WingedEagle Posted October 20, 2015 Report Share Posted October 20, 2015 Hogan 1/4/99. Kane all the time other than the one night reign in '98. Big Show every time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DMJ Posted October 20, 2015 Report Share Posted October 20, 2015 How about Big Show's World Title run in late 99'-early 00'? * First, he wins the title after being inserted into a match that was a legit blockbuster - Austin vs. HHH vs. The Rock - when Austin is injured and kayfabe run over by a car. Fans didn't really care because, prior to this, Big Show hadn't really achieved much in the WWE (in fact, IIRC correctly, he'd lost to Steve Austin on his first RAW in the company and went on to lose to Mick Foley at that year's WrestleMania, going 0-for-2 in the two most important matches of his debut year with the company). The fact is, being booked to serve as a replacement for the top babyface in the company was a rough position for anyone to be put in...but things went from bad to worse. * His first opponent and the guy given the job of trying to add some credibility to Big Show's reign: 80s Star/90s JTTS, Big Bossman. Obviously Ray Traylor was a solid hand and his feud with Big Show was "So Bad-It's Good" level...but it was also truly tasteless and, because Bossman was not regarded as any sort of top contender for the Championship, the outcome of their match at Armageddon 99' was never in doubt. Big Show pinned him in under 4 minutes despite interference from Big Bossman's right hand man, Prince Albert. Yup. Nothing screams "World Heavyweight Champion" like 4-minute title defenses and interference from a guy named after a penis piercing. * Big Show ends up losing the title to Triple H on the January 3rd 2000 RAW in a lackluster match. * While Big Show would go on to wrestle as a part of WM16's main event, his comedic turn on an episode of Saturday Night Live led to him getting repackaged as a silly babyface who impersonated other wrestlers. This brilliant gimmick elevated him to new heights of stardom and credibility, revitalizing a career that seemed to be heading to distaster. Except the exact opposite happened actually. The schtick wore thin within weeks and Big Show was written off TV for the remainder of 2000 and sent to OVW to lose weight. In summation, Big Show's WWE Title reign, possibly designed as a "last ditch effort" to get him over, was a complete disaster that not only failed to establish Big Show as a credible main event talent and failed to entertain fans, but it seemed to set into motion the man's professional downfall, one I'm not sure he's ever fully recovered from. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted October 20, 2015 Report Share Posted October 20, 2015 Was he champion when Bossman dragged off his dad's casket with Big Show attached? Because the comedy value of that segment alone justifies that run. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thebrainfollower Posted October 20, 2015 Report Share Posted October 20, 2015 HHH's 2002-2005 run for me by a mile. I feel like literally half the WTBBP guests start with "I used to be a fan then HHH's reign began". It was what turned me off from being a fan. I'd still watch matches now and then for people I liked but stopped watching regularly due to HHH and his ego. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laz Posted October 20, 2015 Report Share Posted October 20, 2015 Even though I like him more than most these days, Davey Richards with the ROH World title was garbage. 45-minute forced "epics," Richards doing away with all the fun dickhead tendencies in his matches, and the entire feud with Eddie that felt so horribly outdated in 2011/2012. Dan Severn? A big deal in wrestling ever, let alone 14 years after he was last on national TV? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zenjo Posted October 20, 2015 Report Share Posted October 20, 2015 I'll go different and say Tadao Yasuda and Bob Sapp winning the IWGP Title. Yasuda might be the shittiest wrestler ever. Sapp felt like an absolute low point in the promotions history at the time. I also despised Yasuda as a heel and hated his IWGP Title reign. Quite simply he was given the belt because he'd just won a high profile MMA fight at an Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye show. NJ bookers were running the tours. Then a half-senile Inoki would call the shots on the big shows without even watching on a weekly basis. To be fair to Yasuda though I did like him as a face in the late 90's. He was a clumsy, loveable oaf who actually had a lot of charm. Plus he had a very successful career in Sumo so he got plenty of fan support because of that. There were similarities with Hiroshi Wajima in the 80's. You could even make the argument that Yasuda was a good heel. He generated a level of hatred rarely seen amongst Japanese fans. I'm not sure it's the type of reaction that's good for business, but Yasuda certainly had the personality to make an impression on people. