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Originally Posted by hb2k
Well, firstly, they really had no choice while WCW was still alive, because WWF sued WCW for the Madusa situation, under the precedent set in 1991 when WCW took legal action to get their belt back from Flair and WWF, the argument being that a belt is a recognisable symbol of a promotion, and to disgrace the object is unjustly slanderous, or some other legal crap.
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The actual legal circumstance surrounding the belt was a little different. Per WCW policy, Flair he had paid a deposit on it (25,000, I think?), and as WCW had not returned that money to him, it was legally his property. WCW was able to get a legal decision to make WWF stop using the belt on TV and at live shows; that it's visual image was WCW's intellectual property, even if Flair legally owned the belt. Hence the ensuing "visual distortion" image.
As far as the storyline went, the reason you can't say they degraded the belt was that they never really said in an emphatic way "this is not a legitimage World Title," simply "you cannot show this belt on our programming."
Now, someone is sure to point out that Roddy Piper did in fact spit on the belt at one point. This, again, was an act of one man as part of his character. The difference between these one man acts and the trashing of the women's title in WCW, or the destruction of the supposed ECW title on Impact, or the throwing down of the various titles in ECW, is that in those instances, you had the entirety of a promotion basically saying "this/these titles is/are garbage," as opposed to one person expressing their disgust. And incidentally, when Piper spat on the belt, he was more showing his disgust with Flair than the WCW title. Given that that same belt would be carried around with black spray paint on it for a number of years after that, I think a little spit from a hothead like Piper is a small matter.