Wrestling has always focused its storylines on the winning and defending of championship titles. People can talk all they want about how titles are just a crutch and aren’t necessary, but the truth is most people who run wrestling companies aren’t creative enough to run many successful programs without them. And why should they? If it works it works. So with that in mind, I decided to review every title change in WWE (WWF/WWWF) history. And then maybe other titles after that. We’ll see how I feel.
So Buddy Rogers, the first WWWF Champion, never actually won the title. In 1963, the WWWF made up a tournament in Brazil and said that Rogers won the inaugural title there. The truth is that Rogers had lost the NWA title to Lou Thesz in controversial fashion against the wishes of promoters in the Northeast, so three months later they crowned Rogers as the first WWWF Champion. No match of the fake tournament finals exists to review, obviously. Likewise, when Bruno Sammartino beat Rogers for the title (presumably in reality) a month later, no footage has survived (or potentially was ever filmed) of it to review. So we begin with the end of Sammartino’s first reign.
January 18, 1971 – New York, New York
Ivan Koloff def. Bruno Sammartino {WWWF World Heavyweight Championship Match}
This was surprisingly fast paced given the era, and a diving kneedrop finish seems insane. The fact that this footage was taken by a fan and is all that exists AND made its way to YouTube blows my mind. 7:37 of the 14:55 match was shown, which also seems incredible. ***
February 8, 1971 – New York, New York
Pedro Morales def. Ivan Koloff {WWWF World Heavyweight Championship Match}
Wow, heel champions really weren’t a thing in WWWF, and transitional heel champions lost their titles FAST. This was pretty basic, with bursts of fast paced action and big throws. The crowd going insane added a lot to this, aso did Morales succeeding where Sammartino failed in avoiding the kneedrop. I also liked Koloff using his strap to choke Morales. The finish was hinky, as Koloff hit a German suplex (sort of) but didn’t bridge and Morales got his shoulder up to win the title at 12:47. WWE actually posted this match on YouTube, and I’m not sure where it originally aired. ***¼
December 10, 1973 – New York, New York
Bruno Sammartino def. Stan Stasiak {WWWF Heavyweight Championship Match}
The title was renamed before Stasiak won it because the WWWF rejoined the NWA for like 12 years. I’ve heard rumors that Stan Stasiak’s defeat of Pedro Morales for the title never actually took place, so I wasn’t surprised that I couldn’t find footage of it to review. Either way, he lost the title nine days later. This was heavily clipped, no finish was shown, and the audio was fake (just like in the footage of Koloff’s title win) so hard to judge this match. That said, Stasiak was clearly terrible. He was 36 here but moved around and looked like he was over 60. A random 6:16 was shown of the 12:35 match. *½
April 30, 1977 – Baltimore, Maryland
Billy Graham def. Bruno Sammartino {WWWF Heavyweight Championship Match}
Graham, unlike Stasiak, moved around the ring in a way we expect a wrestler to move around the ring. But the match was very boring, filled with long holds that went nowhere. They went for drama near the end with Graham bleeding and then cheating to win at 13:42 after Sammartino inexplicably lost his temper out of nowhere. **
February 20, 1978 – New York, New York
Bob Backlund def. Billy Graham {WWWF Heavyweight Championship Match}
I have no idea where the footage of Graham’s title win came from, apparently WWE released it somewhere officially but I’m not sure where. This I know for sure aired on WWWF on MSG Network. For as much as Graham has bitched about having to job to Backlund, he gave him a ton here. Backlund controlled the first half of the match, destroyed the bear hug as a move, and won with an atomic drop at 15:51. It was wild to see and pretty fun. ***
November 30, 1979 – Tokushima, Tokushima
Antonio Inoki def. Bob Backlund {WWF Heavyweight Championship Match}
So now WWF Got The extra-W Out and before the year was out they did a controversial title switch (and switch back) that they don’t recognize as legit to this day. But at the time it was less cut and dry. From NJPW’s Toukon Series, Night 29. You can’t be a slouch and execute a match like this. It went nearly thirty minutes and was mostly mat work. But it’s just not my kind of match; it starts to feel redundant to me after a while. In the end, Inoki’s cornermen were fighting with Tiger Jeet Singh on the floor while Inoki hit Backlund with a back suplex to win at 28:14. **½
December 6, 1979 – Tokyo, Japan
Bob Backlund def. Antonio Inoki {WWF Heavyweight Championship Match}
From NJPW’s Toukon Series, Night 35. This was a lot better. The first half was all slow mat stuff as before, but the second was stiff suplexes and wild head drops. Sadly the finish sucked. Singh came out again and attacked Inoki, leading to Backlund crotching him on the top rope for the win at 27:08. In WWF land, none of this ever happened. But in New Japan land, this ended in a no contest, the title was held up here, and a match for the vacant title was held in MSG. ***¼
December 17, 1979 – New York, New York
Bob Backlund def. Bobby Duncam {WWF Heavyweight Championship Texas Death Match}
From WWF on MSG, and also from NJPW’s television. So basically for political reasons, a New Japan crew is sent to film this match and be part of its introductions. That way they could show their audience the resolution to all the Inoki/title vacancy drama, while WWE could just air this as any old title defense. It was a mostly boring match, though Backlund seemed motivated at first. The second half of the match was a slog. Backlund won with a sunset flip at 11:50 (shown of 17:18) and celebrated as if this were a genuine title win. I’m not sure why Duncam was chosen to be the to fight Backlund for the “vacant” title. **¼
December 26, 1983 – New York, New York
Iron Sheik def. Bob Backlund {WWF Heavyweight Championship Match}
From WWF on MSG. Sheik had attacked Backlund a few days earlier, injuring his arm. That was the whole story here. Backlund’s selling was terrific, but this was paced like a 10-minute foundation for a really good 30-minute match. Backlund’s second, Arnold Skaland, threw in the towel at 11:06 when the Sheik put on the Camel Clutch. ***
That about covers all of what I like to call the pre-historic era of the championship. Here the WWF leaves the NWA for good and Hulk Hogan brings in all the money with his title escapades. That will be covered in the next part of the series.
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
