10 Fascinating WWE SummerSlam 1988 Facts
4. Ultimate Warrior "Held" The Intercontinental Belt Before Officially Winning It
Fans today are accustomed to live weekly television, but it used to be that WWE would tape several weeks of programming in a single night. Using that formula, matches that would hypothetically air on the date you read this could've been taped three or four weeks ago.
This proved tricky when it came to title changes, and it was the case when Warrior won the Intercontinental belt from The Honky Tonk Man at SummerSlam 1988. A week before the pay-per-view, WWE taped episodes of Superstars and Challenge that would air through the end of September 1988, and Warrior would need to be wearing the belt when appearing on those shows. So what to do?
On both nights, Warrior defeated Honky to in untelevised matches at the start of both sets of tapings. Later in both tapings, Warrior would enter with the belt he'd "won" when taping his matches that would air throughout September. At the end of both nights of tapings, it was announced that the decisions were reversed, and the belt was returned to Honky, so that he could "officially" lose it to Warrior at Summerslam. Complicated, no?