This article written Monday, November 25, 2013.
At the end of Sunday night’s Survivor Series pay per view, the WWE gave fans something they haven’t seen in over a decade. No, not a lackluster WWE title match, it was the tease of one unified WWE Champion. As World Heavyweight Champion John Cena and corporate chosen WWE Champion Randy Orton faced off and raised their titles aloft in Boston, the implications reached further than the TD Waterhouse Arena as WWE fans worldwide wondered if the long rumored Title Unification bout was indeed in the world. As message boards lit up with many theories regarding what will happen, some plausible and some less so, but one thing was clear, the ubiquitous response from the WWE Universe was that unification is a good idea. But is it really? Would unifying the World Heavyweight and WWE titles be a decision that would best serve the interests of the company as a whole or do the answers lie elsewhere?
To understand the current championship quagmire the WWE finds themselves in at the moment, we must go back early 1997. As the Monday Night Wars were heating up and the yet unnamed WWF Universe was ever expanding, talent became the hottest commodity with the World Wrestling Federation and World Championship Wrestling making any and every deal they could to sign and keep top tier talent. For Vince McMahon, once of these deals included creating the European Championship specifically to keep Davey Boy Smith signed. Although created as a vanity title and treated as a joke through much of the first year it was around, the European title became an avenue for lower card talent to gain momentum as they climbed the card in 1998 continuing on into 2001. There were some bumps and bad angles along the way, such as the time Mideon became champion because his pants were baggy or when Mark Henry was handed the title by Jeff Jarrett as a present, but quite a few young stars got their first serious singles championship runs with the European gold. Although treated as mostly a prop by the time it was retired in 2002, with a pedigree that includes former title holders Eddie Guererro, Chris Jericho, Kurt Angle, and Hunter Hearst Helmsley (not mention the seven other former WWE or World Heavyweight champions that held the belt, plus two WCW Champions) it’s hard to argue that the European title was not an important stepping stone for the WWF midcard during the Attitude Era. Despite being deactivated eleven years ago as a victim of the post-Invasion, brand-split rebuilding time, it’s still widely regarded by fans as one of more fondly remembered former titles.
When it was first introduced in 2002 as the exclusive singles title of Monday Night Raw in the form a gift from General Manager Eric Bischoff to Triple H, most immediately dismissed the World Heavyweight Championship as another vanity title. Nine months after it had been consolidated with the WWF Championship to become the WWF Undisputed Title and days after the Undisputed Title, until that point shared between brands as part of the brand extension from five months prior, became a Smackdown exclusive the World Title returned to very little fanfare. Despite being a seemingly new title at the time, the World Heavyweight Title actually holds the distinction of having one of the most convoluted lineages of all time that can be traced back to 1905. The details are a bit messy but when the World Heavyweight Wrestling Championship (founded in 1905) merged with NWA World Title in 1956, the lineage came too. This is further complicated with the introduction of both the WCW World Heavyweight and International World Heavyweight titles which share history with each other as well as the NWA title. WWF inherited this history with their 2001 purchase of WCW, merged it with the WWF Title that year and then splintered them again with the introduction of the World Heavyweight title. In short, before and maybe even in spite of, the last eleven years the World Heavyweight Championship has one of the greatest heritages of any wrestling championship in history. Since 2002, it kickstarted the careers of Batista, CM Punk, and Daniel Bryan while helping Edge put the last few bricks in his Hall of Fame career not mention giving guys like Booker T, Chris Jericho, and Mark Henry runs at the top they otherwise would not have gotten. It has fallen in status over the last few years but successful runs from the likes of Dolph Ziggler and Christian have proven that when booked effectively it has the potential to be a star making title.
The parallels between the European and World Heavyweight Titles are tenuous but they’re there. Both were introduced as somewhat transparent attempts at talent appeasement but earned a status of significance before falling in importance again, punctuated with small flashes of brilliance. Obviously if the WWE and World Heavyweight title incorporation program happens, then the WWE Championship will be THE title in the company but has the World Heavyweight Title really outlived it’s usefulness like the European title before it? I think that championship victory of Dolph Ziggler in 2013 followed by the immense groundswell of support from the crowd proves that if WWE must eliminate a title, the World Heavyweight Championship isn’t the way to go. No, the real solution is around the waist of Dean Ambrose. Admitting the similarly grandiose history of the title is simply not enough to justify it actually existing. It’s hardly a title that elevates workers up the card as long runs from Antonio Cesaro and Kofi Kingston have proven and the most successful talent to hold the championship in recent years (Dean Ambrose) got to the position because of his work in the Shield, not as the champ. If WWE wants to get the most from what they have, I’d suggest unifying the Intercontinental and United States championships to give whichever man wins lone Intercontinental title a sincere rub. A restructuring of titles to eliminate the needless United States Title while making the Intercontinental Championship the stepping stone the European Title used to be to the upper midcard prize of the World Heavyweight Title.
While eliminating the United States title to create a championship caste that would, essentially, put the Intercontinental belt in the place the US title is meant to be while slotting the World Heavyweight Championship into the position formerly held by the Intercontinental title seems a bit counter-intuitive, the reasoning is simple: marketing. Which sounds more impressive, “United States Champion” or “World Heavyweight Champion”? Now that the WWE has already given up much of the pretense that the World title is a top teir title, why not use that to their advantage? Casual fans, new fans, and kids would all see the accolate as being a big deal while still seeing the WWE title as the top prize and that’s exactly the demographic that the WWE covets the most. With proper booking, the IC title could very convincingly fill the role of a championship that young talent wins before getting a chance to actually shine as World Champion before, hopefully, making the jump to WWE Champion. WWE has a potential goldmine of star making potential but they may throw it all away in the name of trimming the fat.
Hawk Jefferson’s offbeat shenanigans can be tracked on Twitter @HawkJefferson