Hoo boy how awesome was the Cruiserweight Classic? Every single match there was a match of the year candidate, indie and international stars were showcased tremendously and built well on the WWE platform, I even saw some stars and moves I haven't already seen on the indie or international circuits like Jack Gallagher and his innovative offense or the new Bully Choke finisher from Brian Kendrick. Funny to see the former Spanky I used to watch live at ROH now twice as creative in the ring as a grizzled veteran.
But one of the best things on the tournament, was the reveal of the New Era revival of the WWE Cruiserweight Championship. And thank god it's not another WWE or Tag Team title rehash. It's a brand new title, and it looks awesome!
But one of the best things on the tournament, was the reveal of the New Era revival of the WWE Cruiserweight Championship. And thank god it's not another WWE or Tag Team title rehash. It's a brand new title, and it looks awesome!
I love this belt design. It's big, it's triumphant, and it's a little bit of best of both worlds. It has the toy like WWE logo in the center and that cool interchangeable current holder round concept the WWE likes because they can send replicas to celebrities and you can tell from a far, this is the WWE's title, but it also has the intricate lines and cool futuristic shapes and that awesome globe behind the logo that I like. If anything it's almost like TNA's new Impact World Title which surprisingly looks great,
crossed with that supposed "WWE Universal Championship" leak that was just a fan mock up but... damn I wish it was what we got.
Although strangely enough it does have that center globe, the non-painted logo and the ticker tape around it, so maybe the WWE decided to base the Cruiserweight title on it? Odd.
But this is exactly what I was saying in my previous blog, "WRESTLING:WWE needs to quit rehashing titles." It's okay to use a theme, GFW, ROH and even to some extents mid 80's WWE did this, just don't completely rehash your titles by just changing the strap color and calling it a day. That would be lazy.
In fact, I've doctored up some of my own ideas for what the rest of the titles should look like based on the Cruiserweight Championship. Keeping it's theme, while combining it with many of their previous belt designs as a prime example of what makes a good looking championship.
But this is exactly what I was saying in my previous blog, "WRESTLING:WWE needs to quit rehashing titles." It's okay to use a theme, GFW, ROH and even to some extents mid 80's WWE did this, just don't completely rehash your titles by just changing the strap color and calling it a day. That would be lazy.
In fact, I've doctored up some of my own ideas for what the rest of the titles should look like based on the Cruiserweight Championship. Keeping it's theme, while combining it with many of their previous belt designs as a prime example of what makes a good looking championship.
NOTE: My photoshop skills are amateur at best. Many corners were cut and you will see some uneven corners and stretched textures due to splicing parts of old belts together with the Cruiserweight title. I apologize for any snafus with textures, smudging and outside pixels.
For starters, let's begin with the US and Intercontinental belts.
... Just unify them and keep it at Intercontinental. The belt's perfect as is and has been the way more honorable belt in WWE history anyway.
... Just unify them and keep it at Intercontinental. The belt's perfect as is and has been the way more honorable belt in WWE history anyway.
It ain't broke, so why fix it? and in fact, just to shorten this blog, let me make a stern suggestion. Or demand depending on how you look at it.
UNIFY BOTH WOMEN'S TITLES. UNIFY BOTH TAG TEAM TITLES. UNIFY THE UNIVERSAL WITH THE WORLD TITLE. AND MAKE THEM ALL PASSPORTS BETWEEN ROSTERS.
By just having one world title, one women's title, and one set of tag titles, and making every belt including the Cruiserweight and IC titles passports between brands, you can build more hype to storylines, create more buzz with inter-brand rivalries and boost more PPV buys and WWE Network views for PPVs. Inter-promotional rivalries and matches always work as long as the companies or brands are known. The WWE is the most known thing there is, so it all works out and has before.
Now here comes the belts I doctored up. Starting with the World Heavyweight Championship. Again, these are only examples but detaied enough you can polish them up for actual belts.
UNIFY BOTH WOMEN'S TITLES. UNIFY BOTH TAG TEAM TITLES. UNIFY THE UNIVERSAL WITH THE WORLD TITLE. AND MAKE THEM ALL PASSPORTS BETWEEN ROSTERS.
By just having one world title, one women's title, and one set of tag titles, and making every belt including the Cruiserweight and IC titles passports between brands, you can build more hype to storylines, create more buzz with inter-brand rivalries and boost more PPV buys and WWE Network views for PPVs. Inter-promotional rivalries and matches always work as long as the companies or brands are known. The WWE is the most known thing there is, so it all works out and has before.
Now here comes the belts I doctored up. Starting with the World Heavyweight Championship. Again, these are only examples but detaied enough you can polish them up for actual belts.
It should be big, intricate, detailed, full of grandeur and elegance while looking tough in a way, and triumphant. Give the center plate it's own current holder round like the side plates do. To pay homage to the old, incorporate a big detailed eagle soaring behind the logo or globe. Have tiny wrestlers ready to lock up to pay homage to one of the very first designs from the WWWF days before it was even WWF! Doll up the WWE logo just like the current World/Universal title you currently have. (A design trope carried over from John Cena's spinner belt.) Add gems and other fixtures that make it look that much more fancy like a real title all while carrying over the theme from the Cruiserweight belt just to really usher in that new era. And just to sell more toy replicas, give select superstars their own gimmicks with the current holder rounds. Like, John Cena gets spinners. Finn Balor gets holographic demon faces. No Way Jose can have multicolored pen lasers and reflectors. Tyler Breeze can have mirrors that flip around to show his portrait. Something fun for the kids and toy collectors to play with. Even sell booster packs of current holder rounds and Create A Round kits at retailers so that you at home can make the belt your own. It'll be fun! All while still looking like a real belt with little to no compromises, and still carrying over the positives of the class ring like designs of your current titles.
