The 24/7 Championship Is Actually The Best Thing In WWE Today
After a rocky start, the belt's skits are now must-see.
Between Lars Sullivan thumbing his nose at a set of outraged fans he'd almost certainly liken to icy meteorological phenomena, snarkily recontextualising the language of the "triggered" for irony, and WWE's recently empowered women descending to antediluvian Diva bickering to further their affairs, the best thing that happened on SmackDown this week was something which was entirely unseen.
Shortly after Elias kneed R-Truth in the mush to claim his 24/7 Championship during their mid-show Lumberjack Match, the crooning victor sneaked away from the inevitable scramble which would almost certainly separate him from his brand new belt. As he crept along the outside like a singing Solid Snake, Elias came face to face with his deposed opponent, stalking him from the opposite side. Cue Benny Hill music: the pair high-tailed it under the ring, only for Truth to emerge several seconds later with the title back in his possession.
It wasn't clear in the aftermath precisely how Truth had managed to pull off his immediate reversal, but WWE uploaded a video to their YouTube channel when the show went off air revealing the full story. A forethinking official had trailed the champ under the canvas, bearing witness to Truth slamming the fleeing Elias' bonce straight into a steel chair and rolling him up for the pin. Quite why there was a camera set up under the ring is anyone's guess, but for once the creativity of the content is worth the lack of logic; it's easy to suspend disbelief when what we're watching is actually, you know, entertaining.
And a lot of people are prepared to. Overnight, only The Undertaker and Goldberg's almost literally Biblical tête-à-tête has outperformed SmackDown's two 24/7 Championship segments in terms of YouTube numbers, with almost half a million people logging on to watch Truth, for so long a relative undercard irrelevance, do the dirty on Elias under the covers. The clip's popularity is no one-off; footage of Cesaro hunting a hiding R-Truth on this week's Raw has drawn more eyebobbles than everything from the show minus Brock Lesnar braying Seth Rollins, whilst the sensational sight of Jinder Mahal being usurped in full wrestling gear on a golf course has enticed over five million watches - easily the company's most viewed on-demand content over the past month.
[Con't. P1/4]