10 Instant Wrestling Title Devaluations
5. From Jerry Lynn...To Steve Corino (ECW World Heavyweight Title)
You can half-understand this one.
ECW's ranks were thoroughly depleted by 2000. That even Taz, who was previously considered (with some justification) too short to make it to the WWF, departed for Stamford, pretty much said it all: nobody was safe.
Well, not everybody. Corino was safe. He wasn't awful by any stretch, but he was destined to float around the midcard for his entire career, which adversely impacted the prestige of the ECW Title and the company itself.
His act didn't fit the big time. He'd brag and screech that the audience were drunken idiots who weren't capable of appreciating real music like the Backstreet Boys and N*Sync, in what had the distinct air of cheap heat, in his dull feud with Dusty Rhodes. The Rhodes feud predictably bombed between the ropes, ensuring that ECW could no longer brag about its match quality nor its standing as wrestling's foremost production line.
ECW in 2000 was no longer the preserve of the outlaw and the rising star - despite their national television deal, it had begun to resemble an Independent for the first time since 1996.
Truthfully, Tommy Dreamer's ECW Title win felt like the death knell for the belt. Dreamer was always the bridesmaid. That was his character. When he won it, it felt like ECW's heartwarming story (as heartwarming as a story involving the Mass Transit incident could be, anyway) had arrived at its natural resolution.