What Vince McMahon Thinks Of Every Vacant WWE Championship Reign
The Nowhere Men.
AJ Styles and Daniel Bryan's recent Intercontinental Title tournament final didn't feel like it was tying up a loose end or making good on something lost to a set of circumstances most of the current human race hasn't ever experienced. Unlike much of WWE's output, it was an escape through the quality of the action.
It was a mess of contradictions on the surface, but a banger all the same. It was engineered to generate fever pitch responses from a crowd of extras being told when to boo and cheer anyway. It was a terrific and triumphant physical war fought during a time where we're all still supposed to be keeping a safe distance from others - a distance former Intercontinental Champion Sami Zayn chose to observe, causing the tournament for the then-vacant belt. It was worthy, for a belt that hasn't been for nearly two decades.
The match was an unexpected gift because the wrestlers made the vacant title mean something more than nothing. A Championship without a Champion - yet another strange phenomenon wrestling can profit from, either by accident or by design. No wonder Vince McMahon has let his top title float in the wind on occasion - there's almost always a make-good...
18. February 13, 1988 (Andre The Giant Sells The Title To Ted Dibiase)
"Who paid for the surgery, Hogan? I did, with all the g*ddamn money we're about to make with you and Savage!"