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jingus Posted October 20, 2015 Report Share Posted October 20, 2015 Was he champion when Bossman dragged off his dad's casket with Big Show attached?Nope, that was weeks earlier. The weird thing about Big Show's reign is how they damn near kept booking him as if he had never won the belt. He just continued feuding with the same non-world-championship-level guy that he'd already been feuding with, while HHH and Rock went off to do other stuff. Hogan 1/4/99.People keep mentioning the Fingerpoke, but I think it's equally important to look at just how insanely bad that entire reign was from beginning to end. Firstly, Hogan promptly went six weeks without defending the belt and didn't even wrestle at the next PPV. In a title run that lasted about two and a half months, he wrestled a grand total of four matches (I know, this is standard for Hollywood Hogan in WCW; but it's still goddamned terrible and an inexcusable way to book your champion). And was his first feud was with: 1.a pissed-off Goldberg trying to regain his title? 2.A newly-elevated DDP who took advantage of the last few months of main eventing to go after the big belt? 3.A non-stale dream opponent like Bret Hart? 4.A new star on his way up like Booker T? NOPE, of COURSE not! We're just gonna have him feud with Ric Flair again. And worst of all: in the middle of the feud, they made the absolute-batshit-fucking-insane decision to attempt a double turn with these men. Despite the fact that Hollywood Hogan had just "won" the title in the lamest and most reviled title switch in the history of wrestling, despite the fact that he was still doing the same NWO awfulness every week, they really thought that they were gonna draw with this guy as a BABYFACE. Despite the fact that he beat the shit out of Flair's young son, and then nonsensically got that young son to turn on his own father, Flair was still somehow portrayed as the bad guy in this storyline. Finally, it all culminated in that audience-insulting "first blood match", which was so poorly executed that the intended angle of a crooked referee and a double turn instead came off more like an utter clusterfuck in which nobody in the ring nor in the back had ANY idea of what the hell they were doing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotJayTabb Posted October 20, 2015 Report Share Posted October 20, 2015 Is it too soon to mention this current Rollins reign? Everything about it has been terrible. It started with his MITB cash-in providing a damp squib ending to what had been a fantastic match. His first title feud with Orton is ultimately forgettable, with the main focus being Rollins’ relationship with Kane and the semantics of who is allowed to use a banned RKO in a steel cage. His feud with Ambrose sees him get cleanly pinned in a title match, only to retain the title via a cheap DQ. Doesn’t matter, because Ambrose takes the title anyway, resulting in the world champion and his hapless comedy sidekicks running around for a month trying to get the belt back. He literally vanishes at the end of his Lesnar match, totally forgotten about as Undertaker and Lesnar face off. He retains his world title against 56-yr old Sting…but only after losing the US title to real star John Cena….it just goes on. This would be fine if he was a cowardly IC or US champion, but he’s holding the biggest prize in the company whilst looking like an inept goof. He loses on regular TV to guys like Kane and Ryback, he’s had three supposedly valuable items stolen from him in the past 12 months (MITB case, the title and a bloody statue of himself) which sends him running about like a moron….and there’s no end in sight. Honestly, Kane isn’t taking the belt off him, so this nightmare of horrific promos and shitty DQ finishes will just keep on going. The most damning part of this is that for most of the year, TNA have had a more believable world champion than the WWE. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted October 20, 2015 Report Share Posted October 20, 2015 I'll go different and say Tadao Yasuda and Bob Sapp winning the IWGP Title. Yasuda might be the shittiest wrestler ever. Sapp felt like an absolute low point in the promotions history at the time.I also despised Yasuda as a heel and hated his IWGP Title reign. Quite simply he was given the belt because he'd just won a high profile MMA fight at an Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye show. NJ bookers were running the tours. Then a half-senile Inoki would call the shots on the big shows without even watching on a weekly basis. To be fair to Yasuda though I did like him as a face in the late 90's. He was a clumsy, loveable oaf who actually had a lot of charm. Plus he had a very successful career in Sumo so he got plenty of fan support because of that. There were similarities with Hiroshi Wajima in the 80's. You could even make the argument that Yasuda was a good heel. He generated a level of hatred rarely seen amongst Japanese fans. I'm not sure it's the type of reaction that's good for business, but Yasuda certainly had the personality to make an impression on people. It felt like they really damaged Nagata at the time. I think he needed to win the title during that tournament due to the MMA loss and instead he loses to a guy that wasn't seen as worthy of the belt. I know he won it a few weeks later but it felt really