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The 411 Wrestling Top 5: The Top 5 WWE IC Champions
The 411 Wrestling Top 5: Hello everyone and welcome to 411 Wrestling’s Top 5 List. We take a topic each week and all the writers here on 411 wrestling will have the ability to participate and give us their Top 5 on said topic. So, onto this week’s topic…
Week 347 – The Top 5 WWE IC Champions
Who are your top 5 WWE IC Champions of all time?
Ryan Byers
5. The Honky Tonk Man – Honky gets points for being a kind of Intercontinental Champion that had never existed before and has only really been emulated once since, in the form of Santino Marella. HTM’s extended reign with the belt that he mainly retained through count outs, disqualifications, and sweet, sweet cheating didn’t really exist to make him a star. It existed to make whoever was ultimately going to beat him in to a star, and, when the Ultimate Warrior squashed the poor guy’s brains out, that is exactly what happened. In an odd twist, though the title reign was never really meant to get him over, Honky was such a great performer that he got over regardless, and to this day he is still able to make a killing at conventions and on indy shows just by showing up, singing his song, and, on a night when he is feeling really generous, taking a bump.
4. Shawn Michaels – I know that there are a lot of people out there who don’t think of Shawn Michaels as a great Intercontinental Champion because everything that he has done since he held the belt has overshadowed his time with the WWF’s secondary strap. However, if you ignore HBK’s career from 1996 onwawrd, it becomes abundantly clear that he has a resume that few other IC titleholders can match. Awesome feud with Bret Hart over the belt? Check. Great matches with Mr. Perfect for the strap? You bet. One of the best matches in Monday Night Raw history against Marty Jannetty? Yup. Revolutionary ladder matches against Razor Ramon? Oh yes. No modern Intercontinental Champion has accomplished half as much as Shawn Michaels did with the championship.
3. Pedro Morales – A lot of people forget about Pedro because his time in wrestling pre-dates Hulkamania and he did not stick around after his wrestling career in an office role. However, even though he was never that much of an in-ring performer, at least from a kayfabe standpoint, Pedro was a heck of a Intercontinental Champion. He brought instant credibility to the still-new title by being a former World Heavyweight Champion who pursued it with the same vigor as he would have the company’s top prize. Furthermore, he defended the title against tough customers in the forms of Billy Graham, Don Muraco, and Ken Patera. In doing this, he amassed the second longest uninterrupted Intercontinental Title reign in history, and, between his two runs with the belt, he has been IC Champion for more days than any other wrestler ever, easily beating out anybody who held the title after the 1990s.
2. The Rock – Let’s ignore his first run as a babyface that was put out of its misery by Owen Hart. What really gets Rocky this high on the list is his second run with the championship. Though it started off in a relatively weak fashion as Maivia was awarded the title when it was forfeited by Steve Austin, the Rock quickly made up for that by engaging in a feud with Ken Shamrock that managed to elevate both wrestlers. From there he moved on to Triple H, and the war that these two grapplers and their respective factions had with the IC strap as one of its focal points took two midcard wrestlers and solidified them as guys who were ready to take the next step up the ladder. Combine that with the fact that Rock was in the middle of perfecting his soon-to-be legendary promo style the entire time that he was holding the Intercontinental Title, and you had one of the most historically significant reigns in company history.
1. Randy Savage – From the second that he took the belt off of Tito Santana (who wasn’t a bad champion in his own right), you knew that the reign of Randy Savage was going to be something special. The Macho Man was a completely different athlete than anything that the WWF was showcasing at the time, and he used his championship matches as the means through which all of those differences could be highlighted. Former WWWF Champion Bruno Sammartino, George “The Animal” Steele, and Jake “The Snake” Roberts all fell to the Macho Man during this period . . . but they would not be his ultimate challenge. What defined Savage’s run with the title more than anything else was his historic feud against Ricky Steamboat, all the way from Randy crushing the Dragon’s throat with a ring bell to their unforgettable match at Wrestlemania III. Even though he won in the end, Steamboat doesn’t get the nod on this list because his role in the feud had more to do with the chase than it did with holding the title. Holding the title was the Macho Man’s job, and he did it better than anybody else in history.
