10 Times Wrestlers Held Championship Belts Hostage

5. Alundra Blayze - WWE Women's Champion

Tessa Blanchard Impact Champion
WWE.com

It wasn't a hostage for very long.

The moment the renamed-Madusa dropped WWE's Women's Championship into a helpfully-placed waste bin live on a December 1995 edition of Nitro meant way more than the sum of its parts. A ratings war that had already turned testy suddenly started smashing supposedly sacred tenets, much in the same way Vince McMahon had when he first took on the territories in the 1980s.

It was Bischoff's a*sshole inguinity and Blayze's bravery that made the moment so, but the entire thing was far more successful in burying McMahon than it was the belt.

The Chairman had thrown in the towel on his rebooted women's division by the end of 1995, doing away with a push for Alundra Blayze that had been stop-start for most of her two full time years with the company. In a rare case of The Chairman conceding defeat on something when he was operating at his most stubborn, he wasn't a devil for the details. Blayze was leaving the company, but he'd forgotten to check that she hadn't stolen the stationery.

Contributor
Contributor

Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation over 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. Within the podcasting space, he also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House! and Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett