10 Changes WWE Hoped You Wouldn’t Notice
Nothing to see here! WWE changes you definitely weren't supposed to spot.
WWE's relationship with its own history can be a bit love/hate.
Sometimes, the announcers draw attention to details from years before and explain why something has changed. Other times? Not so much. Those occasions can stick out, because they rarely reward long-term fans for paying attention in the first place.
These switches can be so blatant that they're impossible to ignore. Kane, for example, went from mute monster to sympathetic victim and possible necrophiliac all within the span of a few years. WWE couldn't hide the ridiculousness of that, and they didn't even try - they just thought, 'f*ck it' and rolled with the latest story they wanted to tell that week.
Some changes are a little more subtle. There's a wide range between subtlety-silliness here. Some examples are ones you might even have forgotten about over the years, and others are things you may never have spotted at all. The product moves so quickly that it's hard to keep up with absolutely everything going on, to be fair.
All of these adjustments have one thread linking them: Vince McMahon hoped you wouldn't give this stuff too much thought.
10. The Spinner Belt Stopped Spinning
Some fans hated the "spinner" belt.
WWE introduced the gimmicky title for John Cena in 2005, and the rotating centre plate became very much akin to pro wrestling Marmite. Cena's customised championship suited him, but it would've been awful had say...The Undertaker held the thing during that era.
The strap's design was distinctly toy-like too, which was surely the point - WWE never miss the chance to make more moolah, and they surely knew that JC's personal prize would shift countless replicas online and at shows. The "spinner" seemed destined to stick around. Then, suddenly, it stopped spinning.
That same core design stayed, but the central WWE logo no longer flapped around like it was about to break off. Nailing down exactly when this happened is tough, but it seems to have been around the time of No Mercy 2007 (shortly after Cena's pec tear).
A few probs wished the company had just debuted a brand new look instead of fixing the logo in place.