Rob Stewart
5. Ultimate Warrior – I’ll buy into the notion that the greatest Intercontinental Champions are those who brought prestige to the belt and made it seem almost as important (if not equally as important) as the WWF World Championship. And you can’t argue that Warrior did not do that. He was positively dominant with the strap, and his reign culminated in a main event WrestleMania match where both his IC strap and the World Title were on the line in a one-on-one match against Hulk Hogan. Not only that, but Warrior beat the World champion to prove that the IC champ had been the better man! That’s about as illustrious as it gets right there.
4. Rob Van Dam – RVD had six different runs with the Intercontinental title, and during just about all of them, he put on some truly amazing matches Not only that, but Van Dam was as hot as the center of the Earth. The guy who made ECW’s Television Title seem like a bigger deal that its World Title moved on to WWF and then did his absolute best to do the same with the IC belt.
3. Chris Jericho – Nine different reigns are nothing to sneeze at, but what sets Jericho apart for me is that he is one of an extremely small number of guys who won the Intercontinental Title between World Title reigns. He wasn’t just a guy who used the belt to move on to the World Title scene, nor was he a guy who moved down the card after losing the World Title and never reached the main event again. He had reigns with the title sandwiched between world championship runs, and that elevates the title by making it seem almost on par with the more prestigious belts in the company.
2. The Honky Tonk Man – Okay, you can’t really have this list without Honky, right? Honky was a stellar heel who never won cleanly if he could help it and accepted a fair loss even less often. He made the fans’ blood absolutely boil in their veins with each narrow escape he made to hold onto the title for all 454 days of his reign. Was he dominant champion who vanquished all comers and proved the superiority of the Intercontinental Title division? Nah. But what he was a character that evoked huge emotions from the crowd and who remains memorable to this day. He may likely not by #1 on anyone’s list, but I guarantee that every other contributor, upon seeing the subject, thought “All right, where, if anywhere, does Honky Tonk fit in?” The guy is synonymous with this belt.
1. Bret “Hitman” Hart – This might raise eyebrows, but bear with me. The year I started really regularly watching WWF, Bret Hart was the Intercontinental champion, fresh off defeating Mr. Perfect. And as a young fan, I knew about Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Warrior and the rest of the larger than life characters of the WWF roster, but Bret Hart was the wrestler who must stuck out to me. He had great (and frequent) matches over the IC championship on television, he had a short rivalry with Roddy Piper at WrestleMania 8 that was amazingly intense, and he ultimately main evented a huge pay-per-view show when he dropped it to The British Bulldog. Along the way, he managed to make the WWF Intercontinental Title feel like the most important belt in the company. Bret put 100% effort into carrying on the prestigious lineage of that belt, and to a young me, he instantly made me more interested in the Intercontinental Title scene than the main event of that era.
Len Archibald
5. The Honky Tonk Man – First off, let me just start by saying that The Intercontinental Title has always been my jam. While Hogan/Andre cemented my fandom, it was Savage/Steamboat that allowed me to embrace my obsession and the Intercontinental Title attached to that feud is what I most closely followed during that obsession. SEGUEWAY! When Steamboat lost the Intercontinental Title to the Honky Tonk Man, I cried like a bitch. The HATRED I had for HTM was no joke…in my youth, he was the one performer that I would have rushed the ring to attack. He never won a match or defended his title honorably. He had that damn Jimmy Hart and Hart Foundation with him to help with his cheating ways. He NEVER LET GO OF THE DAMN TITLE FOR ALMOST TWO YEARS. Honky’s reign was frustrating, maddening and just outright infuriating. When he finally lost the title in seconds to the Ultimate Warrior, I cheered like the Blue Jays won the World Series…not because Warrior won, mind you – but because HTM LOST. Now that I have a better understanding of the artistic merits of pro wrestling, it is so much easier to embrace and appreciate what the Honky Tonk Man did for the IC Title and the longest reign in history.
