10 Worst Wrestling Belt Downgrades | partsFUNknown - video Dailymotion

WrestleTalk

How hard is it to design a good belt? Apparently harder than you would think. These are the 10 worst wrestling belt downgrades.  00:00 - Start 00:43 - 10 01:35 - 9 02:33 - 8 03:43 - 7 04:27 - 6 05:31 - 5 06:46 - 4 07:52 - 3 08:59 - 2 10:02 - 1  SUBSCRIBE TO partsFUNknown: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsfunknown FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/partsfunknown/ Buy wrestling merchandise here: https://www.wrestleshop.com/ Read more Feature content here on WrestleTalk.com: https://wrestletalk.com/features/

Transcript

00:00Look at us, reacting to stuff. We got our finger on the pulse of the discourse. And sure, I'm

00:04imagining a lot of websites have suddenly hurried out a 10 bad belts list this week. But have any

00:09of them had my same dry wit? Willy bum pop pop, exactly. So for a reason that we'll very soon

00:14get to, we got a hankering to talk about bad belts. We've talked about terrible belt designs in the

00:18past. Have a watch of this list, for example. But this time around, we're specifically talking

00:22about when a belt had a good design. And for some reason, known only to a wrestling promoter,

00:27the hippest cat in all of sports. I mean, who has better taste than Vince McMahon? Here he is sat

00:31in front of a giant portrait of himself. For some reason, they take that beautiful belt and proceed

00:36to wipe their cultural taint with it. I'm Adam Haling from Parts of Unknown. Here are our 10 worst

00:40wrestling belt downgrades. Number 10, World Heavyweight Championship. I don't like it, though. I've asked

00:47everyone in the office if they like the new World Heavyweight Championship belt, and only Dan Leighton

00:52said yes. And he also thinks that Thor The Dark World is a good film. So here's a picture of the

00:56Pinch of Salt we'll be taking his opinions with. I asked Editor Rich what he thought, and he said he

01:00thought it looked like a bum hole. And now I won't be able to unsee that. And how about you don't be

01:05able to unsee that as well? It really is almost what we want, isn't it? Which just seems to be WWE's

01:10way of doing things in 2023. The big logo, the weird little bubble which sticks out just too much to

01:16look like a weird button that you'd use to summon hyper-masculine room service. The fact there's just

01:21slightly too much leather around the edge of the gold design, making it look a bit squashed. And

01:26it's all vague, like I can't actually see any of the etching on it. I mean, no one likes change,

01:32and it might grow on us, but it's nowhere near as good as the big gold. And speaking of,

01:35number 9, the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. It's a little bit of a cheat, as we're essentially

01:40making two entries about a wrestling company taking the big gold belt design and downgrading it for no

01:44human reason whatsoever. However, this time around, it was in WCW in the early 90s. Turns out,

01:49it takes 30 years for people to forget it's a bad idea to f**k with the big G. So, Jim heard,

01:54the WCW head honcho who thought that Ric Flair wasn't over anymore and should cut his hair short

01:58and become a Spartacus. You know, the guy that hounded Flair out of the company and into WCW's

02:02competition for almost two years. Him. Well, turns out, another one of his very excellent

02:07gold star Attaboy champ ideas was scrapping the big gold design of the WCW World Heavyweight

02:11Championship after Flair's departure, ordering a brand new belt. And, well, we say a brand new belt.

02:17Here is what WWE were using as their world championship at the time, the vaunted winged

02:22eagle. And here is the design Jim Heard ordered. The sincerest form of flattery, I suppose. It

02:28lasted for two years before they reverted back to the big gold after Heard was gone from the

02:32company. Number eight, the Intercontinental Championship. Look, I realize I'm going to get

02:36called a hypocrite here, but in this very one specific case, nostalgia was right. It isn't

02:40nostalgia if the past is better. And that phrase is actually featured on Luke Owen's family

02:44crest along with pictures of Korn, long shorts, the snares and Chris Pontius. When Cody Rhodes

02:49brought back the classic IC title design, there was much rejoicing because it was glorious. And

02:54that's what people actually liking the IC title design it was replacing. That's how much people

02:58loved the classic IC title belt design. That belt survived for almost 10 years until Cody Rhodes

03:04had the temerity to start his own wrestling company in 2019. And completely coincidentally,

03:08a few months later, WWE binned the IC title that he brought back. And kayfabe, Sami Zayn,

03:13I guess, bought this for his best friend Nakamura. And now I should like this, shouldn't I? Because

03:19at least it doesn't have a huge f***ing logo dominating the plate. But also, yuck a bit.

