What Depreciates Titles

[yourcrapsweak]

This is mostly a stab at WWE, but it really applies to any fed. The reason the WWE title and the World Heavyweight Title and the US Title and the IC Title and so on don't mean anything is because they do not have any contenders for them. To make a title seem important, you have to have people chasing it. People have to want it. There's all kinds of prestige to the WWE Title, everybody should want it. But in WWE, all you see is people feuding over the title. What I mean by that is the only contender for the belt is always someone the champion has a feud with. That's not necessary! To make a title seem important, have the champ face random challengers and beat them. Sure it wouldn't sell PPV's if CM Punk faced Swagger for the belt at Royal Rumble, but having different people just come up and challenge for the title would make it much more valuable.

The champ can have a feud with someone, I'm not saying that's wrong. But it is wrong when that person who is feuding with the champ is the only contender. The way I would do it is this. Say Punk is feuding with Cena. Just because these two have a kayfabe problem with one another does not mean they have to fight for the title. If they feuded for a month but Punk had to face someone else for the belt because they were the contender, it would make the belt seem SO much more important. It's really simple. It's like if I came in and made fun of Punk, I'm automatically the number one contender? No! There should be a long line of contenders, and just because I have a beef with him doesn't put me in front of everyone else.

The way WWE does it makes the belt look like a prop. And yeah I've said it before that's actually what the belt is. But still, if you want to make it look like a big deal, then just throwing it around like that isn't doing anybody any favors.

[Verdun]

I think there's not enough to establish the importance of the us/intercontinental title. Why would someone want it when they can go for the world title? I understand it's an achievement to win it, but for other people. Why do wrestlers want it compared to the world title?

Also, I think Money in the Bank is quickly depreciating titles. They need to retire the concept or find fresh ways of using it.

[kiel297]

I think what they need to do is make the throwaway fueds mean something, by making the ultimate goal of the two participants involved a championship.

Stuff like Orton vs Barrett. Orton's been in putting over mode lately, so we know Barrett's gonna come out on top in some way, but why not make this fued over the Intercontinental Championship by making the winner the Number One Contender? Same with most fueds, of course only one at a time, but still.

My ideal scenario as far as just one belt is concerned is this:
* Champion is fueding with current No 1 Contender
* Two other wrestlers, both in that level (midcard, main event), become involved in a battle to prove who's better and to name the new No 1 Contender for that championship. You can then throw in all the personal stuff we usually have throughout the duration of the fued.

In this scenario, the champ retains his title against current No 1 Contender. It continues as follows:
* New No 1 Contender sets his sights on champion. They fued.
* While this fued has been going on, a new No 1 contender has been decided.

It's not like you have to keep it the same formula either. Maybe both contenders get the title shot and we have a triple threat. Maybe we have a whole load of wrestlers fighting to become No. 1 contender, and get multi man matches, or even a tournament out of it. There's so many ways it can be done.

The overall point of all of that though is to put the championships on the pedestal they should be on, and get the champions over as champions, not wrestlers with titles. Once you put the titles on this pedestal, the champion instantly is seen as the guy to beat, the guy that's better than everyone else, and it makes sense to have everyone constantly wanting to be the guy that beats this champion, because he's THE guy to beat.

Lengthy title reigns too. They can get stale when not handled right, but when they're done correctly they can be awesome! Don't have the title change hands every month! If any old man coulda just walked up to the Sword In The Stone and just plucked it out, the sword would have become worthless, instead of being the sword that could only be pulled out by someone like Arthur, and Arthur in this case, is the new WWE champion!

We don't need Average Joes turning up and taking the belt every month. We need Arthurs to challenge for the title, take it, and keep it!

Right now, Cody Rhodes is King Arthur, and I don't see anyone taking Excalibur away from him any time soon.

[yourcrapsweak]

I think there's not enough to establish the importance of the us/intercontinental title. Why would someone want it when they can go for the world title? I understand it's an achievement to win it, but for other people. Why do wrestlers want it compared to the world title?

