12 OTHER Major WWE Title Changes Outside North America

4. Shawn Michaels Wins European Title - Birmingham, England (1997)

D Generation X Shawn Michaels European Title
WWE Network

Now this is a dandy of a title switch…

The European Championship was created in 1997 and served as a vehicle for the British Bulldog, who won a tournament in Germany to become the first title-holder. Despite its name, the title was defended in the U.S. during Bulldog’s reign, except for what would be his final defense.

Davey Boy battled Shawn Michaels in the main event of the UK-based PPV One Night Only for the European Championship. HBK would defeat the British Bulldog in Birmingham, making him a major heel and raising questions about whether Michaels used backstage influence to gain a title that was somewhat beneath him at that stage in his career. (Michaels would win the WWF Championship two months later.)

HBK would hold the titles for less than three months before “losing” it to fellow D-Generation X member Triple H in a sham match.

Contributor
Contributor

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.