4. Razor Ramon – This is more of a personal pick than anything (objectively, Shawn Michaels would be in his place.) Razor Ramon was the first heel I openly cheered for. Yes, I was a fan of Randy Savage during his most heelish phase early in his career, but if I admitted that on the playground in Toronto, I would have suffered a massive gang-style beating. Razor, though? At the height of Scarface’s relevance in popular culture and the rejection of Hulk Hogan’s goody two-shoes heroics as a teen, Razor was my boy. He carried that Intercontinental Title like it meant the world to him and it just fit. Look at a picture of him with the title…they were made for each other. When it was time for Razor to GO (like take part in one of the defining matches in wrestling history), The Bad Guy was nearly untouchable. If something happened to his gold, something was gonna happen to you, CHICO.
3. Bret Hart/Mr. Perfect – In my mind, these two champions will always be intertwined. Not only for the blistering, changing-of-the-guard match they had at SummerSlam 1991 for the IC Title, but for the quality of their performances and believability they carried as Intercontinental Champion. Mr. Perfect wore the IC strap like he exited the womb with it already sewn onto him, and he continued the longstanding tradition of using the title as a springboard and showcase of the “workers” within the WWF. Bret Hart exemplified what it meant to be a champion as the IC Titleholder, taking on all comers, dissecting his foes and doing everything he could to up the credibility and continue the title’s legacy and lineage. To top that all off, he main evented SummerSlam as Intercontinental Champion on another continent and delivered like no other when he helped give Davey Boy Smith his crowning moment.
2. Chris Jericho – Y2J has won more Intercontinental Titles than anyone else in history. That is enough to place him on this list for me. But Chris Jericho’s output as one of the best IC Champs of all time is more than a number of title runs. It is the prestige he carried as champion. Jericho treated the IC Title like it was his own World Championship and used that sentiment to fuel some great performances and runs. Benoit, Angle, Hardy, RVD, Regal…Jericho sat atop the mountain and competed against a literal who’s who list of superstars from WWE, WCW and ECW at the height of the industry. When the lights were the brightest and the audience was the largest, no one performed better as Intercontinental Champion better than Chris Jericho…
1. “Macho Man” Randy Savage – …with one exception. While Randy Savage is without a doubt one of the greatest in-ring talents in history, we would not even be privy to that talent if he did not absolutely obliterate all expectations when he defeated Tito Santana at the Boston Gardens in 1986 for the Intercontinental Title. Savage did not only DOMINATE during his run leading up to the (at the time) biggest WrestleMania of all time, but he became a pop-culture phenomenon in his own right, playing second fiddle to only the biggest name on the planet at that time. When I was a youngin’ living in the 6 (I just aged myself there), WWF fans fell into two camps: Hulkamaniacs and Savages. As I mentioned before, I was (and still am) Macho Man till I die, but admitting that when we all wondered how much of wrestling was scripted at the time would have got me shanked (by a spork, we were kids.) Randy Savage defined everything I loved about pro wrestling: the theatrics, the athletics, the storytelling, the fame, the spectacle. Savage only had graduation music, a beautiful valet and a gorgeous title by his side. He did not need anything else. When he entered WrestleMania III, The Macho Man was arguably the most hated man in the building. When it was over and he lost his IC Title, Savage garnered the most sympathy. He didn’t even need the IC Title after that anymore. He transcended and became the template for great talents to use the IC Title to springboard into the Main Event. GOAT. That’s all I have to say.
List your Top Five for this week’s topic in the comment section using the following format:
5. CHOICE: Explanation
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1. CHOICE: Explanation
