8 Wrestlers Who Restored The Value Of Championships

A championship is only worth as much as the wrestler holding it. With the wrong champion, a belt’s stock plummets, and it becomes no more than a shiny little trinket, rather than anything of real worth. Pick the right guy, however, and a championship becomes the ultimate prize: something to aspire to, something worth fighting for and official recognition of all the blood, sweat, and tears a wrestler has shed to get to that point.

A champion’s connection with the audience is key to a championship’s prestige, but so is booking. A wrestler needs to be presented as a credible threat before making a challenge, and when they win the belt, they need to be kept strong. One of WWE’s favourite habits in recent years has been using their midcard champions as jobbers to the stars, and it continues with The Miz on SmackDown to this day. Such tactics have rendered the Intercontinental and United States titles meaningless and without value.

It’d be remiss not to mention WCW, either. No company has ever desecrated their own championships with such thoughtlessness, and the fact that Vince Russo, David Arquette and Buff Bagwell’s mother held WCW gold in the promotion’s final years says it all.

But just as a bad champion can ruin a belt’s reputation, a strong champion can turn it around. These list is dedicated to the wrestlers who’ve taken a lowly title belt and helped elevate it to new heights.

Here are 8 wrestlers who restored the value of their championships.

Though WWE’s treatment of their tag division hasn’t been as egregious as what they’ve done to their women’s division at times, their Tag Team Championships have often struggled for prestige. After peaking with the early-2000s Hardyz/Dudleyz/Edge & Christian rivalry, the belts became little more than props for half-hearted, hastily thrown-together combinations of singles wrestlers and listless units like the Colons and Basham Brothers.

Recent years have seen forgettable reigns from teams like The Usos and Prime Time Players and as recently as last summer many considered tag wrestling in WWE to be well and truly dead. The common viewpoint was that the company had no interest in making the division a going concern again, and only kept the belts around for tradition’s sake.

That all changed with The New Day. Big E, Kofi Kingston, and Xavier Woods are closing in on a full calendar year as champions, and while they haven’t always benefitted from great booking, they’re one of WWE’s most important acts. They’ve defeated every team that’s ever been thrown at them, but their immense popularity trumps everything else and elevates the WWE Team Team Titles to a level they’ve not been at in close to 15 years.

Paul London and Brian Kendrick had a great run in 2006/07, but they can’t touch The New Day in terms of all-round appeal. These are their belts, and whoever inherits them has a tough act to follow.