What Does WWE Do With Old Titles?
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With WWE constantly crowning new champions, what happens to all of the old titles? Are they simply retired?
WWE has a lot of titles
WWE has a lot of titles. There are the main titles, the secondary titles, and the developmental titles. WWE also has a lot of former titles that are no longer used. So, what does WWE do with all these titles?
There are too many titles
WWE has a lot of titles. There are too many titles. That’s one of the criticisms that has been levied against WWE for years. There are currently nine different titles in WWE: the WWE Championship, the Universal Championship, the IC Championship, the United States Championship, the Raw Women’s Championship, the SmackDown Women’s Championship,the NXT Women’s Championship,the NXT Championship, and the Cruiserweight Championship. That’s a lot of gold for WWE Superstars to fight over.
One of the issues that WWE has is that there are so many titles and not enough superstars to go around. It’s one thing to have a lot of titles, but if there aren’t enough superstars to make those titles mean something, then it devalues the overall product. WWE has tried to address this issue by creating more titles, such as the United Kingdom Championship and the Tag Team Championships, but it’s still an issue.
WWE also has a lot of belts that have been retired or inactive for years. The Hardcore Championship was retired in 2002, while the World Heavyweight Championship was deactivated in 2013. The ECW Championship was retired in 2010, but brought back in 2016. There are also a number of other belts that have been inactive for years, such as the Million Dollar Belt and the Women’s World Tag Team Championships.
So what does WWE do with all of these old titles? Well, most of them are kept in storage or displayed at WWE Headquarters. However, some of them are given away to charities or used for prop purposes on WWE programming. For example, The Million Dollar Belt was given to Make-A-Wish Foundation in 2008 and The World Heavyweight Championship was used as a prop in various episodes of RAW in 2014.
There are too many champions
WWE currently has ten titles for male wrestlers, spread across its three main brands. Of those ten, six are regularly contested for on television. The other four are the United Kingdom Championship, the Cruiserweight Championship, the United States Championship, and the NXT North American Championship. NXT also has a Women’s Championship and a Tag Team Championship.
That’s a lot of champions. And it’s not just that there are a lot of titles, it’s that WWE doesn’t seem to know what to do with many of them. The United Kingdom Championship is only contested for on special occasions, and the same is true of the Cruiserweight Championship (although to be fair, that title did just have a long arc as part of a terrible storyline). The United States Championship is barely relevant, and the NXT North American Championship has only been around for a few months.
WWE has always had trouble managing its title belts. There have been periods where there were too many champions, and periods where there were too few. There have been periods where belts were poorly defended, and periods where belts changed hands so frequently that they lost all meaning. WWE is in one of those latter periods now, with titles changing hands so often that they no longer feel important.
WWE doesn’t know what to do with old titles
WWE has a lot of titles. For example, the WWE Championship, the Universal Championship, the Intercontinental Championship, the United States Championship, and the European Championship. But what happens to these titles when WWE decides to create new ones?
There are too many titles
WWE has a lot of titles. TOO many titles. It feels like every other week WWE is creating a new title or bringing back an old one. There are so many titles that it’s hard to keep track of them all, and it often leads to WWE devaluing their own titles.
WWE has always had a bit of a problem with too many titles, but it feels like it’s gotten worse in recent years. There are currently 11 different titles on Raw, SmackDown, and NXT (not including the UK Title), and that’s not even counting the Women’s, Tag Team, or cruiserweight titles. That’s just too many.
Part of the problem is that WWE doesn’t seem to know what to do with all of these titles. They’ll hot-shot a title change to pop a ratings decline, or they’ll create elaborate tournament for a title that no one really cares about. The result is that the titles mean less and less, and it devalues the entire concept of championships in WWE.
If WWE wants their championships to mean something again, they need to start by cutting down on the number of titles. 11 is just too many, especially when you consider that WWE has two world championships and two women’s championships. That’s already six belts that are supposed to be at the top of the card, and adding any more just dilutes the importance of all of them.
WWE also needs to be more careful about how they book title changes. If they’re going to have title changes every week, then those changes need to matter. They can’t just be randoml y decided or thrown together at the last minute; there needs to be a reason for them. Otherwise, it makes the whole concept of championships seem pointless.
There are too many champions
WWE currently has too many champions and it’s a problem.
In the early 2000s, WWE had one world champion, one Intercontinental champion, one European champion, one Hardcore champion, one Cruiserweight champion, and one Women’s champion. At the time, it made sense. WWE was trying to appeal to as many different kinds of fans as possible.
But now WWE has four world champions (Universal, WWE, United States, and Raw Women’s), two Intercontinental champions, two Cruiserweight champions, two Women’s champions, a North American champion, a United Kingdom champion, and a Smackdown Tag Team champion. That’s a lot of belts for a company that only has two brands (Raw and Smackdown).
The problem is that having too many champions devalues the importance of each title. If there are four world championships in WWE, then how important can any of them be? The same goes for the other titles. Having two cruiserweight champions makes the division feel less important than it should be. The same can be said for the women’s division and the tag team division.
WWE needs to trim the number of championships down to a more manageable level. They need to focus on quality over quantity when it comes to titles. Otherwise, they risk making all of their championships feel like they aren’t worth fighting for.
WWE should unify the titles
It’s been nearly two decades since WWE has unified all their titles into one World Championship. Sure, they’ve had brand-exclusive titles, but those were always meant to be transitional until they were brought back under one umbrella. Now is the time to do it again.
There are too many titles
WWE has a problem and that problem is that there are too many titles. There are so many titles that they are starting to lose their value and it is becoming difficult to care about them all.
unification would help to fix this problem by making the titles mean something again. It would also make it easier for fans to keep track of who is the champion and who isn’t.
WWE has tried to unify titles in the past, but it has never really worked out. The most recent attempt was in 2009 when they unified the WWE Championship and the World Heavyweight Championship. This didn’t last long though as WWE split the championships up again just a few months later.
Another attempt was made in 2016 when WWE unified the WWE World Heavyweight Championship and the WWE Universal Championship. This unification only lasted for a few months as well as WWE decided to split the titles up again in 2017.
The reason why these unification attempts have never really worked out is because WWE always ends up splitting the titles up again shortly after they have been unified. WWE needs to make a permanent decision to unify all of the titles if they want it to actually mean something.
There are too many champions
Currently, WWE has two world champions, two tag team champions, a women’s champion, a cruiserweight champion, and a United Kingdom champion. That’s too many titles. There are too many champions, and there are too many title belts.
WWE should unify the world titles. The WWE Universal Championship and the WWE Championship should be merged into one title. The current WWE Champion is Jinder Mahal, and the current WWE Universal Champion is Brock Lesnar. Whoever wins at Survivor Series should be the Undisputed WWE Champion.
The tag team titles should also be unified. The Raw Tag Team Champions are Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose, and the SmackDown Tag Team Champions are The New Day (Big E and Xavier Woods). Again, whoever wins at Survivor Series should be the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Champions.
The women’s division is fine the way it is. The Raw Women’s Champion is Alexa Bliss, and the SmackDown Women’s Champion is Charlotte Flair. They don’t need to unify the titles.
The cruiserweight division is also fine the way it is. The current Cruiserweight Champion is Enzo Amore. There’s no need to unify the title with any other belt.
The United Kingdom Championship should be defended on both Raw and SmackDown. The current United Kingdom Champion is Pete Dunne. He should be allowed to defend his title on both shows.
Unifying the titles would make things less confusing for the fans, and it would make things more exciting for the wrestlers because there would be fewer champions overall.