03:25I can't quite put my finger on why this doesn't work. It's total lack of color makes it look a bit

03:30visually crowded. The oval plate mixed with the circular middle bump and the circular side,

03:35it's not dreadful. And it's a damn sight better than a giant logo stamped on leather. But it ain't

03:40as pretty as the classic look of the mid-card title. Speaking of number seven, the US Championship.

03:46Why is the word champion so big? Why is it so big though? We know that the person holding the belt

03:52is a champion. We know that because that's what the belt means. Why do you have to have the word so

03:58big when we already know? It's like having someone driving a fancy new car up to your house. We all saw

04:03you arrive in the car so we know it's yours. But now you're just walking around the house,

04:08twirling the key around your finger and also shouting Lamborghini at the top of your lungs.

04:14Now, to be fair, the US title has had a bunch of crap downgrades in its history. The spinner belt

04:18was a downgrade from the flag belt and the flag belt in turn was a downgrade from the WCW US

04:24Championship. But this one's the dog worst. Number six, the WWE Cruiserweight Championship.

04:29Now, tell you what, say what you like about WCW, and I shall. They had the single worst book year

04:34of professional wrestling in the year 2000, but they did make nice belts. Or at least they made

04:39belts that look like classic belts. Because even as far back as the 90s, WCW were the wrestling

04:43equivalent of an old man saying, back in my day. You could rely on them for something traditional,

04:48is what I mean. And their Cruiserweight title was exactly that. A simple but effective little

04:51recognizable design. It was effective enough that when WWE bought WCW, they chose to keep that belt

04:56over their own light heavyweight title. And then they retired it with Hornswoggle as the last

05:00champion. That was enough to salt the earth forever. At least until 2016, when the Cruiserweight

05:04Classic, perhaps WWE's greatest ever tournament, and that's saying something coming from me,

05:09crowned a new champion and they gave TJP this. It's a toy though. That purple is just so ugly and

05:16plastic looking. I hate it so much. It looks like it came in a cereal box. Fun fact, someone on Reddit

05:24mocked up what the belt would look like with traditional black and gold coloring. And look,

05:28it's kind of a prototype of the World Heavyweight butthole, isn't it?

05:31Number 5. The Ring of Honor World Championship

05:33ROH's first logo was designed via a competition. A competition won by a teenager, and that teenager

05:39legitimately grew up to be Joaquin Wilde. Fun fact aside, they changed their logo eventually to

05:44one that wasn't designed by a teenager, because sometimes old things are worse.

05:48Here is the Ring of Honor world title that was used in Ring of Honor's heyday back in the 2010s.

05:53Isn't it lovely? Ornate, but not visually too busy. Looks like a warrior's prize.

05:57Then they changed it to this, and you know, that's okay. The stripes are a little bit circus,

06:03for me. That was the belt that Bandido had when he couldn't defend the title at Final Battle 2021,

06:08so Jonathan Gresham beat Jay Lethal for the classic Ring of Honor title, which looks like this. And you

06:13know what? That's a bit of nostalgia. I understand why they did that. This would be

06:18for you towards Gresham vs Bandido to unify the belt. Gresham won and kept the sh**hole belt. Like,

06:26the past. I get it. But also, look at this belt. Now look at this one. Why'd you keep this one,

06:33though? It looks like a replica. A cheap one. The red paint is so f**king ugly. Why does current champ

06:40Claudio still have a belt based around this one? Did you lose the other ones?

06:46Number four, the TNA World Heavyweight Championship. In a lot of ways, TNA was WCW too,

06:52including all the Southern Gothic madness, occasional industry-leading wrestling,

06:56and Vince Russo's that statement implies. Another thing they inherited from old WCW

07:02was the appreciation of classic belt design. Back when the WWE Championship was spinning,

07:06and we'll get to that. The TNA World Heavyweight Championship looked like this. The tag titles,

07:11the original X-Division title, the Legends title, all looked pretty damn decent. And then came

07:17the Impact belts. And oh no, they put a sticker on it. They… they just… they liked it,

07:24so they put a sticker on it. See, back in 2017, TNA, now called Impact Wrestling,

07:29was set to merge with Jeff Jarrett's Global Force Wrestling. They brought over the GFW name,

07:34and all their titles, and all their titles, do not know how to handle the color green.