Because you need to prove yourself to get titles. You can't just come in as a rookie and win the World Title without proving yourself. The original purpose of the IC title was to be a stepping stone to the World Title, and that's how it should be.

[yourcrapsweak]

I think what they need to do is make the throwaway fueds mean something, by making the ultimate goal of the two participants involved a championship.

Stuff like Orton vs Barrett. Orton's been in putting over mode lately, so we know Barrett's gonna come out on top in some way, but why not make this fued over the Intercontinental Championship by making the winner the Number One Contender? Same with most fueds, of course only one at a time, but still.

My ideal scenario as far as just one belt is concerned is this:
* Champion is fueding with current No 1 Contender
* Two other wrestlers, both in that level (midcard, main event), become involved in a battle to prove who's better and to name the new No 1 Contender for that championship. You can then throw in all the personal stuff we usually have throughout the duration of the fued.

In this scenario, the champ retains his title against current No 1 Contender. It continues as follows:
* New No 1 Contender sets his sights on champion. They fued.
* While this fued has been going on, a new No 1 contender has been decided.

It's not like you have to keep it the same formula either. Maybe both contenders get the title shot and we have a triple threat. Maybe we have a whole load of wrestlers fighting to become No. 1 contender, and get multi man matches, or even a tournament out of it. There's so many ways it can be done.

The overall point of all of that though is to put the championships on the pedestal they should be on, and get the champions over as champions, not wrestlers with titles. Once you put the titles on this pedestal, the champion instantly is seen as the guy to beat, the guy that's better than everyone else, and it makes sense to have everyone constantly wanting to be the guy that beats this champion, because he's THE guy to beat.

Lengthy title reigns too. They can get stale when not handled right, but when they're done correctly they can be awesome! Don't have the title change hands every month! If any old man coulda just walked up to the Sword In The Stone and just plucked it out, the sword would have become worthless, instead of being the sword that could only be pulled out by someone like Arthur, and Arthur in this case, is the new WWE champion!

We don't need Average Joes turning up and taking the belt every month. We need Arthurs to challenge for the title, take it, and keep it!

Right now, Cody Rhodes is King Arthur, and I don't see anyone taking Excalibur away from him any time soon.

I think this is bad. Having throw-away feuds be for a number one contendership would make the belts looks bad, because then, again, it makes it just seem like anybody could get a shot. Think of how much sense it makes without thinking about wrestling at all. You have some sort of competitive sport, and there is a champion. Two people who are not champions and have nothing to do with the champion have a beef and they face each other a few times. Just because they have a problem with someone else, what makes them more worthy of someone else who is not in a feud?

And with your "ideal scenario", that's what I think is exactly wrong with the whole picture. The number one contender does not have to feud with the champion. Doing this makes the belt look silly or unimportant. Battling for a number one contendership is okay every now and then, but if your number one contender is ALWAYS feuding with the champion, it becomes about the feud and not the title. Even if the feud is OVER the title, the whole thing is about the feud. Again this is fine if you don't do it every single month. WWE has this mindset where every title match has to be relevant to some feud. When's the last time a WWE champion has defended the belt against a worthy contender whom he was not feuding with at all and nothing consequential ever came out of it? Never!

When's the last time WWE came out and said "so and so has been very impressive in his matches in the last few months, so we are going to give him an Intercontinental Championship match," and then he faces the champion and loses, and nothing comes out of it? The champion defeats the contender and goes about his business? It doesn't happen very often. That's the problem. If this happened, it would add prestige to the title. But instead, the IC champion has to be feuding with someone to give a title shot, and it makes no sense if you think about it.

[cero2k]

This is mostly a stab at WWE, but it really applies to any fed. The reason the WWE title and the World Heavyweight Title and the US Title and the IC Title and so on don't mean anything is because they do not have any contenders for them. To make a title seem important, you have to have people chasing it. People have to want it. There's all kinds of prestige to the WWE Title, everybody should want it. But in WWE, all you see is people feuding over the title. What I mean by that is the only contender for the belt is always someone the champion has a feud with. That's not necessary! To make a title seem important, have the champ face random challengers and beat them. Sure it wouldn't sell PPV's if CM Punk faced Swagger for the belt at Royal Rumble, but having different people just come up and challenge for the title would make it much more valuable.

