by Moses Gates
Exclusive to OnlineOnslaught.com

Hello, and thanks for reading the first column from another member of the Big List of People You Won't Recognize™.   As you might have gathered from the name, this column is essentially dedicated to everything that has to do with professional wrestling except the plots, the characters, and, well, the wrestling.   Entrance music, TitanTron videos, set designs, things of that nature.   A new camera angle?   You got it.   A new story angle?   Not a chance.   A new turnbuckle pose from a wrestler?    Oh, yeah.   A new wrestling move from a wrestler?   Not here.   A new character in a Chef Boyardee commercial?  You better believe it.   A new character on Raw?   Some other column (unless he has a really neat costume).

The little are things are really what makes a show.   They are what differentiates a major-league and a minor-league promotion.   They are what finally propel a wrestler from obscurity to some measure of notoriety, or from the upper-midcard to stardom.   Don’t believe me?   Just ask the WWF production team.   Or Mr. Socko.  

For this first column I was sorely tempted to write about Billy Gunn and Chuck Palumbo’s new tights (hate them), but decided instead to go with perhaps one of the most important “Little Things” out there: the title belts.   As you are aware, at Vengeance there will be a mini-tournament for the “Unified Title,” consisting of the WWF and WCW (I’m sorry, the “World”) titles.  And judging from the WWF’s behavior with the last two titles they unified, you may have figured out that they probably plan to retire one of those belts.   The question is which one?

If the real Vince McMahon is anywhere close to the character he plays on TV, this is probably a pretty silly question to ask.   You really think he is going to retire the WWF championship in favor of the one he bought just a few months ago?    The plan will probably be the same plan that was used for the WCW U.S. and WCW tag-team titles.   On Raw, you’ll see the winner with both belts.   On SmackDown!, you’ll see him with only the WWF title.   Now you see it, now you don’t.   Decades of history and tradition, gone just like that.   Of course, only you (maybe), me, and Bret Hart really care about such things.

But I, for one, really hope that Vince swallows his pride and makes the WCW belt the one that is preserved.   Not so much for the history and tradition reasons listed above – the WWF title certainly has its own long and storied history – but just because the belt looks so much cooler than the WWF belt.   The 33 pounds of gold, as I believe Ric Flair used to call it, has gone through a few facelifts (and outright replacements) but unlike the WWF belt, it has always pretty much followed the same design.  Its intricate patterns, unique shape, and the fact that it looks like it cost more to make than Ted DiBiase’s old Million-Dollar Belt (loved it, by the way) have consistently marked the NWA and WCW title.    The nameplate added a few years ago is the only really significant change it’s gone through, and that’s just made it better.  

Have you ever watched a boxing match, and when the winner is presented with the belt thought “THAT’S what he just went through 12 rounds of hell for?   It looks like something my little sister would play dress-up with!”    The WWF belt, while not being at that level, certainly doesn’t inspire one to fight a 7-foot monster for an hour in a steel cage with blood dripping down your face the whole time.   The WCW title, however, does give you that feeling.   When you see it on a wrestler, you think, “That’s the Man.”   When Ric Flair showed up with the NWA title on WWF TV a decade ago proclaiming to be “the real World’s Champion,” most of the reason I believed him was because I thought anyone with a belt like that HAD to be the real World’s Champion.  

Probably the best hope for the WCW title is to have it be the main belt of one of the new “leagues” of the WWF, with the WWF title being the other.   Having the winner at Vengeance carry both titles is second.   Having Vince replace the WWF belt with the WCW belt is a very, very distant third.   Who knows what will ultimately end up happening to the WCW title?   I just hope it’s spared the fate of the other WCW titles.   I wonder if I can find those on E-Bay?

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