1. Bruno Sammartino vs. Buddy Rogers - WWF Title (Madison Square Garden, 1963)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvlIgBnypDM But the all-time greatest WWE title change squash has to be the original. Nature Boy Buddy Rogers became the first WWE Champion by winning in a tournament in Rio de Janeiro in 1963, at least according to WWE.com. In reality, Rogers was recognized as the new WWWF champ when the former Capitol Wrestling Corporation left the National Wrestling Alliance. Rogers reign would last just over three weeks before Bruno Sammartino would plow through Rogers in less than a minute at Madison Square Garden, kicking off an eight-year title reign during which he would sell out the Garden 187 times (including a three-plus year reign in the 1970s). Sammartino was the wildly popular champ WWWF needed to grow and succeed in the early days as a breakaway promotion. Without him, there was no guarantee that the renegade promotion would make it, much less become the sports entertainment behemoth it is today. And it all started with a squash.
Scott Carlson
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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
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