In wrestling, it's quite easy to think of title reigns that were great from beginning until end. Reigns like Bryan Danielson's ROH Title, CM Punk's main WWE World Title, or even Bret Hart's second IC Title reigns all hold up as being really good to great throughout their entire time as being champion. On the other side of the coin, there's the all around bad reigns such as The Great Khali's time as World Heavyweight Champion, where there were just zero highlights. Sometimes, pro wrestling even throws us a curve ball with terrible reigns that had some sort of highlight during it. JBL's time as WWE World Champion is one of my least favorite reigns of all time, but the Great American Bash match that he won the title in was quite good. Although I haven't seen it, as much as everyone hates on Jinder Mahal's WWE World Title reign, his title loss to AJ Styles to be universally praised as a shockingly good match with Styles carrying Jinder to the best match of his career.
What I feel is far less easily remembered are those misleading title reigns. Recently, I got thinking about one of my favorite wrestlers - The British Bulldog, Davey Boy Smith. Here's a guy who had some legendary title matches. Looking at just his two main singles titles reigns in the WWE, look at the sheer quality that Smith produced:
- vs Bret Hart - Summerslam 1992 (IC Title win)
- vs Shawn Michaels - SNME 31 (IC Title loss)
- vs Owen Hart - Raw 1997 (European Title win)
- vs Shawn Michaels - One Night Only (European Title loss)
On paper, both reigns sound pretty great. The Summerslam match is a bit controversial, but depending on who you ask, some would say it's the WWE MOTY and potentially the best IC Title match ever and best match in Summerslam history. The SNME match doesn't get too much talk, but I consider it to be a potential best match in SNME history. The Raw match is a legitimate WWE MOTYC and the One Night Only match may be considered a MOTYC by some, if not, then at least a top ten match. Yet, despite these great starts and finishes for these title reigns, neither title reign is what I'd consider good. As IC Champion, Bulldog did absolutely nothing. Bulldog got into a bit of a program with The Mountie, but despite winning the title in the main event of one of the more memorable PPVs of the 90s, Bulldog's reign lasted just a couple of months and any time he did appear on TV, it was mostly just wrestling jobbers (And The Repo Man) until finally dropping the title to HBK. The European Title reign lasted the majority of 1997, but Smith only defended it a couple of times on TV/PPV. The title ended up being nothing more than a vanity prop for Bulldog to carry out to the ring while he spent the year mostly teaming with Owen and Bret.
The opposite can be true as well. Take Daniel Bryan's World Heavyweight Title reign from late 2011 to WM 28 for example. He won the title by cashing in his MITB contract and then lost the belt in the infamous 18 seconds Mania match. In total, the time of the matches for the title win and title loss was a mere 25 seconds, making it seem like it was an underwhelming title reign, but in reality, Bryan was producing some really solid matches every week on SD and on PPV between those two matches.
What are some of the other notable "Misleading" title reigns where the title win and title loss quality does not agree with all of the matches in between, whether it's a bad reign like The British Bulldog or a good reign like Daniel Bryan?
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Ed
Bookmarks