Friday, March 29, 2024
EditorialWWE Devil's Advocate: The 24/7 Championship is a Great Title

WWE Devil’s Advocate: The 24/7 Championship is a Great Title

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Welcome to the first edition of WWE Devil’s Advocate (or AEW Devil’s Advocate, if need be)! The idea behind this is that I’ll be tasked with trying to argue a point of view that most people would agree is wrong. Whether I feel that way or completely disagree, it is up to me to take on the perspective of making the case for that controversial viewpoint.

My goal is to convince you that this absurd opinion actually holds weight to it, as difficult as that might be. The harder the challenge, the more rewarding if I can succeed.

Ideally, I’d like to receive suggestions for topics in the comments that I can use for future articles, but since this is the first of these, I’ve picked this myself.

The topic at hand for this first post is: The 24/7 Championship is not only not bad and the most utterly useless belt in the company, it’s actually a fantastic title.

This is going to be tough. Here we go.

24/7 Unpredictability

The biggest advantage of the 24/7 title is that you never know when or how it will go to someone else.

Something people complain about constantly in pro wrestling is if the show is predictable. You can often look at the lineup of matches at the start of the show and guess everything that will happen beat by beat. Hell, I can be in the other room cooking dinner and barely able to hear my television and just by the amount of time that’s gone by and the slight change in energy in a commentator’s voice, I know the pinfall is coming and who is about to win.

But with the 24/7 Championship, it can come out of nowhere.

Once this title was created, every single moment of the show—even the backstage interviews—had a chance to see something go down.

The segment doesn’t even need to involve the champion. In the middle of someone else’s “gearing up in the locker room, ready for a match” footage, a commotion could happen and the 24/7 champion could be in danger.

The 24/7 title has changed hands in the middle of other people’s matches, or even during the Royal Rumble.

It keeps you on your toes.

Title Changes on House Shows and Other Events

Title changes are among the most exciting aspects of pro wrestling. Fans will often be hugely disappointed in an amazing match if the last three seconds of it aren’t the champion losing the title. Vice versa, many times, people will speak fondly of a bad match just because a new champion was crowned.

Entire pay-per-views have been written off as good or bad based on ONE title change. Imagine how much more that translates to the generic house shows.

People don’t go to non-televised live events expecting SummerSlam or WrestleMania. They go because it might be the only opportunity they have to see this up close (if Raw or something else doesn’t come to their market).

But they often have nothing to show for it. House shows are non-canon, in a sense. Things go down there that aren’t referenced in the slightest bit and have zero impact on the narrative. People test out new characters, team with other stars they’d never be seen with on camera, and goof off.

It can largely feel like a waste—as if you paid to see a training session or practice game, essentially, rather than a real show. You know that the United States Championship isn’t changing hands 99.999% of the time, but when the 24/7 title changes hands, suddenly, you feel like something on this show mattered.

Back in the day, they used to do this for other events, too. The title is on the line even when Raw, SmackDown and so on aren’t in production, so the pre-show is fair game. R-Truth pinned Jinder Mahal on the airplane flying to Saudi Arabia. Drake Maverick lost his title during his wedding. That makes it really feel like a true WWE Universe.

Opportunities for Crossover Content & Media Exposure

WWE is a company, first and foremost, rather than just the product consumed by the fans for entertainment. They need to think of ways to get more eyes on their programming and to get the name out there.

One of the best ways to do that is to get attention from other parts of pop culture to try to seed WWE into the public consciousness and make it more mainstream. WWE is far from the only example of this. Why do you think the Super Bowl has a big star perform music during halftime? It’s not because NFL fans are clamoring for it. That’s for everyone else to buzz about. It’s why commercials get celebrities to endorse their products or why television shows have guest stars with stunt casting.

WWE was able to put the 24/7 Championship in a spotlight for Old Spice and make that advertiser feel special. Look it up. Rick Boogs has a title reign as Joseph Average.

Rob Gronkowski, Doug Flutie, Enes Kanter, Kyle Busch and other athletes have won the title as a means to get fans of those sports to potentially check out Raw. Not into sports, but you’re into music? Bad Bunny and Marshmello won the title. More into politics? Put the belt on Mayor Glenn Jacobs and that could get mentioned on something like Meet the Press or whatever, potentially.

For all you know, all it take is that one little nugget of “Really? That happened? I’ll go tune into WWE to see what this is all about” before that person gets hooked on wrestling forever and starts to get their friends and family interested by proxy. There are plenty stories of people explaining how they first got into it because of something arbitrary and random.

You can’t get that with any other title. The best you can hope for is for a Superstar to pop up as a guest on a late night talk show once in a blue moon. But that’s more the opposite way around, wherein Jimmy Fallon’s show is looking to draw in the WWE audience, rather than funneling new people into WWE.