07:39Good lord, when Jarrett departed the company a mere four months after the merger, Impact became

07:43Impact again, so they just… popped an Impact sticker over the Global Force name on the world

07:49title. It's an awful business. Number three, the WWE Tag Team Championships. Bloody hell, though.

07:56Flashback to 2009, on the pre-show of WrestleMania 25, the Colons beat Miz and Morrison to unify the

08:02World Tag Team Championships and the WWE Tag Team Championships. For about a year,

08:06they were just called the unified WWE Tag Team Championships and involved the winning team lugging

08:11around four belts. The Usos know your pain. Who needs space in their hand luggage? In August 2010,

08:17the night after SummerSlam, WWE decided to change that and awarded the Hart Dynasty some new belts.

08:23And aren't they s**t? Not even motorcycle grandmother,

08:26Bret Hart could make that copper color look good. They very quickly earned the nickname the Smash

08:32Pennies, and what's more prestigious than a Disneyland trinket you can sign to the bottom

08:35of a draw for as long as you're alive? When the brand re-splat in 2016, the copper became silver,

08:41which is slightly better, but it's baffling that we haven't had good-looking tag titles for over

08:46ten years now. I'm starting to become institutionalized. I'm sure WWE will bring out

08:52some new belts soon. Hopefully the classic World Tag Team Championship design, but with Vince's face

08:57hot-glued on the front. Number two, the WWE Championship. You know what I'm talking about.

09:03I will now leave five seconds of silence for you all to get over the fact the Spinner Belt was the

09:08WWE Championship when you first started watching wrestling, and then silence the lizard part of

09:12your brain that's trying to convince you that the champ belt was good.

09:15Okay, because here's the Undisputed title that came before it, and Lord Almighty, what a drop-off.

09:23And I'm not even the world's biggest Undisputed belt fan. My belt's the Big Eagle, so let's hold

09:28that side by side with the Spinner Belt. Suffering Succotash, son. So many gaudy gemstones. The way

09:34it spins so that whenever a ref would hold it up before a title match, the W would always be on its

09:39f***ing side. Champ. In fact, it says champ. How humiliating. It's like meeting the Undisputed

09:44title's teenage son, but then the son refused to grow out of his face for eight f***ing years.

09:49Saying the Spinner Belt is bad is the most ice cold of wrestling takes, but it doesn't make

09:53the sparkly toy any less wank. The big W belt they currently have is loads better,

09:58and that's not good. It's just a big corporate key ring.

10:01And number one, the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not just doing this to

10:07make Tempest sad, although that is the main reason why I conduct 70% of my business. The current

10:12IWGP Heavyweight title is better than the Spinner Belt, obviously. But when we're talking about

10:18downgrades, this one hurts the most. The IWGP Heavyweight title, the one that came

10:24before the unified one, is often regarded as the most beautiful title belt of the modern era. The

10:29best since 2002. And then they unified the World and IC titles. Koto Ibushi said,

10:34new belt, please. And they gave him this, and Koto Ibushi said,

10:37oh no, I'm going to drop this to Will Ospreay immediately. Even a Power Ranger would look at

10:42this and think, that's a bit camp. From something that looked like it was chiselled out of history,

10:47to something you'd find in an overseas toy shop with the copyrightless name of Big Wrestle Belt.

10:53And I suppose it's functional, but shed a tear for the likes of Shingo Takagi or Sonata,

10:57that they don't get to carry around this, they're forced to carry around this. It's not as good,

11:01lads. It's big, not as good.

11:04And that's our list. What do you think is the worst way a company has screwed up a wrestling belt?

11:08Let us know in the comments. And if you'd like to see more of our list,

11:11here's one from last week. Just give it a listen, you idiot.

11:14WWE intermittently treats the WWE Championship like a big deal, depending on whose waist it's

11:19around, which is very strange. You think it would make more big stars? They're committed to main

11:23eventing it with every show, raising wrestlers' importance up to match the belt, rather than

11:27lowering the belt's importance to match the champion. But hey-ho, I don't run a wrestling

11:31company. I never have, to be clear. I didn't run WC.

10 Worst Wrestling Belt Downgrades | partsFUNknown

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended