Quote:
Originally Posted by Bad News Gertner
Ron Simmons winning the World Title in WCW
Bad enough that a mildly over face wins your top title, but then you book him at Halloween Havoc in a match for the title against the Barbarian? Typical early 90's WCW nonsense. Bill Watts was trying to recreate the success he had with JYD in Mid-South and it failed miserably with Ron Simmons shoe-horned into that role.
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With Simmons I think it was more the "emotional" aspect of having the first African-American champ that made it a big deal. However, I felt the hype wore off having him drop the belt less than 5 months later to Vader. This was really the issue with WCW through the 90s that nobody really held the belt for long enough to be a truly dominant or memorable champion and having someone drop the belt on PPV or nitro and then regain it days later just made the credibility of the title sink further even though Arquette and Russo holding the belt was the lowest of the low.
I mean there was Sting V DDP on Nitro, they wrestled a classic match one of the best on Nitro IMO and was the only highlight in the post-fingerpoke era. Sting wins the title we're all happy. Then less than 2 hours later....he loses the title to DDP. Talk about anti-climax.
As we debated elsewhere I felt the Goldberg streak was perhaps ended way too early but the manner of the defeat was credible i.e. a dominant face and perhaps not winning cleanly. I keep saying my "dream scenario" would have been for Goldberg to have held the belt for more than a year up to Starrcade 1999 and dropped it to a face like Chris Benoit. It would have not only restored the belt's credibility but people would have been tuning into to see how long Goldberg could go on and also building Benoit into the top face and the build-up to them eventually squaring off.