Does being a champion mean anything anymore? | Opinion
Are you really a champion if you’re losing?
I’m getting fed up with seeing so many champions losing on television on a weekly basis. Maybe this is a “old man yells at cloud” moment but shouldn’t being a champion mean something beyond just holding a title? It wasn’t that long ago if you were a champion, you would hardly lose, and if you did, it was for a good reason. But these days it appears that most of the midcard champions are always set up to be the fall guy for a more established star, which pretty much destroys the whole concept of championships.
I look at someone like Bandido and wonder about the position he’s in. He’s the Ring of Honor World Champion, the top championship in ROH. He always delivers and is one of the best wrestlers on the planet. I can’t think of a time where I saw a Bandido match that wasn’t awesome. But in terms of a top-level champion, can you argue he’s at the level of some of AEW’s top stars? Well, no, because nine times out of ten he loses to them. He lost to Swerve Strickland in the Owen Hart Foundation tournament and is set to challenge Jon Moxley for the International title at Forbidden Door this coming Sunday in a match where, let’s be realistic, Mox is favored to win. At least his ROH title isn’t on the line!
This isn’t the only example, of course. Oba Femi beat Dominik Mysterio in a matter of minutes on a recent episode of Raw despite Mysterio holding the AAA Mega Championship. When Komander won the ROH Television Championship last year, he lost to Kazuchika Okada in a match that was for the Continental title.
The argument for champions losing used to be that they can lose in order to build to a future title match. But Mox isn’t going to challenge for the ROH Championship anytime soon and neither will Swerve. We are not going to get Femi wrestling for the AAA Mega Championship. These losses weren’t to set up future title matches, but instead were designed to give someone that’s getting the push a big win ahead of whatever comes next.
It doesn’t help that there are way too many titles in pro wrestling anyway. AEW has become downright comical with its frequent title additions. When Tony Khan introduced the National title late last year, it was described as a title that would be defended overseas, like for NJPW or CMLL. That’s great, but that was also how the AEW International title was described when it was introduced a few years back. And we can’t confuse that with the AEW Continental title, which at one point was part of the AEW Unified Championship.
Yes, you should be confused.
This sounds cliche and a talking point that’s been screamed across social media but I’ll just say it here: titles used to mean something. There were only a few of them back in the 90s, and when someone won the Intercontinental title, for example, they felt important and were protected as such. That seems to be disappearing everywhere as more titles continue to be added. So the question now is, if everyone can be a champion, what’s the point of being one?
Bryan Rose is an editor from California that has been covering professional wrestling for well over a decade. He officially joined F4WOnline as an editor in 2017.