The champ can have a feud with someone, I'm not saying that's wrong. But it is wrong when that person who is feuding with the champ is the only contender. The way I would do it is this. Say Punk is feuding with Cena. Just because these two have a kayfabe problem with one another does not mean they have to fight for the title. If they feuded for a month but Punk had to face someone else for the belt because they were the contender, it would make the belt seem SO much more important. It's really simple. It's like if I came in and made fun of Punk, I'm automatically the number one contender? No! There should be a long line of contenders, and just because I have a beef with him doesn't put me in front of everyone else.

The way WWE does it makes the belt look like a prop. And yeah I've said it before that's actually what the belt is. But still, if you want to make it look like a big deal, then just throwing it around like that isn't doing anybody any favors.

completely agree with you. WWE just needs to get over that fact that giving a title to someone is not to get them over, but to reward them for being the best of the best. They also need to get their writers working, not all feuds/angles for the main eventers need to revolve around the World Title. They don't even need to end in a No1 Contenders Scenario.

[kiel297]

I think what they need to do is make the throwaway fueds mean something, by making the ultimate goal of the two participants involved a championship.

Stuff like Orton vs Barrett. Orton's been in putting over mode lately, so we know Barrett's gonna come out on top in some way, but why not make this fued over the Intercontinental Championship by making the winner the Number One Contender? Same with most fueds, of course only one at a time, but still.

My ideal scenario as far as just one belt is concerned is this:
* Champion is fueding with current No 1 Contender
* Two other wrestlers, both in that level (midcard, main event), become involved in a battle to prove who's better and to name the new No 1 Contender for that championship. You can then throw in all the personal stuff we usually have throughout the duration of the fued.

In this scenario, the champ retains his title against current No 1 Contender. It continues as follows:
* New No 1 Contender sets his sights on champion. They fued.
* While this fued has been going on, a new No 1 contender has been decided.

It's not like you have to keep it the same formula either. Maybe both contenders get the title shot and we have a triple threat. Maybe we have a whole load of wrestlers fighting to become No. 1 contender, and get multi man matches, or even a tournament out of it. There's so many ways it can be done.

The overall point of all of that though is to put the championships on the pedestal they should be on, and get the champions over as champions, not wrestlers with titles. Once you put the titles on this pedestal, the champion instantly is seen as the guy to beat, the guy that's better than everyone else, and it makes sense to have everyone constantly wanting to be the guy that beats this champion, because he's THE guy to beat.

Lengthy title reigns too. They can get stale when not handled right, but when they're done correctly they can be awesome! Don't have the title change hands every month! If any old man coulda just walked up to the Sword In The Stone and just plucked it out, the sword would have become worthless, instead of being the sword that could only be pulled out by someone like Arthur, and Arthur in this case, is the new WWE champion!

We don't need Average Joes turning up and taking the belt every month. We need Arthurs to challenge for the title, take it, and keep it!

Right now, Cody Rhodes is King Arthur, and I don't see anyone taking Excalibur away from him any time soon.

I think this is bad. Having throw-away feuds be for a number one contendership would make the belts looks bad, because then, again, it makes it just seem like anybody could get a shot. Think of how much sense it makes without thinking about wrestling at all. You have some sort of competitive sport, and there is a champion. Two people who are not champions and have nothing to do with the champion have a beef and they face each other a few times. Just because they have a problem with someone else, what makes them more worthy of someone else who is not in a feud?

And with your "ideal scenario", that's what I think is exactly wrong with the whole picture. The number one contender does not have to feud with the champion. Doing this makes the belt look silly or unimportant. Battling for a number one contendership is okay every now and then, but if your number one contender is ALWAYS feuding with the champion, it becomes about the feud and not the title. Even if the feud is OVER the title, the whole thing is about the feud. Again this is fine if you don't do it every single month. WWE has this mindset where every title match has to be relevant to some feud. When's the last time a WWE champion has defended the belt against a worthy contender whom he was not feuding with at all and nothing consequential ever came out of it? Never!

