wrestling / Columns
The Seventh Dimension 03.28.08: When ‘He’ Came
**Foreword: This is an opinion piece about the World Heavyweight Championship. It is not intended to act as a tool for which to share views on anyone who has held it, simply the reigns and switches themselves and what effect they had on the title’s prestige. More than anything, it’s about how those in charge of booking the title have made the difference, NOT those who have been gifted it.**
The World Heavyweight Championship, currently on WWE’s Smackdown brand, is one half of the biggest award in wrestling today. Originally incepted in September 2002 (ignoring the post-InVasion period), as a counterbalance to the WWE Championship becoming exclusive to Smackdown, it was immediately pushed as Raw’s centerpiece and was main-eventing pay-per-views within two months. However, not everyone immediately accepted it as being anything other than a trial-run for the draft split.
There have been debates raging for years, albeit not particularly passionate ones, over when the title earned its place as a true top-tier belt on par with the original. Some say it was immediately, as the design – and, in fact, the belt itself until June 2003 – is the same as the old WCW Championship. Others have said that PWI’s classification of the belt as a recognised World Heavyweight Championship, an accolade the magazine seldom bestows, was what did it. Perhaps the simple fact that it was on Raw, the ‘A’ brand, gave it that authenticity. Or, as Scott Slimmer believes, Batista ending Triple H’s relative dominance with the title and taking it over to Smackdown in mid-2005 had the most pronounced consequence (On a side note, Scott has recently written one of the best columns you’ll ever read in your life).
What needs to be remembered, though, is that many of these are only relevant to US. In the world of kayfabe and marks, or even just fans who don’t use these sites, a lot of the apparent ‘turning points’ are meaningless. They don’t care about PWI, and probably didn’t even notice when the belt was replaced with a shinier one that had the WWE logo at the top of it. Heck, some of these people may never have seen WCW, whether they be too young or just too involved with WWE during the Monday Night Wars, and thus the adopted lineage of the WCW Championship goes over their heads completely. This is, after all, considered a different belt – a successor, but not the same. With that in mind, some probably don’t even think about its history with the NWA when they see the belt, or even know about it. They just think “Edge sucks!” and move on with their lives. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it did pose a slight problem when WWE was trying to market the belt as a massive deal.
So, before looking for what truly gave the title its edge (no pun intended), it’s best to study first why it could be criticised in the first place.
I think the first obstacle was that, by handing the belt to Triple H and making it Raw’s title, WWE encountered a bit of a double-edged sword (Wait, is that right? Encountered a double-edged sword? How could that even happen? “How do you do, sw-AAARGH!!!” I think too much about these things…). By telling us that this title was the best thing since sliced bread, it pushed the idea that this thing was supposed to be taken very seriously but also alienated some of those who believed the WWE Championship to be the be-all, end-all of wrestling. Many of those who saw it as a new championship wondered why it could be immediately treated with such vigor just because Triple H and Eric Bischoff said so, and those who wrongly perceived it as being the WCW Championship may have wondered why a belt held by David Arquette and Vince Russo on the show WWE officially buried a full eighteen months previously could now be Raw’s golden child. It also upset a few people that Triple H, who had already won the original WWE Championship five times, was handed the title instead of having a brand new champion crowned via a tournament or something similar. Still, a lot of people were happy enough when Shawn Michaels returned and won the belt in the inaugural Elimination Chamber at Survivor Series 2002, which gave this new incarnation of the belt three very important milestones – its first pay-per-view main event, its first transition from one champion to another, and its first ‘moment’ which was a heightened hybrid of the other two.
