XIV wrote: ↑Jun 16th, '22, 11:36
Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Jun 15th, '22, 17:46
XIV wrote: ↑Jun 15th, '22, 15:14
I'd put a strong disagree on that, granted they've started him down this combat club thing route. But he's the most able to pull off being a smarmy heel that'll stretch you because hes better than you and act a prick about it, so when the babyface triumphantly returns, somebody wants "the best in the world" to give Danielson all the payback from the beatings he's dished out.
That scenario does work (although they've tried heel Dragon and the fans haven't taken to it at all, which caused problems for Hangman, and could for Punk as well).
THIS is the biggest argument against it:
cero2k wrote: ↑Jun 15th, '22, 16:51
but do you really want Danielson's first reign to be an interim title? or Mox's second (first two-timer in the company ) for that matter?
I don’t think it matters if someone’s first reign is interim or not. They still work to get into that position and then face the “real” champion down the road.
Nobody questions a UFC interim champion as to whether their first reign matters or not.
I think with the right two guys putting it over, you can run a compelling story on this.
I think it kind of does matter. Wrestling is a work, so we know that an interim reign was never the plan, and so if you don't validate it by having that person beat the champion, it feels- lacking a better term- fake.
XIV wrote: ↑Jun 16th, '22, 11:36
I think with the right two guys putting it over, you can run a compelling story on this.
I'm actually not sure you can, or at least certainly not in the kayfabe environment that AEW has.
The issue with an interim title is that in order to validate the entire concept, you need to have the unification match as soon as the "rightful" champion gets healthy again, so there is no real time to build it. The only way to do it is to have the "rightful" champion on commentary constantly saying "that guy's belt is fake. I'm the real champion," but 1) there are only so many weeks you can have someone say that before it starts to get grating (because the story inherently isn't capable of progressing while the "rightful" champion is injured), and this is even more of a problem with a babyface as the "rightful" champion because he/she should understand the situation, and the more he/she says that sort of thing, the more heelish he/she starts to sound.
People will point to Shawn and Razor as an example of how you can do this, but the key difference between that situation and this one (even more so than Shawn being a heel and a Punk being a face) is that in that situation,
there was no interim champion. Razor was the only officially recognized champion, and therefore there was nothing absolutely necessitating* that Shawn vs. Razor match occur right away, which is what gave them the time to build it up.
The only circumstances I can think of where an "interim champion" kind of thing can really be made to work are the insanely unique circumstances that ROH had where the company was taking a big hiatus
and you had an unforeseen circumstance at the very last show create a situation where you needed to create to create an interim title, as you then not only had a reason to have an interim champion, but the fact that you weren't going to be running any shows for a long time allowed you to have a reason for why you weren't unifying the titles as soon as you could (because ROH's sanctioning body would want it to happen at an ROH show) while also creating a situation where both guys could go around defending their titles he and there and claiming to be the rightful and defending champion.
Even just a general "two belts" situation really shouldn't happen in most situations. If you have a babyface promotion, they should be prioritizing resolving any controversy around the title in an efficient manner, so it would never get to the point where someone feels a need (or really even has the time) to get their own belt made (that was one of the big flaws with the Matt Taven angle in ROH). If you have a heel authority figure, a babyface who got screwed and is walking around with a belt and calling himself champion seems like the kind of thing a heel authority figure would put a lot of effort into quashing quickly (especially if the heel authority figure is specifically aligned with the heel champion). You'd need an environment close to lawlessness to make it work, where management either completely apathetic because they just care about making money (or have some ulterior motive to everything, a la Dario Cueto... but even in that situation, a shrewd promoter would eventually just book the unification match at the point he/she things it would make him/her the most money).
*I would argue that in a situation with a babyface in authority, the genera principal that Shawn never lost the belt should have been enough to necessitate a rematch being a priority, but I'm willing to give WWF something of a pass there because the required pace really just wasn't how TV was done at the time, and I understand that they wanted to get Shawn back in the ring and making money as soon as possible to keep him happy because, if I remember correctly, he had shoot quit over the steroid suspension that the injury was a cover for, claiming that he had never taken steroids, and they needed him back because they didn't want him going to WCW.
Then again, there are ways to make it work, like Shawn engaging in some sort of bad behavior where management is punishing him by not giving him a title shot, until Razor eventually demands that Shawn be given a title shot. Even then, though, I really can't see how they could have delayed the match to any later than the Rumble without it feeling too repetitive. Maybe you could do a regular match at the Rumble ending in some sort of screwy finish involving the belt(s), like they wind up on the outside after the ref-bump, and Shawn's getting his butt kicked and in desperation he grabs his belt and hits Razor with it, and as he crawls back to the ring, the ref recovers and Shawn gets the win by count-out. That way Shawn can go on TV and say that he beat Razor and because he is the rightful champion, he should have had the champion's advantage, not Razor, but management disagrees and Shawn gets upset, so next week he attacks Razor with the belt and tries to injure Razor so that management will be forced to take the title off of Razor and give it to him, and that's your big angle to set up the Ladder match (because with the belts hanging above the ring, they won't be able to be used as weapons)?
But, looking at the Rumble 94 card, do you really want to do that kind of finish in the IC Title match when you're already doing sh*t finish in the world title match and a freakin'
tie in the Rumble itself (and babyfaces losing clean in the tag title match, too)? It's kind of funny, because the 2022 (or even 2005) answer would just be to do the Ladder match as the main event of the Rumble, but that would never have happened back then. Thinking about it a little more, in a modern environment you could probably buy yourself a little more time by establishing a grueling scheduling of defenses/other matches for Razor to create a reason for why Shawn isn't getting his title shot, and you can probably even delay Shawn actually bringing his belt back for a few weeks until he starts to think that management won't actually give him a rematch.
Anyway, that was a fun tangent.