26 Times Wrestling Titles Have Been Disrespected

20. "Who's First?" Gillberg's Light Heavyweight Championship Run

WWF Title broken
WWE.com
With the then-WWF starting to recognise the Light Heavyweight Championship once more in 1997, Taka Michinoku won the vacant title after a tournament before losing the belt to Christian. Then came Duane Gill.

November 1998 would see Gill defeat Christian for the gold on an edition of Raw. What followed shortly after was Gill's transformation to Gillberg; a gimmick that parodied WCW's Goldberg. Along with the phrase of "Who's First?", Gillberg would be used as a way to poke fun at Goldberg's elaborate entrance, his tribal tattoo, and his supposedly piped-in crowd reaction. Unlike Goldberg and his streak, Gillberg would regularly lose match after match. In fact, he would only win one match, an assisted win over Goldust.

Gillberg would somehow hold the Light Heavyweight Championship (largely due to it never being defended) for a record-setting 453 days.

Having brought the Light Heavyweight Championship back into play in '97, it was sad to see the WWF essentially give up on the belt as early as 1998 by giving it to a character that never won a match and was created purely to spoof WCW. After that, how could anyone really take the title seriously?

 
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Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.