KB’s Review: Champions Losing Is A Bad Idea

I don’t know how else to put something that should be a really simple idea. Earlier this week on “Monday Night Raw”, a staggering four champions were defeated in a single night. When you keep in mind that there are only six champions in the whole company (counting New Day as two champions), this has to be one of the worst days to be a champion in the history of the company. Today we’re going to look at the multiple reasons why this is perhaps the dumbest thing that a wrestling company can do and how it hurts everything and everyone involved.

First and foremost (and hopefully the most obvious), it makes champions and their titles look worthless. That title belt is supposed to make someone look like they’re one of the best around in the promotion. Charlotte is supposed to be the best woman, New Day is supposed to be the best tag team and Miz is supposed to be a strong midcard star and someone ready to move up to a new level.

However if you watched “Monday Night Raw” this week, these people all look like they’re easy to beat and therefore not worthy of holding a title. How are the champions different than say the Fandango or Dolph Ziggler or anyone else who doesn’t hold a title but lost last night? There’s a pay per view coming up in less than two weeks and I’m supposed to want to pay to see these people defend their titles?

Speaking of the pay per view, that brings up another issue: the Dudley Boyz, Sami Zayn and Paige all pinned champions earlier this week. Other than Zayn, none of them are being added to the title matches, at least not right now. In other words, the wins meant nothing and aren’t helping the people who got those wins, so who actually benefits from these things?

The worst part is that it’s not even a new concept. On “Monday Night Raw”, January 13, 2014, Kofi Kingston pinned WWE World Champion Randy Orton in a non-title match. Kingston would then lost to Orton via DQ the following week, pin Fandango on “Smackdown” and then enter the 2014 Royal Rumble as entrant number eight, last about twelve minutes, help eliminate one person, and be eliminated by Roman Reigns.

Compare this to Kingston’s performances in the 2013 Royal Rumble (entered #4, lasted 22 minutes, eliminated two names) or the 2012 Royal Rumble (entered #11, lasted about 18 minutes, eliminated no one). These aren’t exactly tour de force performances but they’re certainly not terrible.

However, they’re also about the same as his performance in 2014. You might think that someone who pinned the WWE World Champion completely clean could warrant, I don’t know, A TITLE SHOT or something. Instead, Kingston got another match the next week (non-title of course) with John Cena interfering to cost him the match. Nothing more was mentioned about this and Kingston was right back in the midcard section where he started.

Normally I would go back in time and list off several more examples but that’s a bit more difficult here because it happens so infrequently. Sure a champion might get counted our or disqualified to advance a feud and set up a rematch which is perfectly fine. That’s logical storytelling and has worked for years. What hasn’t happened for years is to have a champion get pinned in the middle of the ring with nothing coming as a result.

Simply put, that makes no sense and is really bad booking. How are any of these people going to benefit from their wins? The Dudley Boyz have already had and lost a feud with New Day, Paige isn’t in the title match at “Extreme Rules 2016” and unless Zayn wins the title, this really keeps him in the same place.

What might be even worse is how simply one of these stories is to fix. Kevin Owens is owed an Intercontinental Title shot, Cesaro was ripped off and Zayn already lost to Owens at “Payback”. The solution here should have been obvious: have Zayn beat Owens to get into the title hunt and Owens says he gets in because of his rematch clause. All it takes is some simple planning and everything works out the same without the need to have Miz get pinned on free TV.

Speaking of bad storylines, let’s take a look at Paige vs. Charlotte. The idea here was to have Charlotte not be able to win without Flair in her corner. Ok, that’s fine enough, but look at what happened. Instead of Charlotte being all confused and upset, she wrestled the same match until Flair came out anyway and distracted her, setting up the rollup win for Paige.

How does this advance the story they’re trying to tell with Charlotte? It was Flair being out there that distracted her instead of the other way around, setting up the stupid finish. If you just have to do this stupid idea that makes Charlotte look like a mess, could you at least follow your own storylines instead of going the completely opposite way and making everyone look confused? Well save for Paige of course who can now go back to Main Event in matches that are barely ever watched.

Finally, it makes the people who beat the champions look stupid. Do you think the Dudley Boyz are going to bring up beating New Day and therefore deserving a title shot? Or maybe Paige will think she deserves to be the #1 contender to whoever wins between Natalya and Charlotte? Anyone think either of those things will happen?

I’d certainly go with not likely, because that’s not what’s in the plans at the moment. No instead let’s just have them go on about their usual routines and act like what they did means nothing because, unfortunately, that’s exactly what it does mean. These people are going to just go on with whatever they were doing (read as nothing in both cases) because these non-title wins are worthless.

That’s the big summation of all these problems: the non-title wins over champions mean nothing other than bad results for everyone involved. No one benefits from them and the titles themselves are damaged in the process. Unfortunately that’s the best idea the writing team can come up with because just having someone else (as in not a reigning champion) getting pinned means nothing.

This really shouldn’t be a complicated idea and it really needs to quit happening. It stopped being shocking a long time ago and the fact that it’s now happening twice in half an hour doesn’t make it interesting. Now it’s just stupid and makes everyone, including the creative team, look bad. Figure out something else because this isn’t working.

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