10 Stages Of The WWE Championship’s Devolution: From Prize To Prop
4. Ratings Grab
Vince McMahon's decision to crown himself WWF champion was baffling both in itself and the context of company storylines - which, by the stupid standards of 1999, really is saying something.
To parse the (il)logic: McMahon, still (an awesome) heel, was driven out of the WWF by Austin per the stipulation of Fully Loaded 1999. Upon returning to the company as a face, he was goaded into a title match by Triple H - who would later recover, but by that point was a paper champion - and only went and won the bloody thing. Weird, is probably the word; by that point, the WWF was handily thrashing WCW in the battle for ratings supremacy, Mr. McMahon was never a critical smash in the babyface role, and the point was almost entirely missed: the McMahon family existed to elevate the stars, not act as the stars themselves - and they worked because they were the enemies of the common man, not their avatars.
The net result was a damaging blow to the prize. It was arbitrarily handed to and removed from McMahon for a ratings spike. Almost instantaneously, it devolved from prize to gimmick. While it was regrettable, retconned and ultimately restored, it remains both a blot on the lineage and a harbinger of the indiscriminate damage to come.