We’re just a little over a week into life without Vince McMahon in the WWE, and with Triple H serving as the man with the pencil, we’re already seeing some key differences in programming. Monday night’s episode of Raw was the first episode in a long time that I sat through, in its entirety, and felt entertained from beginning to end. It was very wrestling-centric, which…hey…what do y’know? As it turns out, pro wrestling actually plays pretty well on a weekly pro wrestling show! But, to me, the minor tweak that I noticed right away and enjoyed the most was the focus the show placed on one of the WWE’s midcard titles – the United States Championship.
We saw a nice vignette early on highlighting some of the former champions in the belt’s history – names like Dusty Rhodes, Harley Race, Bret Hart, and many other legends of the sport of professional wrestling. It was a nice way to remind audiences of just how prestigious the lineage of that title is, how it helped serve as a stepping stone to bigger and better successes, how it defined the careers of some men, and how many damn good wrestling matches we’ve seen with that slab of gold hanging in the balance.
But, as nice as it was, it also served an important purpose – to show us all, as fans, that this United States Championship is going to mean something again. They backed this up with two triple threat matches to determine who would wrestle each other to determine – stay with me here – who would face Bobby Lashley for the United States Championship. So, it became a huge focal point of the show. In Lashley, they have a readymade champion who comes across as a main event talent. If you’re not going to have Roman Reigns on every show, you need a top draw and a top prize for wrestlers to vie for. Lashley can be that guy, and the United States Championship can be that prize. It makes all the sense in the world.
I’m all for this idea, and I’d imagine they’ll do something similar on SmackDown with the Intercontinental Championship (that still looks like a Beyblade on a leather strap, thanks I hate it). When I think back to my childhood, growing up as a wrestling fan, there were times when I thought the Intercontinental Championship was cooler than the WWE Championship. I remember guys like Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, Razor Ramon, and Jeff Jarrett holding that title in the mid 1990s and routinely having the most exciting matches on the card. I remember feeling like it meant something to hold this title (or if you were a WCW fan, the U.S. Championship), and that added to the depth of the show and the thrill of the competition. The WWE can certainly get back to that, and it’ll help create a more balanced, well-rounded, and interesting show.
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Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley
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