Was JBL a transitional champion?
 

Only champ once but the reign was 10~ months. Won from Eddie lost to Cena.

A transitional champ is Iron Sheik holding the belt for less than a month to move the title from Backlund to Hogan. That's his sole purpose . Not a lot invested in the Sheik. Quite a bit invested in JBL.

Wayyyy too long of a run to be a transitional champ.

It was a 10 month reign.

The entire Attitude Era was just transitional champs if a ten month reign can be looked at as such.

Kinda. I feel like they needed it on a heal and didn't really have a plan in mind. Jinder Mahal held it for quite awhile and he was transitional. So I think even though it was a long reign they were just waiting for something better.

I don't think Jinder was transitional. That was the WWE trying to get a foothold in India and it not working.

Absolutely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...Champions_(WWE)

The World Heavyweight Title seemed to have a whole shitload of transitional reigns from like 2007 on.

Guys like Ivan Koloff and Stan Stasiak in the WWWF are textbook transitional champions

He was keeping it warm for John Cena /s

Yeah no way you can call a long reign transitional, especially considering the guys he defended successfully against like Taker and Big Show.

And Booker T and Kurt Angle

You maggots forgot about Eddie.

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-st...45555673-3.gif

No. His reign was too long to be transitional and it wasn't till way later into his reign that Cena started to really emerge as the legit next mega star for WWE.

Before Royal Rumble 2005, WWE had been more focused on trying to get Randy Orton over as the next future mega star after Lesnar left.

If your definition of "transition champion" is just to get the belt from one person to another, eventually, then every champion is transitional.

I absolutely HATED Jinder Mahal's WWE Title reign, but as much as I hate to say it, and as much as I criticized them at the time, WWE probably knew it wasn't going to launch business in India instantly. They'd done stuff with The Great Khali in the past, and he was a much bigger star. I think it's more about fertilizing the ground there, so there's a long history of WWE being good to India. Maybe TV deals were coming up too, and the stations over there pay a shit-tonne?

Part of me still thinks Vince either lost a bet, it was a joke that got way out of hand, or Vince was just sick of needing to depend on indy-style workers, so he went with a jacked up guy with absolutely no talent.

One of the guys that often gets considered a transitional champion is Mick Foley, but his win was really about generating a hot product, a great moment and creating that "anything can happen" drama. Do you think he qualifies? Plus he moved the title from The Rock to The Rock.

SummerSlam '99 yeah, absolutely.

:roll:

Foleys hot shot was a ratings stunt. He wasnt transitional as you said he transitioned nothing

Sgt. Slaughter would be another example, true or false?

I would certainly say so, in that his win was to get the belt back on Hogan and off Warrior. I don't know if he ever even successfully defended it.

Won it at the Rumble and lost it at Wrestlemania two months later.

AND THAT'S AN ORDER

The only reason he had it was because no one was available and Eddie wasn't cutting it. Plus, Vince is a spiteful, self-destructive idiot so he just had to 'get back' at Fox for firing Layfield. He was absolutely a transitional champion.

That's not really what a transitional champion though. Getting back at FOX is, in itself, a completely different motive than transitioning the belt.

Eddie was a WAY better draw than anyone on the brand including Lesnar.

Perhaps, but Eddie himself felt like he wasn't able to handle the pressure of being champion. He was more than happy to drop the belt the first chance he got and Layfield just happened to be Vince's pick.

That was just the cherry on top. If Layfield hadn't suffered the consequences of his goosestepping I have no doubt Vince would probably have gone with someone else to get the belt off Eddie because he still had to deal with the problem of Eddie not feeling like he could handle the role of champion and someone had to fill the slot until Cena could take it.

There were other options available like Angle, Booker T, Big Show, Taker etc..


JBL is also my favourite wrestler of all time

They literally took the title off Lesnar and gave it to Eddie because Eddie was out drawing Lesnar by a long shot

Lesnar wasn't anything until he came back

Angle and Show were injured for a good chunk of the year if I'm not mistaken. Undertaker probably would have been the likely candidate if Layfield hadn't gotten fired. Booker T had the stink of WCW on him; there's no way Vince was picking him. I know there were potential options and you know there were potential options but it's the Family Feud problem: it's not about what you would answer. It's about what 100 stupid people would answer.

But that doesn't make him a transitional champion. A lot of time and money was put into him. That doesn't happen to transitional champions.

