Jim Cornette recently appeared on Inside The Ropes and spoke about the recent WWE Title Unification. Here is what he had to say…
“I think it would be best to have one champion and make it feel more special but I also think the horse has left the barn, cowboy. I hate to be negative Nancy or Debbie Downer but you can see why when I watch the current product it gives me gas because for years in wrestling everyone knew who the World Champion was. Of course it depended what part of the country you were. For most of the country, the NWA champion was the champion people knew. Harley Race would hold the title for 3 years, Dory Funk Jr. would have it for 3 years, Ric Flair would hold it for an amount of time, Lou Thesz, you know, practically lived with the thing. Everybody knew he’s the champ. in the AWA it was generally Verne Gagne, home are hero. In the northeast it was Bruno Sammartino, no matter who came and went, everyone knew, Bruno’s the champ. Well now the problem is, the title instead of being viewed as the prize in sports, the titles have been used as props. Oh lets switch the belt onto this guy or that guy, oh let the guy cash in a briefcase and cover the dead guy that’s just been beaten up, it’s just been turned into a prop, it’s been devalued, it’s been prostituted. Besides that, now that everyone pretty much knows pro wrestling is choreographed, pre-determined, whatever you wanna call it, everyone knows you’re not really the champion and someone just awards you it. The only thing that ever annoyed me about the Bret Hart screwjob in Montreal is Bret called the newspapers in Montreal to tell them he’s been screwed and hadn’t really lost the title, well he didn’t call them when he won the thing and say oh I didn’t really win it, someone just gave it to me. Now, It’s a shiny belt that people can buy a replica of and it’s another tool in our toolkit that we’ve devalued to the point where it doesn’t make us any money anymore and it’s sad.”
