The Day The WWE Intercontinental Title Died
4. The Hot Potato Years
As is the case with any championship belt, the more it changes hands, the less its value resonates. If titles are being switched around on a regular basis, with so many wrestlers getting to hold the belt, what makes the next title change all that special?
You just need to look at the cold, hard numbers to see how much of a hot potato the Intercontinental Championship became towards the end of the 1990s and then into the 2000s and beyond.
From when Pat Patterson was crowned the first ever Intercontinental Champion in 1979, it took 16 years for the 30th IC Title reign to commence - that being Jeff Jarrett defeating Razor Ramon at the 1995 Royal Rumble PPV.
In the subsequent five years alone, there were another 31 different Intercontinental Championship reigns by the time Chris Jericho defeated Hardcore Holly and Chyna at the 2000 Royal Rumble. Jumped ahead another five years to 2005, and the once-prestigious title had changed hands a further 42 times when Carlito defeated Shelton Benjamin on a June 2005 episode of Raw.
During the first decade of its existence, only one Intercontinental Championship reign lasted less than 100 days, with that being Ricky Steamboat's 65-day run, which was cut short after the Dragon requested time off for the birth of his first child. Other than Steamboat, the second-smallest run with the Intercontinental Championship during those first ten years was Rick Rude's 148-day run.
Skip ahead to the Attitude Era, and two-week reigns weren't uncommon, and there were even runs with the IC Title that lasted a single day as the championship became a hot potato.