Over the last eight years, WWE has really done away with any kind of structure for its roster. As the reign of John Lauranitis impeded the developmental system for a good few years, WWE, perhaps fearful of losing even more depth, has tried to maintain a lot of guys in the company, and for the most part kept them in the exact same position for a long time. Sure, a guy in the middle will get a temporary run on top - Barrett with Nexus, Miz headlining Mania, Dolph as World Champion, but ultimately they all end up right back where they started.
And unfortunately, this creates an environment where a lot of guys are spinning their wheels and repeating the same accomplishments and rivalries. Perhaps the biggest victim of all in the resulting midcard quagmire has been the Intercontinental and United States Championships.
I'm not breaking any new ground here by bemoaning the fact that these belts mean nothing any more - they haven't for years, and there are times when it's difficult to even remember who holds which one. With the same crop of guys exchanging this belt, every time it being the start of a "big push" that goes nowhere, people have been conditioned to the fact that if a guys holds the championship, it really has no consequence on his career. Hell, often times they'll job a champion out because they figure he has a title to help protect him.
It's insane, really, because this is the company that knew how to treat the Intercontintenal Title for years. Often times, the reason WWE can't grasp something, it's because it wasn't their creation, they never lived it before and they don't get why it works. But this was the company that headlined a house show tour with the IC Title way back when, that had Randy Savage and Mr. Perfect and Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels have textbook runs in how to book the championship.
It's fairly simple - for the belt to mean something, it needs two things, focus and consquence. It has to be the peak of somebody's career (Rick Rude/Razor Ramon/Tully Blanchard), a litmus test for a potential next top guy with serious momentum (Warrior/Rock), or a point of redemption for a fallen World Champion (Shinsuke Nakamura/Hiroshi Tanahashi). Ahhh Japan. Where the secondary title is of paramount importance. This is where the need for this conversation comes in - there is a world in which the Intercontinental Title means a hell of a lot, and that's New Japan Pro Wrestling.
Shinsuke Nakamura has dominated the Intercontinental Title for almost two years, with the exception of short runs from La Sombra and Tanahashi, and because it has been booked as the second most important match on so many shows consistently, it's viewed as being almost as big as the IWGP World Title, to the point where at the January 4th WrestleKingdom Tokyo Dome show (the WrestleMania of New Japan), the fans voted for the Intercontinental Title match to go on last, because the champion, the challenger, and the title were that credible. It seems so difficult to comprehend the WWE doing that today, but it did it for years. And Japan proves that this concept works in the modern day, it is by no means alien.
Somewhere in 1999, when Vince Russo was at his height of influence in the WWF, the Intercontinental Title switched hands a ridiculous number of times, and was passed around guys like Val Venis and The Godfather without much of a care for its value or place on the card. It was only a year before that The Rock had an awesome run with the belt, culminating in an extremely memorable Ladder Match with HHH, perhaps the final time the belt was treated as anything close to a top 3 priority.
Today, its a surprise if the Intercontinental Title is even defended on Pay-Per-View. The structure the belt gives got lost in translation in the modern television wrestling environment, and the problem I see with this is that wrestling has fewer star-making devices than ever before.
WWE World Title? Doesn't always take top priority, was a cold title for Orton's entire run, meant a ton at WrestleMania, but now Bryan is back to feeling like issue number three before whatever HHH and Cena are doing.
Beating the top guy? They've seen John Cena do jobs at WrestleMania and come out laughing the next day with no change to his position. Making a star can't just be done with one victory, because the people know it's all in the follow-up, how they're treated afterwards that matters.
Winning the Royal Rumble? Doesn't "make" anybody, and you could argue it never really did, but it's harder than ever now after a couple of years of winners opening WrestleMania.
Undertaker's Streak was the last remaining "sure-fire starmaker", and they ended it.
The WWE needs structure again to build stars. Unify the IC and US belts, and you can have so many people want a piece of that gold because now there's less than ever. And if you want to make it a big deal, for it to be a legitimate success, do what New Japan did and give it to a former top guy - sure would be a new dimension for John Cena or Randy Orton to have a long run with the IC Title and defend it every month in the second or third from the top match on a PPV (the spot they currently occupy anyway). You'd have top guys, cutting promos on the value of the belt, in important matches. And when they finally lose, the guy that beat them have actually accomplished something, because the fans would know they beat a high priority guy for something that is high priority. That's a building block, one that would mean a hell of a lot for the select few that get it.
Focus and Consequences. Would be nice to see that in WWE again.
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