Posted on by bdamage1
B. Dangerous
Remember the Time will take a nostalgic and opinionated look at ill-fated gimmicks, poorly conceived storylines, and forgettable moments in wrestling history. Now join me as we take a few moments to unearth that which should remain buried forever and do our best to Remember the Time…
Remember the time there were title changes that never officially happened?
Prior to the internet era, the pro wrestling landscape was peppered with title changes that the company in question never formerly recognized as a part of a championship’s lineage, whether because of a controversial finish or some internally contrived reason. Sometimes it was to make the fans of a region happy so that they could celebrate the victory of a hometown hero. Sometimes it was done as a gift to an outgoing wrestler to give him the “rub” before he entered a new territory. Whatever the case, if you were in attendance for one of these “phantom title changes”, you were part of a unique and largely bygone piece of history.
Here are just a few examples of phantom title changes that bear some significance.
The Rockers Win!
In 1990 the WWF has a smoking hot tag team division and the WWF Tag Team Championship had a great deal of prestige.
That night the championship was held by the legendary Hart Foundation and their opponents were the fan favorite Rockers.
At a point during the match, one of the ring ropes snapped and pretty much caused the match to slow in pace and for safety reasons, there was no high flying, which was the hallmark of The Rockers.
The conclusion saw The Rockers defeat the champions and celebrate the win only to have the decision reversed days later. The official excuse given was that the ring environment was unsafe for championship competition due to the broken rope. However, the official reason was that because of the broken rope, the match was too dull to air on WWF television. The Rockers would never get to officially hold the WWF Tag Team Championship.
Bobo Wins!
Ron Simmons is the first black World Champion of a major promotion, right? Well, he’s the first officially recognized black champion of a major promotion anyway.
In 1962, the great Bobo Brazil defeated “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers for the NWA World’s Heavyweight Championship. But after the fact, Brazil discovered that Rogers had competed with an injury.
Bobo declared that because of this he didn’t want the win and wanted to defeat Rogers at his best.
Doctors would determine that Rogers was not, in fact injured and therefore the belt rightfully belonged to Brazil. However, after this revelation, the NWA went forward without recognizing Bobo Brazil as champion for reasons that are not entirely clear.
Colon Wins!
In 1983 Ric Flair traveled to Puerto Rico to defend his NWA World’s Heavyweight Championship against local champion, Carlos Colon.
In a prime example of “making the local fans happy”, Colon defeated Flair for the title that night to a huge hometown celebration. But then, in a curious bit of tomfoolery, the NWA declared that the match never officially happened and returned the belt to Ric Flair some days later and the incident was never spoken of on NWA television and does not appear as an official title change in any record book.
Warrior Wins!
Just days prior to his official WWF Intercontinental Championship win at SummerSlam, The Ultimate Warrior defeated The Honky Tonk Man to become Intercontinental Champion at a house show.
The Ultimate Warrior left the arena that night with the title belt and defended it against enhancement talent in the days leading up to SummerSlam.
By the time we got to SummerSlam the original title change had been declared a disqualification against the Ultimate Warrior and therefore The Honky Tonk Man walked into SummerSlam as champion.
The reason for all of this was so that the WWF could shoot matches with the Ultimate Warrior as champion so as to have that footage ready post-SummerSlam for WWF TV broadcasts.
Veneno Wins!
Jack Veneno was loved amongst the Dominican faithful. Accordingly, when Ric Flair traveled to the Dominican Republic to defend his NWA World’s Heavyweight Championship against Veneno, the crowd was unapologetically in Veneno’s favor.
On that particular night, Roddy Piper had accompanied Ric Flair to the ring and the fans in attendance very clearly did not care for Piper and his antics. At one point Piper attempted to interfere in the match on behalf of Ric Flair, but quickly halted when Dominican security guards pointed their firearms at him.
Flair recognized that the situation was dire and
made the decision on the fly to drop the belt to Veneno that night in order to appease the bloodthirsty crowd and avoid a potential riot.
The NWA immediately reversed the title change and chose never to recognize it using the excuse that Veneno was unwilling to leave his home country to defend the championship around the world, which was a requirement of the champion.
A similar situation occurred with Victor Jovica in Puerto Rico as well.
Non-Champions Defend!
Though never formally recognized as WWF Heavyweight Champions both Lex Luger and Ted DiBiase have defended the WWF championship at house shows. DiBiase did so for a couple of days while Luger did for nearly a month.
In closing, the phantom title change was a useful tool to appeal to the territory fans and to keep things interesting for the wrestlers. It’s almost certainly a thing long in the past, but it’s an in topic of study when doing a deep-dive on title histories. It might surprise you to learn who has held a championship, even if just for a few moments before having that win erased from the official record forever.
That’s all for this time grappling fans. Until next we meet, Remember the Time…