anticlimactic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pantherwagner Posted October 20, 2015 Report Share Posted October 20, 2015 Hogan early 99 made me check out from WCW. I still watched for about a year, and then very intermittently until the end. Other promotions that I enjoyed (AJW, NJPW, AJPW, CMLL) had died, were dying or were changing completely so I do not think that I have ever been a big a fan since then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jushin muta liger Posted October 20, 2015 Report Share Posted October 20, 2015 Triple H's title run from 2002 to 2004 was obvious to me but also Kaz Fujita and Brock Lesnar's IWGP title reigns were to me were the worst. Just bad booking and bad performances during those Simon Inoki years. I agree with C.S. earlier that JBL's title reign was great when you looked back on it but it felt brutal through real time cause the fans wanted Eddie to be champ and JBL got elevated out of nowhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted October 20, 2015 Report Share Posted October 20, 2015 I think we can honestly just say 2002 to 2006 NJPW for bad title reigns. Did Fujita ever legit job the title? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveJRogers Posted October 21, 2015 Report Share Posted October 21, 2015 The Miz has to rank highly on this podcast episode. Its one thing when one of the most annoying and obnoxious heels in your company gets a MiTB Briefcase and cashes it in, its another to have him completely neutered for most of his storyline and reign. His cashing storyline on Randy Orton is pretty much secondary to John Cena's battle with The Nexus, then when he finally wins the title off of Orton and is in position to headline WrestleMania AS CHAMPION, guess what? FINALLY! THE ROCK HAS COME BACK! HOME! And we kickstart Cena-Rock as THE Main Event storyline, despite The Rock only being the "guest host" of WrestleMania. So that takes a lot of the wind out of Miz' run right there, and he pretty much never recovers. Oh sure Miz retained the title at WrestleMania, but due to shenanigans that would set up Rock-Cena as the Main Event of the NEXT YEAR'S WrestleMania! Not very often, if ever, even with tons of non-DQ match shenanigans happenings has the winner of the main event of WrestleMania been prone and laid on top in order to get the sneaky win. That's barely qualifies as Honky-Tonk level of championship victory! He's still in the mix for the title for a while, and even a had an appearance in an Elimination Chamber Match, after dropping it to Cena the next month at Extreme Rules, but is never really treated as a Main Event Contender after this run ends. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jushin muta liger Posted October 21, 2015 Report Share Posted October 21, 2015 I think we can honestly just say 2002 to 2006 NJPW for bad title reigns. Did Fujita ever legit job the title? In the last one, he didn't. Lesnar F5 and pinned Chono in their three way at the Dome. Interesting cause I listened to Cabanas interview Rocky Romero from years ago and he claims that there were 8K in attendance at the Dome when he debuted and won as Black Tiger IV. That is the same show Brock won the title and New Japan claimed 38,000 at the Dome for that show. The real no number has to be somewhere in the middle but that's how bad New Japan was during the time period. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wade Garrett Posted October 22, 2015 Report Share Posted October 22, 2015 Hogan WCW 94. Benoit, Guerrero, Jericho, Layfield, Mysterio. The fuckin Miz. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ButchReedMark Posted October 22, 2015 Report Share Posted October 22, 2015 The Miz's reign is saved by the top flight program with Jerry Lawler. Testament to The King's greatness, that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alucard Posted October 22, 2015 Report Share Posted October 22, 2015 I enjoyed the second half more, but the first half of Punk's last reign was pretty awful to me, at least the booking was atrocious all the way around. I think that's where Miz's main event run died too. From Alberto cashing in on Punk at SummerSlam, Punk went on to 1. Lose to Triple H @ Night of Champions 2. Takes the fall to Alberto in the triple threat with Cena @ HIAC 3. Takes the fall in tag w/ HHH vs Miz & Truth @ Vengeance then the next night, demands a title shot, the following week is told beat Mark Henry and you get the shot. He loses by DQ, comes back later and just beats up Alberto til he gives him the shot and goes on to win the title. Punk vs Miz vs Alberto at TLC being the first PPV title match, where in the build Punk completely buried both guys with these "you guys are so boring" promos and making them look like fools at every turn up to and during the match itself to the point where neither guy was any sort of threat. Alberto went away with injury after but I don't think Miz ever recovered. After that the Rumble match with Dolph, where he was also made to look like a complete joke with Punk getting multiple visual falls before finally just finishing him off. Then there was the Jericho feud which always felt so forced to me. The matches were good