I was doing some math...
 

I read that as "I was doing some meth." Maybe I was too quick with my Destor crack earlier. ;)

... and TNA has 34 active male wrestlers. CONSPIRACY!

So that is an average of 17 wrestlers were brand.

Anyway, is that counting Rey or not?

Agreed.

I've thought of this for a while. It's the state of things. In later times, there'd never be more than 3 or 4 former champions in a promotion at the same time due to the way the business worked.
They'd be weeded out by factors like injury, or free agency. Either that or they'd simply be phased out.

Now, wrestlers last longer, and there's only one big dance. Chances are, if you're a former champ, you're going to be able to keep a job in WWE. These guys are kept under contract and keep wrestling because they can, and because TNA can't sign them, or WWE doesn't want them to.

WWE plays two fiddles nowadays. They push talent to the world title consistently. There's no denying that. Like the old days, they still create new champions which has always been a strength.
But it doubles as a weakness now, because of the old champions loitering around the main event scene. We see guys wrestling into their 40s now, instead of going to the "Atlanta retiring home" as they used to call it. So now WWE is doubling as what WWF once was, and what WCW once was. This causes a full house.

I agree, it's a problem.

Well, I still say the ECW title holds about as much greatness as the IC title, if not less.

Which is preferable: having a lot of guys win a world championship or having several guys pass the championship around and rack up 8 or 9 "runs" apiece?

Neither. I saw no problem with things in the attitude era, where 4 or 5 guys held the title, and didn't rack up too many reigns.

It's the blend of keeping the title holders at a decent low, while making the title change hands enough to entertain people, but not like a hot potato.
And of course, knowing when to bump someone down for a while and push someone new to the title.

Neither is the right answer.

I think at the end of 2000 there were like 5 champions on the roster.

Seemed like a good balance to me. You had the established guys, and newcomers. Main events always stayed fresh, and of course there was a solid uppermidcard, so you knew guys like Jericho and *Benoit* were waiting in the wings.

Which in WWE thesedays, somehow, doesn't prevent the problems. John Cena and Batista held the title for like nearly a year on their first runs. Bradshaw had the WWE title for a year before that, and Cena went on to have another year long reign.
Orton had it for a longer than average time.

Title reigns in the past few years have actually been longer than they have in more than a decade. The titles, until recently, weren't changing hands as much and new champions were less common as well.

It all comes back to the former champions hanging around. Nobody who wins the title leaves

Too many shows, too many titles, not enough stories, not enough tag teams. Yeah, Taker should retire or at least just appear maybe half a year.

But at the end of 2008 there were 3 times as many guys on the roster so I guess it kinda makes sense that there are just over 3 times as many former World Champs around (Personally I don't count the ECW Championship as a World Title anyways).

:y:

The problem being a number of transition title holders in between long reigns still skews the numbers.

Well when you have three champions this stuff increases threefold. That's common sense, but it still shouldn't work as ridiculously as it does.

I won't lie, I'm a CM Punk fan and was moderately happy to see him win the title. But he didn't stay there, and they didn't need him there. He would have been better off not having won it, because now when he wins the IC title it's a demotion. Why bother?

If they're going to put the title on a guy, he should be someone they plan on elevating to title status.
The problem is guys like JBL, Khali and others who they put the title on, but have no longterm or serious plans of keeping in the main event.

Titles are dealt out more generously, and indicate being in the main event for the time-being rather than being bumped up to that level indefinitely.

Putting the title on a guy like Jeff Hardy for the first time makes sense (from a creative standpoint). He's been in the company a long time and has climbed his way to it in kayfabe, the fans are calling for it and he's consistently popular enough to be utilized in the main event for the forseeable future.
Same goes for Edge, or Randy Orton, but it's just pointless to make other guys champions prematurely or temporarily because of the injury bug.

As a fan, I refuse to complain about guys I lobby for becoming champion because that makes me a hypocrite (eg CM Punk), but the truth about the topic is, if they're going to make a guy a champion it should mean something at the time, rather than being a fluke until two years later. Putting the title on CM Punk is now pointless, because he won't be elevated back to that status for a long time, if at all. He's going to do the things now that he should have been doing before winning the title anyways.
Orton's an example of this. His title win and reign last year would have meant way more if he never won the title for a month in 04.

Yeah, I don't get why for injuries they rush and go, "ZOMG, WE NEED A CHAMPION!!!" and just grab the first Joe Six Pack from the locker room. It would be acceptable to have the title be vacant for awhile to do some tournament or something and build up some guys, something, anything but make Khali champion or give Edge another placeholder reign.

Pretty much. I've heard a million arguments on why JBL was made a champion but the bottom line is it didn't really make much sense at the time, and since he hasn't done anything interesting since it was a waste. He was an okay heel, because people naturally hate him, but he wasn't a great champion or a worthwhile investment.
Now he's a former champion, and hasn't done anything since and likely won't.

They easily could have used the oppurtunity to give RVD or Booker T the push they deserved and went on to get anyways. Or, they could have used Jericho. The bottom line is the injury bug hit Smackdown at that time, but there were at least 5 more sensible options before plucking one of the members of APA 2.0 off of Velocity and throwing the title on them for a year without much thought.

It's the reason why the IC and US titles aren't worth shit. If you are a former World Champion, it kind of elevates you above being a contender for the title, leaving guys that will likely get traded due to small roster or fired because they aren't former world champions to fight for it, and because there are so many former world champions on the roster, its credibility is destroyed.

I think with the ammount of TV and PPV's there are, and no legitimate dominant face or heel, this was just an inevitability.

On the other hand, some of these former champions are Big Show, Kane, Mark Henry, Kahli, CM Punk, Rey and I think they are all very safely regarded as mid-carders. Matt Hardy too as of one week from now. That leaves only 10 over the 3 shows, and with 2 of them being HBK and Undertaker, it seem quite as stupid.


How was this stat in the roster, say 4 or 5 years ago? When Hogan, Benoit, Eddie, Booker, Angle, Lesnar, Flair, Foley were all in there as champs?

The thing about the IC/US title is that they are rarely defended at PPV. Look at it this way: in the Attitude Era, we had 2 hours a week of TV, that being Raw. Eventually Smackdown came into the picture, but for the most part we really just had Raw to contend with. Yeah, there was hEat or Shotgun, but those were largely jobber shows. What I'm getting at is that now we have 5 hours of TV a week and the same amount of PPV time, with 3 World Championships as well as a Women's championship that is much more active than it ever was in the Attitude Era. We're lucky if we see one set of the tag team champions on a PPV.

Yeah, but who is there to fight for it? more so if they are going to couple up midcarders as tag teams.

I'm more concerned about getting the IC AND US titles on the card, lack of tag contenders being one of the reasons. Frankly I wouldn't care if they unified the Tag Titles, especially if it somehow lead to one brand going away.

I think tag titles should be unified, even if they aren't cross-brand, no trouble. They can have it as a feature of only one show. Tag team championship wrestling. It's not like it's utilized on either anyways, so it might as well be brand exclusive.
They could still have tag team wrestling on the other show, just not for titles.

I hate to go down this road, since it causes debate, but this is all yet another problem that would be solved by merging the brands, or at least the titles.

:-\ Same.

I know where this is going...

No where. I honestly read it that way.

Yea, and I said I know where this is going