The most common thought about championships in wrestling is that there are too many. Because there are too many, they lack meaning. It takes away from people just beating each other up over personal issues like:
- NWA Hollywood Wrestling's Roddy Piper versus the Guererros in the 1970's
- WWF's George Steele versus Randy Savage in the 1980's
- WCW's Chris Benoit versus Kevin Sullivan in the 1990's
- WWE's Mick Foley versus Randy Orton in the 2000's
- ROH's Kevin Owens versus SCUM in the 2010's
- WWE's Rusev versus Bobby Lashley 2020
With 2020's first prominent personal issue being a cucking angle, I think we might want to step away from personal issues. Were the feuds listed above the best of each decade? No (I cannot actually judge Piper's [which did involve trophies and bets...research].), and I know that. Because most feuds need a championship to create the personal issues or further emphasize how important it is for the challenger (in most cases) to dethrone a champion. The latter being the basis for ECW's Raven character.
Raven made it a point to ruin Tommy Dreamer's life for alleged past indiscretions. ECW's fans knew that whoever the summer camp bully was, it was not the Dreamer they knew. To make matters worse for Dreamer was that Raven had become the heavyweight champion, so Raven reigned the Land of Extreme as a tyrant and it fell upon Dreamer to come up with a way to save the promotion. Raven's most heinous actions were at the expense of Dreamer's best friend, The Sandman. He stole his wife and child in order to make it nearly impossible for him to win his title back. The belt elevated one feud and was the center of the drama for the other.
You can argue that the championship's sole purpose is to instruct the fans which feud is suppose to be the headliner. That was definitely the case in the organizations that did not belong to the NWA, but in the NWA, every territory needed their own sets of belts. The fans needed to know who the best were when they went to the smoke-filled venues, and the promoters needed something to kick off the feuds.
It also promoted the wrestlers who had the belts on the national stage. A title reign just looks great on a resume.
As roster sizes grow, more championships give wrestlers more to do. Bookers cannot come up with a personal issue for every pairing. If somebody has a championship, they motivate wrestlers to become challengers. This is a play on the original premise of professional wrestling. Two would fight just to get the winner's purse. There is no reason to take it personally, until someone takes shortcuts to secure it.
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