thing that Vince Sr. felt drew as well, all were top faces who beat all the top heels that were built up for them. Only Graham got a significant heel run. In fact the next long heel run was Yoko in 93. It just wasn't the WWF way to have face champs have short runs. Only the heels were transitional champions and never before had it been hotshotted from the face to a heel and back to the SAME face, When Bruno lost to Koloff, it went next to Pedro. When Pedro lost to Stasiak, it went back to Bruno. And when Bruno lost to Graham, it went to Backlund. When backlund lost to Sheik, it of course went to Hogan. No one reclaimed the title quickly and I think it helped build up the mystique of the champion being a big deal.
The IC belt got moved around a bit more in the 1st half of the decade, but I think with Savage and Honktyonk such strong champions, and Warrior being built as the man to take over for Hogan, it simply wasn't the same opportunity to move the belt around. Thus guys like Roberts or Rude, didn't get an IC run.
People clowned the NWA for having so many titles but I liked it. It guaranteed title matches on television and gave wrestlers a chance to run with a belt but they weren't ready for a major title.
ReplyDeleteThe WWF(E) could have had regional titles.
Yes. I laughed at that.
ReplyDeleteThreadjack:
ReplyDeleteSorry to TJ here guys, but I'm not a real gamer guy and I had trouble finding an answer through Google. I just bought WWE '13 brand new, updated my PS3, and the game won't start. It looks like it will, but then a screen comes up saying the game data is corrupted, and to delete it and restart the game. I have no idea what this means, since I haven't played the game yet, so what game data exactly? It's not an issue with the disc cause I just exchanged it for another one at Best Buy and the same thing happens. All my other games are working fine. Anybody have this problem before? Does this mean my PS3 has a virus?
the story i heard was that honky was originally supposed to be a transitional champ to jake, but jake kept fucking up with drugs etc. at the wrong time. then they saw how much heat honky was drawing and just ran with him.
ReplyDeleteno idea how true that is, though
I think they already knew Jake was on the way out by late-1991, which is why he never actually beat Savage (though that feud was a masterpiece in how to keep the heel strong despite all the losses). There's no point in giving a guy the world title when he's on the way out, even though Jake would've jobbed to Savage at WM8 anyways.
ReplyDeleteObviously we're in a much different era of title reigns, but between Savage's win in February 1986 and Honky's loss in August 1988, exactly THREE guys held the intercontinental title. If you counted back the number of different IC champs over the last 30 months, you'd probably have 15 guys.
Very true. Beefcake was greatly improving in the ring during the late 80's and by 1990 was a legitimately solid worker. As much as we smarks roll our eyes now at the thought of putting Beefcake over Curt friggin' Hennig, it would've been very believable had the internet been around back in 1990.
ReplyDeleteI don't get the love for Bossman getting an IC run. There are some guys just not meant for title runs, and he's one of them. The BBM character was all about serving justice (either correctly or warped, depending on face/heel alignment). Getting/holding a title never seemed a priority for him. Some guys are meant for the chase, some are not.
ReplyDeleteIf you ever took a trip down to Cobb County, Georgia you'd get it.
ReplyDeleteThe fact we're discussing who has or hasn't held the Intercontinental Title 20-25 years ago yet we can't remember who held the belt 2-3 years says everything you need to know about the current value of the title.
ReplyDeleteRude jumped around working all manners of odd places. Various indy shots, an appearance in IWCCW teasing a feud with the Honky Tonk Man, and a tour or two of All-Japan.
ReplyDeleteHe didn't sit out, though.
ReplyDeletePunk is an exception, not a rule. His title reign length would be much less of a story 20+ years ago. A few people noted how long Demolition held the tag titles but there was little OMG A CALENDAR YEAR bloviating. Of course there are more title changes now. Week-to-week booking will always result in more title changes than the WWF's old month-to-month booking--compare '80s WWF or AWA title reigns to the title reigns of other territories. The promotions that ran weekly cycled through more champions, always.
ReplyDeletePunk is the exception, you're right there, but I still stand by my point that the number of programming hours (or number of TV shows if you will) does not equate to more title changes. There are more title changes today because of poor planning, i.e. weekly booking. I hope Punk's title reign will show the brass at WWE (Vince) that it's cool to have stability at the top and that it just makes the fans that much hungrier to see the champion dethroned.
ReplyDeleteI am not a fan of the Cena character, though respect his in-ring ability. I promoted, on these boards years ago, just give the title to Cena and let him carry it for at least a year. The heel that's able to beat him, will get a major rub and then, just recycle it with a heel.
Anyways, I got off topic a bit, sorry.
At one point, though, they had Prime Time, Challenge, Superstars and All-Star Wrestling floating through TV. Still not as much as they have today (Raw, Smackdown, Main Event, Superstars, Saturday Morning Slam), but it was still a good amount of TV time.
ReplyDelete