but I hated all of the segments/angles of the feud. After that, the Bryan feud that put the focus on AJ Lee and nothing else which sucked. Things got a lot better/more interesting with the heel turn and Cena rejoining the title picture. On the subject of Miz's reign, I loved that one. Thought his cash in was one of the better ones and of course the mentioned Lawler feud producing classics. Also had that badass falls count anywhere match vs Morrison at the beginning of 2011. Enjoyed his whole rise from tag guy to US Champ to WWE Champ. I also liked the JBL reign and HHH's. Always enjoyed those heel runs where the champ finds unique ways to retain each time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ezgo Posted October 22, 2015 Report Share Posted October 22, 2015 JBL's was pretty bad. The matches with Undertaker, Booker T, Kurt Angle & Big show in a triple threat, and then Big Show again just stunk. In fact he was the least talented wrestler in all his championship matches by a large margin. I can't believe it lasted so long, SmackDown was entertaining at the time; I enjoyed the rise of John Cena, Rey & Eddie, Angle was doing some good stuff but JBL just got more dull by the week and killed my interest dead. Really took a long time for the title to recover in image for me. Yup. I hate that reign with a passion, because Smackdown from ~2002 until then was the best product the WWF has ever put out in my opinion, and JBL's reign ruined it for me. He was a terrible heel champion with a horrible stable, especially compared to what we had gotten a little over a year before (the short-lived "Heyman's Alliance," with Big Show, Team Angle, and Kurt himself). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yo-Yo's Roomie Posted October 22, 2015 Report Share Posted October 22, 2015 I thought the first half of Punk's long reign was the best in-ring babyface reign since Bret in 94. From memory, it was only the Elimation Chamber match that disappointed. The defenses against Bryan, Jericho and Henry in particular all delivered the goods. I actually think it was the post-heel turn portion of the reign that was disappointing, mainly because Punk was injured for so much of it. He didn't seem to regain his spark until the feud with The Rock, and that was the end of the line. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fakeplastictrees Posted October 22, 2015 Report Share Posted October 22, 2015 What made the JBL reign so bad to me at the time was the fact that RVD, Cena, Booker T, Angle, Rey, and The Undertaker WERE ALL RIGHT THERE. I wasn't opposed to a JBL U.S. title run against the likes of Dupree, Jindrak, London, Kidman, etc, but the main event scene should have been Eddie and the previous 6 I mentioned. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ezgo Posted October 22, 2015 Report Share Posted October 22, 2015 What made the JBL reign so bad to me at the time was the fact that RVD, Cena, Booker T, Angle, Rey, and The Undertaker WERE ALL RIGHT THERE. I wasn't apposed to a JBL U.S. title run against the likes of Dupree, Jindrak, London, Kidman, etc, but the main event scene should have been Eddie and the previous 6 I mentioned. I get that the goal of JBL's reign was to create a hated heel to get Cena over, but they could have done that like 100x better with Undertaker or Angle with his Heyman's Alliance stable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grapplin' apple Posted October 23, 2015 Report Share Posted October 23, 2015 Hogan's second title run. I like the matches with Bossman, but I hate, hate, hate the feud with Zeus. It was one of the major reasons I went from a hardcore fan to watching tangentially until 1995. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JaymeFuture Posted October 25, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 25, 2015 I want to thank everybody for the contributions, we got to read a number of them on the show, which is now available at the following link: http://squaredcirclegazette.podbean.com/mf/web/fumvra/SCGRadio58-TheMostHatedWorldTitleReignsEver.mp3 Join us as we take your nominations for this tremendous distinction, talking all the trials and tribulations involved in the World Title reigns of individuals such as JBL, The Miz, Shane Douglas, Rey Mysterio, Chris Jericho, Ronnie Garvin, Kevin Nash, Jeff Jarrett, Hulk Hogan, Big Show, Kurt Angle, Seth Rollins, Triple H (of course) and many more, debating what made these runs as utterly hateable as they were. A very fun show this week, check it out and let us know what you think! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotJayTabb Posted October 25, 2015 Report Share Posted October 25, 2015 By the time you got to the "cat in the microwave" line from Butch's Shane Douglas post, I could barely breath for laughing. Absolutely phenomenal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JaymeFuture Posted October 27, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 27, 2015 I got a text from a friend of mine yesterday simply saying "I need that Shane Douglas email as my ringtone". Absolutely A+ contribution. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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