I wonder if a tournament would do anything?

He was also in the midcard against Piper at Wrestling Classic in 85 (won by DQ) and Warrior got the main event spot at Survivor Series 1989 for some reason.

Cena main eventing against Lesnar or Rock makes perfect sense. Even Cena-Kane made more sense as the main, IMO, than last night. The Punk-Bryan-AJ angle had been very hot, and the Cena in the Bank match is to get a title shot, and it just seems asinine to have a #1 contender match over the title match. I assumed there would be a surprise, or perhaps a Big Show falls through gimmicked ring spot, to justify the placement, but nope.

SS 1989 was two PPVs before Warrior won the title from Hogan, so I assume by that point Mcmahon was trying to push Warrior as the top star or co-top star. This PPV was all 5 on 5 matches anyway, so it wasn't Hogan wrestling for the title in the middle of the show or anything.

Wrestling Classic 85 was a tournament, and the only non tourney match was the Piper Hogan match. The WWF had acquried a ton of talent from various other organizations recently, and seemingly used this event largely as a way of pushing and showcasing that talent.

Oh I understand that. I'm just trying to point out that Cena main eventing over title matches or over the World Champion isn't an original phenomenon. The point is better made with Steve Austin rather than Hogan, however.

The belt is still treated differently today (and in the attitude era), and with less respect, then it was during Hogan's heyday in my judgment. I was just trying to support this view. The non-champion top star being treated as bigger then the belt isn't an entirely new phenomena to be sure. But that doesn't mean that it isn't a mistake in the long term to act this way. It spoils the narrative and drama to some extent.

TAKA Michinoku and The Great Sasuki don't believe so.

Well I was only serious to the point where I'm predicting that they do a tournament and it advances the tag division 0.

I didn't say I didn't like TAKA. I did. But the WWF Light Heavyweight tournament that he won was worthless and didn't get the division over at all.

Gorilla Monsoon beginning every Hogan match by calling him "the greatest professional athlete in the world today" did tons to legitimize Hogan and the WWF Championship as a premier accomplishment. It would do tons of good for WWE to add some "sports" back into their product. There should never be a moment when guys strive to be anything other than world champion.

+1. It was strengthened even more when at WM V, Ventura called Macho Man the best professional athlete in the world today during his entrance and Gorilla had to agree, (paraphrase) "Well yes, if you're the world champion then there's really no argument to be had there."

Cena is making an announcement about mitb tonight. I bet he buries mitb somehow.

One reason to put raw mitb after punk/Bryan is so there was no way to have cena cash it in that night

They dont do tournaments anymore. Vince hates them for some reason. It also wouldnt do much to set the tag division back on track.

In terms of fixing the tag division they need to:
1, create a halo team of two of the most over wrestlers who fans care about and have a long history in the this business - Mysterio and Orton for example
2, have a young team who can draw heat and is given the opportunity to do dastardly things to the beloved halo team or just generally do cool **** that hurts heels like Kofi like superbombing them through tables and just generally working aggressive, smart and underhanded - D Bryan and Damien Sandow strike me like they could pull this role off really well
3, make them feud for 6 months using actual time on TV to get them both over, bringing in different teams, having the heels cheat to eventually win the title then cheat to screw the faces out of their chances to win the titles back and put in some great matches along the way
4, there is no 4
4b, stop splitting up teams after 3 months, a tag team can have a guy try and even succeed at winning a singles title without them being split up first

Obv as part of 3 you mix in other teams - it was always about Edge and Christian vs Hardyz vs Dudleyz but they also faced Too Cool, Mean Street Posse and the Acolytes during the time too but no one remembers them because they didnt form part of the major matches.

The funny thing is the WWE is ****ing obsessed with tag matches. They dont know how to have a Raw or Smackdown without a tag match. But they just use tag matches as a method of getting two feuding pairs to wrestle together with the result not being important to the PPV itself. What you get from that is the realisation that the best tag teams arent the champs struggling to get on PPVs but the random pairings of Punk and Sheamus or Bryan and Alberto. Fundamentally for tag team wrestling to work again they need to stop doing a lot of things they do in singles wrestling too.

How in the hell can you say "Vince hates tournaments" when they have done a ton of them over the past few decades? They have built entire big four PPVs around them (WM IV & SS 98 are ones I can think of off of the top of my head) and an entire PPV concept (KOTR) around them?

They also did the tourney just last year to name RMJ champion before handing it to John Cena.

littlekeed, I know it's not an entirely new concept, it's just been enchanced with Cena. I'm sure there's probably more than 4 matches but it didn't happen with Austin anywhere near as much as it does with Cena. Maybe it's just recency bias getting to me.

when austin was maining over the title, it was for the hottest feud in the history of wrestling

cena was doing it vs kane

It was never as pronounced in the Attitude Era because, although you had an obvious top guy, the gap between Austin and Rocky/Foley/HHH wasn't nearly as pronounced as the gap between Cena and I guess Punk.

Because I have read a former writer saying so in a piece he wrote.

That Creative Recall dude did once say that, but he based that on knowledge he seemingly had while with the company, and they still did a tournament to crown RMJ a year ago (well beyond the time of Creative Recall guy's employment with the company). On that basis, I'd have to say that his information must be dated and/or flawed, because a tournament was hardly necessary to do in that case and that was what Vince went ahead with.

i would love to see a lot more of them tbh. i love the set up of tna's bound for glory points system. you add something like that and suddenly all these midcard matches actually have a point to them (fighting to be #1 contender).

I'd agree with this fwiw. Cena/Kane in the main event of Elimination Chamber is the worst offender. The WWE title curtain jerked ffs.

This.

It is shocking to me, but TNA is actually the company I am most interested in right now.

Somebody make sure this is all real.