Colohue Dogma – Ranking the Nine WWE Championships Post-Summerslam 2017

By Tom Colohue, PWTorch Specialist

The Miz (Photo credit Scott Lunn @ScottLunn © PWTorch)

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Before WrestleMania I put together a piece that assessed all of the different titles in WWE in order to explain why Goldberg was the UV Champion heading into WrestleMania. This has played out roughly as expected, with the UV Title going from the absolute bottom of the barrel barely to a higher position. What about the other titles?

At current there are nine championships in WWE. Which are the most prestigious? Which are the most worthwhile and, if you were in WWE, which would be the one most worth pursuing.

I’m going to break it down, piece by piece below. Disagree? By all means message me @Colohue and we’ll get this party started.

9. WWE Smackdown Women‘s Championship

The timeline of the Smackdown Women’s Championship started very promisingly, with Becky Lynch a prominent and deserving inaugural champion. The elevated position of Alexa Bliss, especially now, gives the title a genuinely strong heritage leading up to February. Unfortunately, this was the point at which Naomi won it and, even more unfortunately, the Smackdown Women’s Championship was a major sufferer from the Superstar Shakeup.

Since the shakeup, Raw’s Women’s Division has been able to focus particularly on a small collection of wrestlers, ignoring the rest of their division. Smackdown have gone in the other direction, giving all seven of their women’s wrestlers plenty of stuff to do and keeping them as even as possible. This has meant limited action for all involved.

Naomi, the champion for most of this, was given a positive push but due to niggling injuries and a weak promo style, Naomi has done very little for the title. Unable to defeat Charlotte upon her arrival, Naomi has only defended the title against a debuting and laughably ineffective Lana since the shake up.

The title has gone undefended on multiple pay per views and, for a while, the women’s Money in the Bank briefcase was more sought after than the title. It has been a bad few months for the Smackdown Women’s Championship.

Future Prospects: Natalya as champion is a big step forward for the belt given how much experience Natalya has. She is capable of carrying a division, wrestling week in and week out and it’s additionally helpful that she is a heel champion; adding plenty of mystique.

Carmella has given a belated boost to the title simply by having the briefcase and being visibly interested in using it so with Lynch and Charlotte both due back and Carmella on the horizon, this is one that should only be on the up from here.

8. WWE Intercontinental Championship

If not for The Miz, there might as well not be an Intercontinental title to compete for but an uninterested Dean Ambrose title run, a pre-show Wrestlemania title defence and the title going undefended on Summerslam have really done a number on the value of this belt. It’s a real shame given how strongly the Intercontinental Championship was booked last season.

After the shakeup things started very promisingly for the Intercontinental Championship, with The Miz, Finn Balor and Seth Rollins all competing in a number 1 contendership match from which The Miz emerged as the winner. Unfortunately, Dean Ambrose rarely seemed to even remember that he was a champion and made his feud with The Miz intensely personal rather than having it about the championship.

The Miz exists purely as a utility player at this point. He deals with the celebrities and he runs in on promos. The Miz has also been a catastrophic loser any time that the title is not on the line. Barely anything has been done to develop potential new challengers until Jeff Hardy won a battle royal and with Jason Jordan expected to be pushed to the title soon it really doesn’t seem promising for a once prestigious title.

Future Prospects: Despite The Miz being the best thing to happen to this title for the last ten years, this title desperately needs to have an actual upper mid card division built around it. That means a collection of wrestlers who want this title and are willing to work hard to get it, including competing with other members of the division to get it. Having Jeff Hardy involved with Jason Jordan already in the background is a very good start. We will never know if that might have been the plan for Big Cass.

Hopefully more people will be involved because otherwise we’re all going to be stuck waiting for Bo Dallas or Curtis Axel to eventually take the belt and then an even longer wait until The Miz retires Chris Jericho to become the first ten time Intercontinental champion.

7. WWE World Championship

What a fall from grace this has been. After going from Dean Ambrose to AJ Styles, on to John Cena and then to a Bray Wyatt who had almost a year of build behind him the title was in a very good position. Randy Orton is a big name to have the title moved to and even though he rarely makes for a good champion, Orton is a legitimate top drawer who had a multitude of feuds lined up ready to move on to.

He did not move on to any of them. Jinder Mahal came from absolutely nowhere to take the title using some good old fashioned cheating. Since that moment the WWE World Championship has not been the top title on Smackdown. It’s been third at most.

Interest in the supposed top belt is at an all time low, with Randy Orton showing very little interest in taking the title back, instead choosing to attack Mahal simply because Mahal was a cheater. Then it was because family. The title barely even needed to be involved.

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