When's the last time WWE came out and said "so and so has been very impressive in his matches in the last few months, so we are going to give him an Intercontinental Championship match," and then he faces the champion and loses, and nothing comes out of it? The champion defeats the contender and goes about his business? It doesn't happen very often. That's the problem. If this happened, it would add prestige to the title. But instead, the IC champion has to be feuding with someone to give a title shot, and it makes no sense if you think about it.

Upon reading the above, I completely agree with you. I kinda see the flaws in my plan now.

[Big Red Machine]

This is mostly a stab at WWE, but it really applies to any fed. The reason the WWE title and the World Heavyweight Title and the US Title and the IC Title and so on don't mean anything is because they do not have any contenders for them. To make a title seem important, you have to have people chasing it. People have to want it. There's all kinds of prestige to the WWE Title, everybody should want it. But in WWE, all you see is people feuding over the title. What I mean by that is the only contender for the belt is always someone the champion has a feud with. That's not necessary! To make a title seem important, have the champ face random challengers and beat them. Sure it wouldn't sell PPV's if CM Punk faced Swagger for the belt at Royal Rumble, but having different people just come up and challenge for the title would make it much more valuable.

The champ can have a feud with someone, I'm not saying that's wrong. But it is wrong when that person who is feuding with the champ is the only contender. The way I would do it is this. Say Punk is feuding with Cena. Just because these two have a kayfabe problem with one another does not mean they have to fight for the title. If they feuded for a month but Punk had to face someone else for the belt because they were the contender, it would make the belt seem SO much more important. It's really simple. It's like if I came in and made fun of Punk, I'm automatically the number one contender? No! There should be a long line of contenders, and just because I have a beef with him doesn't put me in front of everyone else.

The way WWE does it makes the belt look like a prop. And yeah I've said it before that's actually what the belt is. But still, if you want to make it look like a big deal, then just throwing it around like that isn't doing anybody any favors.

I think that this problem exists because of the 4/5 weeks of TV followed by a ppv format. With only one show out of 5 that people are paying for, you obviously have to build up to that show. Because of that, you need to have almost everything hot by that one show. The indy model, however, requires every show have a drawing point. Every show must have something to make people go out of their way to pay for it. Because of that, you structure things so that some things heat up while others cool off. One of the easiest things to build up slowly is a title shot (because all you really need to do to build it up is have the guy say he is going after the title and then win a bunch of matches). Look at ROH in 2009. Aries was being chased (all at once) by Petey Williams, Tyler Black, Kenny Omega & Colt Cabana. In 06, they had Dragon being chased by Homicide, Joe, Cabana, Nigel, & KENTA. In 08 Nigel was being chased by Claudio, Steen, Dragon, Tyler, and, towards the end of the year, Lynn. Hell.. early this year, Roddy was being chase by Jay Briscoe, Davey, Generico, Daniels, and Cide all at once.

The one disadvantage to this is that the early defenses tend to be throwaways (how many time have we seen title defenses very early on the reign against Jay Briscoe, Cabana, Roddy, or Hero). Of course, this doesn't mean that those matches can't be great matches, and that they can't either have some small build-up to them (like Jay's defense against Roddy at Only The Strong Survive), or can't have some magical "OMFG, they are going to actually have a title change here!" moment like Eddie vs. Hero from Revolution: Canada.

With a 4 weeks then a PPV format, though, this is extremely hard to do without some sort of gimmick like the Pick 6 or the TNA Title contenders rankings (the old ones, from way back when) that keeps the concept of competing to earn a title shot fresh in people's minds.