And JBL had a lot of title defences against wrestlers who have drawn money. They could have easily taken the belt off him.

The issue isn't Guerrero's viability as a draw. It was Guerrero himself as a person feeling like it was too much for him. There were legitimate concerns about him potentially relapsing. Whether there was any weight to that, who knows, but it comes down to how Guerrero felt about himself, not what we felt about him. Lesnar needed to lose the belt anyway since he had to work the Goldberg match at WrestleMania 20.

Remember that the endgame is Cena ends up champion and is the new poster boy who is going to help get Vince his diamond-encased casket. Anyone in between that time frame is holding down the fort until that happens. That's the whole point of a transitional champion. You're transitioning to where the real money is going to be made. Again, I know there were other people who could have taken it off Layfield in the middle of his reign and, yes, there was significant time and effort invested in him but that goes back to the point of Vince being a spiteful and stubborn human being.

Fuck you. JBL is one of the greatest WWE Champions of all time.

They literally gave JBL the longest reign as Champion in the history of Smackdown....

Vince isn't going to waste 10 months worth of money out of spite. That's delusional.

I wish I could neg rep you for this but it won't allow me without commenting and mobile won't let me do it.

JBL is a wrestling GOD and you should burn in hell from a clothesline.

Nevermind I was able to copy paste a comment into it. Congratulations you are my first neg rep I believe.

But still Fuck You. JBL is a Wrestling GOD damnit.

You clearly don't know Vince. Anything he was losing during that time he was looking to make up with interest when Cena became ripe. In Vince's mind, there's no one to turn to but Layfield and if he's going to go, he might as well go all the way. It's not like Vince ever went back to him in the future.

You know Vince?

I know his habits. You're talking about a guy who screwed the pooch with the invasion, kept Kevin Nash as champion for a year, and is trying AGAIN to do a football league that fucked him the first time around. Using stubborn as a description is being gentle.

$$$

Kevin Nash was just a transitional champion until the real money could be made with Bret Hart.

I can't believe this is a thread. As others have already stated, he held the title for 10 or so months. That's the furthest possible thing from transitional.

You mean like how Vince picked Booker to defeat Rey at The Great American Bash (2006) because JBL was literally too sick to go that night and claim a second title?

LOL, great logic.

Get a load of this guy

According to his Wikipedia page, JBL’s reign as champ saw him beat the Undertaker at Summer Slam, Booker T at Survivor Series, Eddie Guerrero, Taker and Booker at Armageddon, Kurt Angle and Big Show at the Royal Rumble, and Big Show in a barb wire cage match at No Way Out. And he did all this while leading the main heel faction that was the focal point of Smackdown each week.

This seems like a silly discussion.

Are you sure you didn’t mean to ask if JBL was a transitional Intercontinental Champion? Because that I’ll buy.

Different year under a different set of circumstances.

You know I was going to stick up for you and give Simple Fan some shit for his apparent boner for JBL and the way he came at you....But then you insulted Kevin Nash. The great Kevin Nash. How absolutely dare you!?:fu::fu::fu: :rant::rant::rant::rant::rant:

Remember when RVD ended up being a transitional champion on accident because of the devils lettuce?

In fact, I think he ended up being transitional WWE champ and ECW champ at the same time because of it.

JBL was cool.

He was indeed.

Even so, you must that if Vince was willing to give him a KotR win AND give him the big gold belt for 4 or so months, I'd say the "stink of WCW" was long gone for Booker at that point.

But again, nice logic. It just looks so lovely with the holes I've punched in it.

JBL and Kevin Nash are both wrestling Gods.

His finisher should have been a Northern Lights suplex called Nash Bridges

FourFifty knows Vince. He actually had a convo with him

Whoa.

On RAW, no less, after the stupid son of a bitch Rick-Rolled him, and Vince actually called him back for a second chance at $200,000 during a "Million Dollar Mania" segment.

Jim Ross: Answer your phone, you idiot!

Never gets old :lol:

I was aware a poster did that because it has been posted before, but did he seriously give up the opportunity to make $200,000 just to Rick Roll Vince McMahon?!

I think I'd regret that fairly soon after.

As you saw in the clip, he picked up on the second try and gave the correct password to win the money. I recall he bragged that he planned to use part of it for a Kane tattoo.

I didn't watch the clip because I browse on my phone.