Four weeks later, and Triple H would earn the belt back, beginning a nine-month reign of terror at the top which really began the anti-HHH movement. He retained twice against the then-useless Scott Steiner, before making Booker T his bitch at Wrestlemania which really jarred many. And ‘bitch’ is no hyperbole – he pinned him cleanly twenty seconds after hitting the pedigree. Then he had a feud with Kevin Nash, which ended up inside Hell in a Cell in a pretty decent match, again with Triple H coming out on top. Going into Summerslam, and with Bill Goldberg undefeated, it was fair to expect that Goldberg would walk out of the show’s Elimination Chamber match with the belt. The fact that Triple H was slightly injured and Kurt Angle retained the WWE Championship earlier in the night seemed to confirm this, but instead Goldberg suffered his first defeat in the company after Triple H hit him once with the sledgehammer during a Spear attempt – the only offensive move Triple H made in the entire match, and after roughly three minutes of his participation. It actually got worse from there, because they booked Goldberg in a ‘retirement’ match meaning he HAD to win the belt at Unforgiven, so all of the suspense was dead.
Goldberg retained once at Survivor Series, before Triple H won the belt for the third time in a triple-threat match featuring Kane during his yearly push. Triple H won his fourth title by defeating Randy Orton in September 2004, before Orton had any fair chance to prove himself as a champion, and held the belt until a Raw show late in the year, when he was vacated of the title after a triple-threat match that ended in a Dusty finish. The result of this? A third Elimination Chamber match, this time at the first ever New Year’s Revolution, which Triple H won in what was now obviously a painfully contrived method of getting Triple H’s total World title record into double-figures. Thankfully, during this time Batista caught fire for seemingly no reason, won the 2005 Royal Rumble and absolutely creamed Triple H in their title feud, with three successive clean pinfall victories before being traded over to Smackdown. It’s fair to assume that, unless the titles switch shows again or Triple H is drafted to Smackdown, that the 3rd of April 2005 marked the last time Paul Levesque will ever be seen with that big gold belt.
Now, while Batista’s impact was significant, I don’t see it as anywhere near the biggest rub the belt got. Perhaps in actual terms, it is – the move away from Triple H’s clutches, onto a different show with new challengers, certainly lent the belt a new niche. The fact that the title was still, officially, not even three years old at this point made it seem much more suited to Smackdown, the show most often seen as the more likely to bring new blood to the table (as well as being a lot younger than Raw). It was also good because it allowed Batista – who was, after all, the champion – to take free reign of the show and make absolutely no secret that HE was the star at that moment, NOT an afterthought in Triple H’s quest to return to prominence. As it turned out, Triple H was actually out injured, so John Cena’s first few months of Raw were also a Hunter-free zone. This probably contributed to the hatred Cena still receives to this day, as a really viable and contemptible heel challenger would have helped instead of cocky tweeners such as Chris Jericho and Kurt Angle, or Christian Cage who was still in the midcard more or less. It’s funny how things work out like that.
However, on an individual basis, the Batista victory and shake-up doesn’t even come close to being the single-most important step in the building of the World Heavyweight Championship’s prowess. There was one factor, well over a year beforehand, that did so much more in storyline terms. Unfortunately, due to events that took place last year, it’s also one people tend to gloss over.
On January 25th 2004, after a controversial end to their World title match on Raw the previous month, Triple H and Shawn Michaels had a terrific Last Man Standing match. This bout ended in a draw, meaning Triple H retained his World title. Directly following this, Chris Benoit of Smackdown entered the ring as the annual Royal Rumble’s first contestant. After just under sixty-two minutes, Benoit was declared victorious, and we could now look forward to Benoit/Lesnar and Michaels/Triple H as our Wrestlemania main events. But instead, the very next night on Raw, Chris Benoit was introduced by Stone Cold Steve Austin during a confrontation between Triple H and Michaels, during which Benoit challenged Triple H for his World Heavyweight Championship citing a ‘contract loophole’ he discovered after winning the title shot.
And just like that, the World Heavyweight Championship’s legitimacy increased to near-infinite levels seemingly overnight.
