The Intercontinental Championship used to be a lot more important than the mid-card curse it has since become, with Superstars who had been competing for the WWE Championship only a month before vying for this belt just as much as they had that one. A very peculiar cliché as of late is the fact that whoever holds the title will lose almost all of their non-title matches. They often deliver the goods when defending it, but for some reason look weak as hell when they're not! As a result, holding the belt is now far from an advantage for any existing or up and coming Superstar. Just look at Wade Barrett's bizarre string of recent losses against Sin Cara before successfully defending the title. It appears as if this is a booking decision made in order to make the champion's eventual victory more "surprising", but its repetitiveness has eliminated that entirely. It's ultimately just a very strange way to handle this title, but at least it gets defended (unlike the US one).