10 Best WWE Hardcore Champions
Gone, but not forgotten.
WWE's Hardcore Championship was discontinued in August 2002, and not a day has gone by since in which every single wrestling fan in the world hasn't paused for a fleeting moment to remember it.
It didn't carry much prestige, of course. In fact, it was once worn (for about 15 seconds) by an anonymous woman who - due to being a WWE employee with female sex organs prior to the year 2014 - was referred to by commentators as "Godfather's Ho".
This was reflected in the way in which contemporary performers treated it, too. It wasn't a belt that you went to the ring demanding a match for so much as it was one that, if you saw the champion standing around backstage and had a frying pan within your grasp, you'd have a half-hearted go at out of a sense of obligation.
As you have probably inferred from the above, the Hardcore division didn't exactly produce many five-star matches. Most of them were brief - so brief that you could fit about 10 of them in one show - and they were less likely to feature armbars and headlocks than they were thumbtacks and flaming tables.
That said, we wouldn't have it any other way - and, in celebration of that, here are the 10 best Hardcore champions ever...
10. Tommy Dreamer
A World Heavyweight Champion in ECW, Tommy Dreamer's primary function in WWE was being carted out every so often to coincide with the company's occasional, fleeting aspirations to make hardcore wrestling a staple part of its product.
Before Paul Heyman's passion project was bastardised in 2006, this involved winning the Hardcore Title some 14 times, an achievement that puts him sixth in the all-time rankings (one place below Shawn Stasiak, who held the belt 15 times, or less than one day, in total).
Most of these reigns were of course completely meaningless, but the last of them carried some significance. It was Dreamer who agreed to put up the belt against Intercontinental Champ Rob Van Dam in August 2002, a match which unified the two titles and thus ended the Hardcore lineage for good.
For this reason, plus the fact that he just seems like an all-round swell guy (which is something of rarity in professional wrestling, where being horrible is often encouraged), the Innovator of Violence has to be included on the list of greats.