10 Wrestlers Who Were Secretly The Greatest Intercontinental Champions Ever
Pat Patterson is in some excellent company.
The Intercontinental Championship has been the cornerstone of the WWF/E midcard for nearly forty years. During that time, its been considered a stepping stone to the big time, and has been contested in the main event at five WWF pay-per-views, including WrestleMania and SummerSlam. Its also seen a marked downturn in fortunes recently, in no small part due to abysmally short-sighted booking strategies that have seen the companys chosen stars booked preferentially over the entire roster, at the expense of building new stars and creating a future. The title has been held by seventy-six men and one woman, Chyna, in 1999; it was held by Dean Douglas for less than fourteen minutes in 1995; it's been vacated ten times, and unified with every singles title in the company except the WWF/E Championship. Stars that have had memorable IC title runs on their way to greatness in the main event include The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Shawn Michaels, and the Macho Man Randy Savage, while stars like Chris Jericho and Triple H managed to elevate the title just by wearing it. Meanwhile, Mr. Perfect, Rowdy Roddy Piper and Razor Ramon were famous for never wearing main event gold in the WWF, but managing to make the Intercontinental Championship seem like a world title. And, of course, everyone knows about the Honky Tonk Man, who through politicking, scheming and cheap-shotting, managed to remain the longest reigning Intercontinental Champion in WWF/E history at 454 days. Those are the facts that everyone remembers but what about the unsung Intercontinental Champions, the men who no one remembers but who actually had revelatory runs with the title? This article is dedicated to ten of the finest of them.