Spotlight on Lesser Superstars

Seemingly 57 people have won the 24/7 Championship. Most of them haven’t won any other titles and probably never will. The ones who have won other titles are largely just the Cruiserweight Championship.

Outside of a few names (mostly in the women’s division, like Carmella, Nikki A.S.H. and Alexa Bliss) and Jinder Mahal (former WWE champion), these 24/7 champions have largely been midcard to jobber acts.

They’re never in a position to win a better title. You’re not going to see Titus O’Neil win the Intercontinental Championship. Shelton Benjamin’s always been awesome, but he’s past the point where he’ll win the Universal Championship. Mojo Rawley was never going to headline WrestleMania.

But this title gives them a chance to do SOMETHING they can hang their hat on. They can tell people “I’m a former champion in WWE” even if there’s an asterisk to it.

Imagine how that must feel to be Peter Rosenberg, where you’re a fan from childhood and you aren’t stepping in the ring as a performer, but you’re still able to say you scored a pinfall on national television or pay-per-view and beat a WWE Superstar to win a championship. That’s awesome.

Old stars like Pat Patterson had one more moment in the sun. People who popped up for guest appearances like Kelly Kelly got to get a pop from the crowd and chuckle at the lunacy of their former job.

R-Truth is the MVP of this title. He’s made it his baby. Do you think Dana Brooke likes having a belt after all this time, even if it’s just the 24/7 Championship and not the Raw or SmackDown Women’s Championship?

They know it isn’t the same as winning the big one, but it’s still something they wouldn’t pass up.

 

Some Genuinely Funny Moments

“Hold on a second. I have to write up a quick post about how Santa Claus just became a WWE champion. This is my job.” – a direct quote that I’ve said before.

Humor is subjective. Clearly, what Vince McMahon found hilarious wasn’t funny to everyone. Even though I haven’t laughed at 9/10 scenarios with the title, because much of it grew old, there are some moments that made me legitimately laugh.

The first time we had several new champions crowned immediately one after another was a wild ride. It’s overplayed now, but at first, wow.

Ted DiBiase pays Alundra Blayze for the title? Gerald Brisco gets one up on Patterson for some stooge action? REFEREES have won the title? Maria Kanellis beat her husband while she was pregnant and got everyone to stop chasing the belt for a while because they finally had some morals, only for Mike to take advantage of pinning her while she was getting an exam done.

Some of this stuff (key word “some”) was worth a chuckle. R-Truth’s original hunt and games with Jinder Mahal was way better than any of the Reggie and Akira Tozawa stuff, or any of the crap with Tamina and the love story angle.

You can’t please everyone all the time, and you can’t just write for one audience, either. Just because I didn’t find it funny to see Tozawa and Truth hiding in trash cans while Reggie flips into oblivion doesn’t mean some portion of the audience wasn’t loving it. Keep that in mind. People have different opinions.

Speaking of which…

My ACTUAL Opinion

All the arguments above are essentially made with the preface that if done well, these are good ideas. Unfortunately, WWE hasn’t actually accomplished this. The 24/7 title has more promise and potential than it has true value.

It’s trash and everyone knows that. From the moment it was unveiled as one of the many “quick fix” gimmicks WWE tried to do with the whole “gritty third hour of Raw with less lights that we give up on immediately” and Raw Underground and such, everyone crapped on it because the belt looked atrocious. The reputation that’s followed hasn’t been much better.

But that doesn’t mean it can’t be something better.

I would personally redesign the belt a bit. I’m not a fan of the rainbow straps. The green leather looks awful and the empty side plates are distractingly bad. You can’t be expected to replace the side plates for each Superstar who wins it, since it revolves around too often, but why is it just a blank square? Why isn’t it at least the WWE logo, the words 24/7 or a clock design?!

Black strap, or maybe a dark gray one to differentiate it. Cool it down on the title changes so when it happens, it’ll feel more special, as we need to reeducate the fans and condition them to not expect it every show anymore.

Maximize your exposure. Why did Bad Bunny not lose the title on Saturday Night Live? That could have been the running gag throughout the whole show with multiple people winning the belt over the hour, pinning each other during sketches and so on. Get people talking about it.

Do something different. Put the title on a guy like Omos and have it be the total opposite of what we’ve seen, where instead of someone having to run away just to escape losing the belt, its now on someone who can safely walk the halls and anyone who messes with him is swatted down.

I want this title to retire with R-Truth, eventually, but I don’t think it needs to go away right this minute. However, if they don’t start fixing it soon, I don’t see much overall value in keeping it that much longer, as I doubt it is helping the ratings at this point.

Did this at least get you to think the opposite way temporarily? Are you sold on the argument?

What other ideas of Devil’s Advocate topics are you interested in seeing me tackle in the future?

Drop your ideas in the comments below!

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