12 Terrible Things That Happened To The Intercontinental Championship (That Are Worse Than a Diva Winning It)

WWE.com

On New Year's Day, WWE.com put up an article titled "10 things we want to see in 2016" with the above picture of Sasha Banks with the Intercontinental Championship as the picture on the first page. This goes with #9 on the list; "A Diva wins a male championship". While this would of course be impossible due to WWE's views on male-on-female violence, it would be cool to see someone like Banks win a male title, as she has shown to be a better wrestler than some of the men on the roster, and has experience with intergender matches (like this one, where she says her future fiancee has a tiny dick and gets kicked in the mouth by said future fiancee). In an era where people like Candice LeRae can fight in hardcore matches with three other male wrestlers and we have independent pay-per-views where every match is intergender, it seems wrestling has grown to accept intergender wrestling as another kind of wrestling, instead of just "watch this guy batter this woman"
 Well, not exactly. On that article, one comment stood out to me. It reads, and I quote

" dumbest thing I heard 2day, true wrestling fans don't want to see a diva win the ic belt, who made this list anyway."

Let's ignore the fact that this "true wrestling fan" has probably never seen any wrestling outside of WWE, and look at the comment. The idea that a women holding the Intercontinental Championship would diminish the title's history is ridiculous for a few reasons. First off, Chyna has already held it twice, and since the title has still been considered an important championship in WWE for 15 years after she won it says something. And second, there have been much worse things involving the Intercontinental Championship that would still be worse than a woman holding it. Here are ten things worse than a woman holding the Intercontinental Championship (in no particular order).

 

12. The longest reign in the title's history was a joke 

While the Honky Tonk Man was a very entertaining character, he was still a joke champion who's heat was basically based on the fact that he would often intentionally get counted out or disqualified to retain every single time. The story even goes that much better wrestler and talker Jake Roberts was going to beat him for the title, but Roberts was still injured after a guitar shot went array. Honky apparently grabbed a real guitar on accident instead of a gimmicked one. Basically, The longest reign in the history of the Intercontinental Championship was a fluke and a joke beginning to end.

11.  The longest reign in the title's history ended in a 31 second match

To top off the awful reign of the Honky Tonk Man was the embarrassing way it ended. At SummerSlam 1988, the Honky Tonk Man had an open challenge for his title due to his original opponent, Brutus Beefcake, being written off TV. Out came The Ultimate Warrior, who proceeded to squash the champ in 31 seconds to win the belt. While the argument can be made that it was shocking, and the champion didn't see it coming, but the fact that the longest reign in the title's history ended in a match that was barely half a minute is terrible. 

10. Ultimate Warrior immediately vacated the title after winning a better one

The epic match between WWF Champion Hulk Hogan (name retracted) and Intercontinental Champion Ultimate Warrior was a great match and one often remembered throughout history. It also included the shocking clean loss by Hogan, an incredibly rare moment. Having the Intercontinental Champion both main event WrestleMania and beat Hulk Hogan was great for the title, What wasn't great was Warrior immediately giving up the title because he had the WWF Championship. While it makes sense in shoot sense, because they needed a champion to main event each house show tour, but in kayfabe, it made the title feel less important, because it was immediately traded for a better one.

9. Dean Douglas' 11 minute reign

Before In Your House 4, Intercontinental Champion Shawn Michaels was beaten up by a group of Marines outside a bar and couldn't compete. At the pay-per-view, Michaels' opponent Dean Douglas (better known as Shane Douglas) was simply awarded the title...and then immediately lost it to Razor Ramon, ending his reign at 11 minutes. Why would they even give the belt to Douglas just to have him lose it immediately? It made no sense.

8. Frequent hot-shoting during the Attitude Era

In the Attitude Era, the Intercontinental Championship was basically worthless. The title was passed around so often it lost all meaning. From WrestleMania 13 to WrestleMania 17, the title changed hands 30 times. Even worse, 13 of those title reigns lasted less than a month, and 7 lasted less than two weeks. There was one point where the belt changed hands 3 times in 4 days. Yeah, because nothing screams "important" like a new champion every few weeks.

7. Title changes for no reason

Branching off the hot-shoting of the title, another thing that has plagued the Intercontinental Championship are the pointless title changes. What I mean is having the title change hands, just to have it go right back to the champion shortly after. There have been 18 times where the title has changed hands and gone back to the champion with a month. This includes times where the title was vacated, only to go back to the guy who vacated it. Why do that? It just makes the title feel cheap.

6. Triple H wins the title just to deactivate it

For whatever reason, WWE decided to unify the World Heavyweight Championship and Intercontinental Championship in 2003. It didn't make a lot of sense, since one was a world championship and one was a secondary championship. It's not like when they unified the WWE & WCW Championships, because both of those were considered a top prize in wrestling. At No Mercy, World Heavyweight Champion Triple H (mid-Reign of Terror) defeated Intercontinental Champion Kane and unified the two belts. 7 months later, the belt was back, with Christian winning in a battle royal at Judgement Day, making the unification completely pointless.

5. A 21 second match at WrestleMania

Once again, WWE made the Intercontinental Championship look pathetic by having the reigning champion JBL drop the belt in 21 seconds to Rey Mysterio on the Grandest Stage of Them All. What makes this quick match arguably worse than the 31 second Warrior-Honky Tonk match  is that the champion was a former WWE Champion and had main evented WrestleMania before. Along with that, JBL was considered an actual credible champion, unlike the Honky Tonk Man. Just terrible.

4. Ezekiel Jackson held it

Do you even remember who Ezekiel Jackson is? Didn't think so.

3. The Miz has held it for one day...twice

The Miz being champion is not a bad thing. He is a decent wrestler who gets great heat. The problem is the guy has failed to be a good champion when he has the belt. The Awesome One has had two title reigns end after 24 hours each. The first was the night after WrestleMania 29, where he dropped the belt back to Wade Barrett after winning it the night before. The second was the night after Night of Champions 2014, dropping the belt back to the former champion Dolph Ziggler.The fact that someone can win it more than once and drop it so quickly kind of sets the bar pretty low for anyone to be champion.

2. Curtis Axel jobs to CM Punk for months while champion

Things were looking good for Curtis Axel when he re-debuted. He won the Intercontinental Championship and was getting a solid push. Then the CM Punk-Paul Heyman feud happened. Because Punk couldn't get his hands on Heyman every week, Axel became Punk's punching bag for months on end, all the while still holding the Intercontinental Championship. Axel never got one over on Punk, and it made both him and the belt look worthless. 

1. Wade Barrett has held it 5 times

Don't get me wrong, I think Wade Barrett is great and should be champion. The problem is that he has been Intercontinental Champion half a dozen times, and is one of the biggest jobbers on WWE TV. It would be fine if he held it once and was jobber, but he's held that title more times than all but three wrestlers. He has held the belt the same amount of times as Triple H, who is a 13-time world champion. In fact, out of the six wrestlers to hold the Intercontinental Championship 5 or more times (Barrett, Triple H, Chris Jericho, Jeff Jarrett, Rob Van Dam, and Edge), Barrett is the only one who hasn't gone on to win a world championship (Jarrett's were in WCW and TNA, but still). And judging by his current position in WWE, that seems like a very distant thought.

dumbest thing I heard 2day, true wrestling fans don't want to see a diva win the ic belt, who made this list anyway.

dumbest thing I heard 2day, true wrestling fans don't want to see a diva win the ic belt, who made this list anyway.

dumbest thing I heard 2day, true wrestling fans don't want to see a diva win the ic belt, who made this list anyway.