Since we've established all the ones that were awful (although no one's mentioned Judy Bagwell, WCW Tag Team Champion yet), what do you think were some of the best instances of awarding a title without a match?
Some of the ones that jump out at me:
Yeah, Mick and Vince was a masterpiece. "Thanks...DAD." AWESOME.
Some of the ones that jump out at me:
- Andre to Dibiase, WWF Title: Duh. Perfect sense for the Dibiase character, and as much of a disaster as the Wrestlemania IV tournament was from a match-quality perspective, the storyline was certainly hot enough.
- Vince McMahon to Mankind, WWF Hardcore Title: Great for furthering the Mankind-Vince storyline, and played beautifully by Mick and Vince.
- Lance Storm to Carl Ouellette and Elix Skipper, Saskatchewan Hardcore International Title and whatever they renamed the cruiserweight title: I don't know if you can say that anything in the last two years of WCW actually *worked*, but I was amused by the renaming of the titles more than anything else.
- Kevin Nash to Ric Flair, WCW title: Again, crappy as the last years of WCW were, it made sense within the storyline for Nash to return the title to its rightful owner. I can still hear Tony Schiavone's "Kevin Nash is the ghost of Ric Flair's career!" call...points for enthusiasm, I guess.
- British Bulldog to Al Snow, WWF Hardcore Title: Another one of those matchless title transitions from 1999, sure, but it worked well enough, given that they didn't do Davey Boy's big reintroduction so he could feud over the Hardcore title. It's not like the belt had that much credibility (even before the 24/7 era), and I also loved seeing Al run out there as Leif Cassidy. And yeah, the Pepper storyline was awful on multiple levels (not least of which was the Kennel From Hell), but this part of the payoff worked for me.
The Austin-Rock IC title switch is also one of my favorite angles of all time, so that's right up there.
I thought that the intro of Ted Dibiase Jr, with Cody Rhodes basically winning the title from himself, was pretty clever.
Of course, Pat Patterson.
I think there's potential in a storyline where a title gets awarded via divorce settlement, because it would hit close to home for a LOT of guys. Like, say, Dolph Ziggler marries AJ in storyline form, they divorce, and David Otunga as legal rep for AJ somehow manages to bribe the judge into giving AJ custody of the World title, which she then bestows upon someone for Dolph to chase.