Ignore for a moment any conceptions you have of Chris Benoit the eventual killer (I made my thoughts pretty clear in my second week here), because at this point Benoit was probably at the height of his popularity. He was a man who had spent his previous nineteen years in professional wrestling, regarded during much of that time as one of the best workers of his generation, yet had just one day as a World champion to show for it. In his four years in WWE before that point, he’d been agonisingly close to winning the traditional WWE Championship on many occasions – four of which were on pay-per-view, including two reversed decisions against The Rock in 2000. He’d been on Smackdown for the entirety of the Brand Extension, and therefore had spent well over sixteen months working and aiming towards eventually earning that elusive belt. He was in a big feud with Brock Lesnar and his manager Paul Heyman, who had been the one to have Benoit given the punishing #1 slot in the Royal Rumble to make sure he could never challenge Lesnar ever again. Well now, he was the number one contender going into the biggest show of the year. He had the chance to achieve what had been his ultimate ambition since he debuted in the company, to hold the championship that predated the Kennedy Assassination by seven months and had been the absolute pinnacle of wrestling for much of that time.
And yet, in kayfabe, Chris Benoit chose against that. He threw away the opportunity to cement himself as a ‘former WWE Champion’ and avenge the injustices he’d suffered at the hands of Heyman and Lesnar. He thought “fuck convention”, and took a huge risk by jumping ship to Raw where there were already two of the greats battling it out for possession of the top spot. It could have all gone so horrible wrong, but it didn’t, and two months later Benoit was reduced to tears as Eddie Guerrero, who had won the WWE Championship in Benoit’s absence from the chase, applauded and embraced him in the middle of the ring in one of the most satisfying moments wrestling has ever produced.
However, in reality, the hazards for the WWE were just as copious. Going into Wrestlemania, the World Heavyweight Championship was still only considered to be eighteen months old, whereas the WWE Championship was entering its fifth decade. This was the twentieth Wrestlemania, which was obviously a landmark occasion, and every Wrestlemania bar three before this had been closed out by the WWE Championship match. Conversely, the World Heavyweight Championship had only been defended once before at the event, which was the previous year and was the aforementioned utterly under-whelming match between Triple H and Booker T in the mid-card. With all of these things taken into account, even with the World title being Raw’s belt, the WWE could have been forgiven for headlining with the classic WWE Championship as usual. Instead, the higher-ups decided that the underlying menace of rejection was substantially overridden by the potential of helping to establish the foundations of the World Heavyweight Championship’s impending legacy, rather than simply ADD to the already-existing one the WWE Championship boasted. Had this step not been taken, I don’t know if there would even BE separate World titles in the WWE today.
The execution (definitely no pun intended) of this was made all the more genius by the fact that Chris Benoit was something of an icon to many at the time. It was all well and good having Triple H go on and on about why his piss was better than our lives because he had that belt, but that’s basically who Triple H is – a massive egomaniac. As a character, he’d gloat if he had a blueberry muffin. It’s expected. Shawn Michaels winning the title was very nice, but it felt more like “Shawn Michaels is back and beat Triple H!” than it did “Shawn Michaels has won his first World title in over four-and-a-half years!”, so it wasn’t as effective as it could have been. Goldberg’s reign was an abortion, though it would have at least been more memorable if he’d won at Summerslam. I don’t blame Goldberg in the slightest, incidentally. And that was it – three men had held the belt, five different reigns between them, two of which were overshadowed by booking and the other three were ‘The Triple H Show, Featuring the World Heavyweight Championship’. Not the most auspicious backbone for the title, though certainly not outright bad either. Just a bit mediocre.
When Benoit challenged, that changed. Benoit was over with the marks for sticking up to Heyman and winning the Royal Rumble, and was worshipped by the smarts for being a great wrestler. When Chris Benoit told us that the World Heavyweight Championship was worth forgetting all previous trials and tribulations and was, at the very least, on par with the WWE Championship, we listened. And the WWE knew we would listen, because we’d seemingly waited for Benoit to get his chance to shine almost as long as he had.