[yourcrapsweak]

I think that this problem exists because of the 4/5 weeks of TV followed by a ppv format. With only one show out of 5 that people are paying for, you obviously have to build up to that show. Because of that, you need to have almost everything hot by that one show. The indy model, however, requires every show have a drawing point. Every show must have something to make people go out of their way to pay for it. Because of that, you structure things so that some things heat up while others cool off. One of the easiest things to build up slowly is a title shot (because all you really need to do to build it up is have the guy say he is going after the title and then win a bunch of matches). Look at ROH in 2009. Aries was being chased (all at once) by Petey Williams, Tyler Black, Kenny Omega & Colt Cabana. In 06, they had Dragon being chased by Homicide, Joe, Cabana, Nigel, & KENTA. In 08 Nigel was being chased by Claudio, Steen, Dragon, Tyler, and, towards the end of the year, Lynn. Hell.. early this year, Roddy was being chase by Jay Briscoe, Davey, Generico, Daniels, and Cide all at once.

The one disadvantage to this is that the early defenses tend to be throwaways (how many time have we seen title defenses very early on the reign against Jay Briscoe, Cabana, Roddy, or Hero). Of course, this doesn't mean that those matches can't be great matches, and that they can't either have some small build-up to them (like Jay's defense against Roddy at Only The Strong Survive), or can't have some magical "OMFG, they are going to actually have a title change here!" moment like Eddie vs. Hero from Revolution: Canada.

With a 4 weeks then a PPV format, though, this is extremely hard to do without some sort of gimmick like the Pick 6 or the TNA Title contenders rankings (the old ones, from way back when) that keeps the concept of competing to earn a title shot fresh in people's minds.

It can still work with WWE's model, but they just choose not to. You can build feuds that's fine, but what's wrong with (from a kayfabe stance) saying "okay the champ, Punk, is feuding with Alberto Del Rio. But Sheamus has been especially impressive lately, so we're going to give him his rightful chance at the title at the PPV instead of Del Rio, just because he has a problem with Punk doesn't mean he deserves a title shot." The problem with that is the WWE crowd would get bored. It's like they're doomed for failure (if you want to call it failure).

[Big Red Machine]

I think that this problem exists because of the 4/5 weeks of TV followed by a ppv format. With only one show out of 5 that people are paying for, you obviously have to build up to that show. Because of that, you need to have almost everything hot by that one show. The indy model, however, requires every show have a drawing point. Every show must have something to make people go out of their way to pay for it. Because of that, you structure things so that some things heat up while others cool off. One of the easiest things to build up slowly is a title shot (because all you really need to do to build it up is have the guy say he is going after the title and then win a bunch of matches). Look at ROH in 2009. Aries was being chased (all at once) by Petey Williams, Tyler Black, Kenny Omega & Colt Cabana. In 06, they had Dragon being chased by Homicide, Joe, Cabana, Nigel, & KENTA. In 08 Nigel was being chased by Claudio, Steen, Dragon, Tyler, and, towards the end of the year, Lynn. Hell.. early this year, Roddy was being chase by Jay Briscoe, Davey, Generico, Daniels, and Cide all at once.

The one disadvantage to this is that the early defenses tend to be throwaways (how many time have we seen title defenses very early on the reign against Jay Briscoe, Cabana, Roddy, or Hero). Of course, this doesn't mean that those matches can't be great matches, and that they can't either have some small build-up to them (like Jay's defense against Roddy at Only The Strong Survive), or can't have some magical "OMFG, they are going to actually have a title change here!" moment like Eddie vs. Hero from Revolution: Canada.

With a 4 weeks then a PPV format, though, this is extremely hard to do without some sort of gimmick like the Pick 6 or the TNA Title contenders rankings (the old ones, from way back when) that keeps the concept of competing to earn a title shot fresh in people's minds.

It can still work with WWE's model, but they just choose not to. You can build feuds that's fine, but what's wrong with (from a kayfabe stance) saying "okay the champ, Punk, is feuding with Alberto Del Rio. But Sheamus has been especially impressive lately, so we're going to give him his rightful chance at the title at the PPV instead of Del Rio, just because he has a problem with Punk doesn't mean he deserves a title shot." The problem with that is the WWE crowd would get bored. It's like they're doomed for failure (if you want to call it failure).

It is doable, but that wouldn't draw as much on PPV as Punk and Del Rio would. You could, however, make the argument that Punk vs. Del Rio on the PPV should be non-title, which is fine, but again, I don't think it would draw as well.