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By Ian Hunter, PWTorch Trivia Specialist

Ian Hunter here, walking on out to the fire and brimstone that is Kane. Now, why not use Booker T’s old fire pyro with Kane’s entrance? It is fire after all. But no, we gotta slap fire on the Undertaker. As if thunder, lightning and purple fog weren’t enough for him to walk out to. Is it just me, or has the Kane character run its course three times over? But hey, maybe it’s just me. I’m sure the audience loved the stories about being a burned brother, or liked the fake marriage to Lita, or the corpse humping. And I’m sure fans just loved the short cup of coffee he spent with the WWF Championship. In fact, since we all know the current ECW title is nothing but a piece of tin stapled to cheap leather, that one-day title run is the best Kane has done in years. Yeah, I know he was a tag champ and an I.C. champ, but I don’t care because those runs meant nothing to the fans. So in tribute to that short run, we’re doing trivia on bad title changes. But first, we need to answer last week’s questions.


1: C. Chris Benoit only had the title taken from him once. Mainly because he only one it once. He was stripped of it after leaving for the WWF. Many view it was a failed attempt to keep him from leaving.

2: Rob Van Dam. Ironically enough, the longest running champion had the belt taken from him due to an injury. Van Dam gave up the belt and declared he’d be back to take it. Sadly, ECW folded, and he would never get it back.

3: D. The Powers Of Pain held the belts with Dusty until they had to vacate them upon leaving for the WWF. The Road Warriors had to fill their spots (which they weren’t really happy about) and set up the behind the scenes feud that would later come to pass in the WWF.

4: B. Why it was Big Van Vader, we'll never know. Vader never even held the title! Why would he need to beat him?

5. Rip Oliver was the only man stripped of the title. It was done so after his suspension from attacking Mike Von Erich and beating him to a bloody pulp.

Multiple winners this week, though I can tell some of you basically searched on Wikipedia for the answers and made little effort to double check your info. No offense people, but I can tell the difference between those who just look up info and those who know their history. I may have to start making you write essays… Anyway, this week’s winners are Mark Smallman, Curtis Shanks, Joseph Kata, and Nick Bocanegra. There were two more winners, but you left no name to take the credit. The rest of you get belts for your win… and then I strip you of them. Go fight the ECW brand to get it back! Mwahahahahahaha! It’s a new week and new questions are on the horizon. Answer the questions and email your answers to TorchTrivia@gmail.com. We'll post the names of those who got ALL FIVE correct. Good luck to you all!


1. All of this week’s questions will be write-in answers. And first we’ll focus on one of the most bogus title changes… The Fingerpoke Of Doom!!! January 4th, 1999. While most of you were watching Mick Foley win the WWF title from The Rock for the first time on Raw, the rest of you were probably watching the return of Hulk Hogan on Nitro. Hogan had mainly been wrestling with Dennis Rodman for most of 1998, and was somewhat in “retirement” at the time. His return was highly anticipated and he didn’t fail to disappoint (at first) by challenging Kevin Nash for the WCW Title. The two came to the ring, Hogan posing as a face and Nash as a heel. Nash shoves Hogan, Hogan walks up to Nash, pokes him in the chest, and down he goes. A three-count later and Hogan is champ again. Aside from devaluing the WCW belt and making Goldberg look like a schmuck, what major event came out of this action?

2. While we’re focused on the WCW title, let’s move down to the year 2000. And no, I won’t talk about the night David Arquette became champion in a match inspired by a movie. We’re gonna move forward to Bash At The Beach. In what was supposed to be a defining match for WCW, Hogan was to take on then champion Jeff Jarrett and Hogan was going to win the title. The end of the match came very quickly as Jarrett laid down in the ring and allowed Hogan to pin him without a fight. Hogan chewed out Russo (who gave the order), pinned Jarrett and took the belt. Russo would later come out and chew Hogan a new one (after he left the building) and started a new match with Jarrett and Booker T. However, there are two sides to the story and no one really seems to know the truth. One version is that what you saw is what you got, complete chaos with no planning and inner politics at work. The second is that it was all planned until Russo came out and started a new match. Who was in on the planning of Hogan having the belt?

3. Remember when Vince McMahon became champion in his own company? Yeah, that tends to be ignored nowadays, but it was done. Triple H was in full heel mode, kicking ass and taking names, running on the high he got after winning the championship from Mankind after SummerSlam. And how does the WWF take the title away from the company’s top heel at the time? By making it’s top star (Austin) cost him the belt against the owner of the company. The match was lackluster at best, and if not for the Austin factor, would have been a wash-up match on Sunday Heat. Our question to you, who was the referee for this match?

4. Mike Awesome was a two time ECW Champion as the company was getting national exposure on TNN. In March of 2000 he got an out-of-the-blue contract from WCW… and took it while he was still champion! Legal actions went back and forth over Awesome appearing on WCW television with the ECW belt (which he never did), and soon an agreement was made to put the belt on Tazz. In one of the strangest events in pro wrestling history (and one of the least talked about history making events), a contracted WWF wrestler fought against a contracted WCW wrestler in an ECW arena for the ECW belt. He would later drop the belt a week later to Tommy Dreamer, who openly admitted years later he didn’t want to be champion and instead wanted to go his whole career without winning the belt. Which in retrospect he almost got after Justin Credible came out to take it from him. But it originally wasn’t meant to go to Justin. Who was the champion-to-be that Paul had in mind after Dreamer?

5. Stan Stasiak. Until the 1990’s, he held the shortest reign of the WWF Championship… one week. Back in the early 70’s the WWWF was still mildly a part of the NWA, mainly because McMahon Sr. was on the NWA board. The championship was then just a territory belt that held a little more pristine than other territories and no other organization was recognized in the Northwest. The champion at this time was Pedro Morales, who proudly held the belt for over two years and helped make the company a mainstay on local access channels. But McMahon wanted to go in another direction after bringing Bruno Sammartino back and asked Morales to dump the belt. Morales refused citing that he was drawing more money than Bruno did years before, but ultimately lost the argument and was told to drop the title. So he did… but not to Bruno. Stasiak became the go-to guy for the title change, much to his reluctance, but later reflected on the fact that at least he would be known as a world champion in his career… if only for a moment in time. But what few know is that Stasiak wasn’t the first pick for the title drop, and that a different match had been booked for the title drop. Who was originally going to be the transitional champion?

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