It certainly helped that the match itself, which of course became a triple-threat with Michaels and Benoit both challenging Triple H, is one of the greatest matches I’ve ever seen and am ever likely to. Everyone was on their absolute best form, and when the dust had settled the audience in attendance – who had cheered Benoit all the way through – erupted at what they’d seen. I get goosebumps to this day when watching it. It was a truly extraordinary way to culminate what had already been an above-average Wrestlemania, and the union of Chris and Eddie afterwards was the icing on the cake. It was also important in keeping BOTH titles at the summit – for all of Triple H’s arrogance and Jim Ross stating that “the World Heavyweight Championship is the richest prize in the business”, it took seeing both champions together equally happy for one another to convince me once and for all that the big gold belt was here to stay but the initial title was still just as primary.
It’s been four years since then, and the World title’s seen a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. Batista’s held it three times, Edge twice and Undertaker’s about to win it for a second occasion as well. There have been a few down-times, such as Rey’s dismal sympathy reign (not his fault), Khali holding the belt out of desperation (again, not his fault and nowhere near as bad as it might have been), and that long streak of events where the World title always came before the WWE Championship even if Raw wasn’t main-eventing the show. However, the final quarter of 2006 saw the World title close out all of the last three pay-per-views, reasserting its place as a genuine major. Overall, the belt has never quite reached the lofty heights it did back in 2004, but it never needed to. All that was required was that it was believed to be of the same stature as the WWE title, a belt that people actually wanted to win and would go out of their way to do so. In short, a title that you would be proud to call the greatest achievement of your career if you won the thing.
Chris Benoit’s title reign ultimately proved lackluster and, as we all know, he killed his family and committed suicide last June. If we are to believe some of those who make their opinions heard, Chris is presently residing in a special unit of Hell for victims of brain-injury and retards, and is comparable to Hitler despite it being Goebbels who murdered his children. Rather than sympathise with a man who evidently mentally incapacitated himself for our entertainment over a number of years until he unwittingly transformed into a filicidal and mariticidal maniac, apparently it’s better to simply pigeon-hole him as ‘cold-blooded’ and continue to cheer such upstanding citizens as the premeditated liar Ken Kennedy or the bag-shitting juggernaut known as Randy Orton. But, regardless of how Benoit is perceived now, one thing that will never change is that his fictional decision to go for the World Heavyweight Championship in its infancy, rather than the proven WWE Championship, did more for the respectability of the belt than anything before or afterwards.
One can only hope that Samoa Joe’s impending TNA title victory can make even a fraction as profound an impact.
I said last week that I would probably write something about the Hall of Fame, but to be honest I don’t really have anything to share on it. I think my original idea was to look at the current inductees, decide who was worthy and who wasn’t, who should be in there who isn’t already, and who out of WWE’s current stars are likely to make it in there when their days in the ring are over.
However, I couldn’t find the motivation to concoct such a piece for the following reasons – I don’t know enough about a lot of the inductees in there right now to pass a fair judgment, it’s not for me to say that anyone residing there does or does not deserve their place, and we can’t always predict who will and will not have a positive influence based purely on the quality of their ring-work (co*Benoit*ugh).
Besides, I think there are already plenty of other articles dedicated to people who ought to be inducted, so I won’t retread old ground. I’ll just say congratulations to Ric Flair, Mae Young, Peter Maivia, Alan Johnson (Peep Show fans must surely get that one), Eddie Graham, Jack and Gerald Brisco, and Gordon Solie. Although, naturally, some of those people are dead. Yeah.
From ’24-man Tag Team Match’:
ythacker0101
apparently mayweather wins. khali comes and big show throws mawweather to him and khali hits but floyd moves and big show is hit then floys pins to win.
No.
That’s all I have to say about that.
Another week flies by like so many seagulls. Next time, I’ll probably just take a shortcut and do some sort of Wrestlemania fallout shit, fill it with insults and swearing and call it ‘work’. That are me, isn’t it.
Oh, and for anyone wondering about the title of the column, the answer’s yes: I did just call it that because the initials were ‘WHC’. To be fair, I really couldn’t think of anything else at all that suited the subject.
Bye.