Next up, the Women's Championship.
Next up, the Women's Championship.
Carrying over the current theme of making the Women's title literally a women's version of the men's belt, make it every bit as big and extravagant as the men's belt. Just still looking different in more areas than just being a different color. Base a lot of the belt's design on Fabulous Moolah's title. After all, without the blood sweat and tears of Fabulous Moolah, Mildred Burke, Gladys "Kill 'Em" Gillem, (who still has the best forearm smash of all time next to Killer Kowalski and Kahagas,) Mae Young and many others, we likely wouldn't have seen women's wrestling for about another decade, and the uphill climb might have been that much greater. I've added some fixtures from the 80's, the mid 90's and the late 90's-late 2000's Women's titles as well, but only here and there while the rest is just my World Heavyweight title crossbred with Moolah's belt. Make it quite similar to the men's belt, but not a complete rehash just so that casual fans or non-fan elder relatives of wrestling fans and kids can buy their loved one the right belt and not just haphazardly buy the wrong belt not even reading the title. And also, keep most of the color scheme from the current Women's title. I actually do like the combination of gold and red. And since this is another spin on the men's title, carry over the concept of gimmicked current holder rounds for certain Superstars. For example, Ember Moon can have red LED light blood moons. Naomi can have glow in the dark party glasses. Sasha Banks can have reflective diamonds spelling out "BOSS" Becky Lynch can have steam shooting goggles. Again, just a fun gimmicky idea that you can replicate for the toy version.
Last but certainly not least, the World Tag Team titles.
Last but certainly not least, the World Tag Team titles.
For far too long, the tag team division has been relegated as a side show often with random pairing teams becoming paper champions and holding the belts for about a month and a half before an actually established team with a name captures them. So, in order to restore honor tot he belts, why not go the Women's title route and make them tag versions of the World Heavyweight title, except this time NOT completely copy-paste the same boring template?
Base them mostly around the old school tag belts everybody loves, while sticking to the Cruiserweight theme just for the center. Transpose the eagles just like the how the NXT Tag Team titles are transposed so both holders have their own unique belt to take home with them. It's a nice gesture! Use just a little bit of the current Tag team title's gladiator belt design as a banner for the current holder rounds, and give the tag team champions the same treatment you give the Cruiserweight, World Heavyweight and Women's champions. Their own custom current holder rounds. The possibilities are endless! For example, The Usos can have their respective face paint on their rounds perhaps painted in glow in the dark paint to contrast off of Naomi now that she's a part of the Anoai dynasty by marriage. The Hype Bros can have blinder glasses that can flip back and forth between "HYPE!" and "BROS!" The New Day's could have glitter or they could be 808 drums to clap along to "New! Day rocks!" The Club's rounds can make machine gun sounds when pressed. Again, a toy like gimmick that can be replicated perfectly for the real toy version that only select Superstars can have, not all of them. Just to have a little fun while keeping honor to the championships.
Beyond unifying and making new versions of the Women's, World Tag Team and World Heavyweight championships, maybe at least two new championships need to be made WWE Trios Champions, and perhaps WWE Women's Tag Team Champions. Neither of which I've designed belts for, but hopefully the previous examples can give you a guideline to how to make them properly.
The WWE needs a Trios title because ever since the Reality/Network Era, they've had an a=off and on stellar trios division! Whether it was The Shield, The Wyatt Family, The New Day, The Club with AJ Styles, intergender stables like Enzo Cass and Carmella, female trios like B.A.D, (though I found it a bit racist the black, token half black and samoan women had to be heels for telling the truth about The Bellas and how bad off the Diva's division was at the time when Paige was a face for saying the exact same thing,) there have been a lot of long lasting and pretty successful trios over the years not counting previous eras like the NWO revival in the late Attitude early Ruthless Aggression Era or Team Xtreme and the 5-6 person rotating cast that had a lot of 6 man tags in D-Generation X. They need belts to accommodate that! Instead of just having the trios go for the two person Tag Team titles and one singles, why not go all Lucha Libre and develop a World Trios championship and actually build a decent and well written trios division? You could (AND SHOULD) sign Jack Gallagher and add him to the Vaudvillains (or jut sign him for the hell of it because he was over and he's awesome.) You could have The Usos jump shift to Raw and reform The Bloodline with Roman Reigns as top heels. You could make a new version of The Shield, either with Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins and maybe sign back Chris Hero this time wrestling as Chris Hero and not Kassious Ohno, making them form The Shield that CM Punk wanted, or if you must keep Seth Rollins heel (and why? He came back with so much momentum and fanfare even when he dissed the fans,) have Seth Rollins form a brand new even more evil version of The Shield with The Authors Of Pain. seeing as how The Authors Of Pain are dressed just like The Shield and basically have their old gimmick just silent and with the legendary Paul Ellering. Either way there are still hardcore faithful fans of The Shield, and it could work! More so with the babyface edition with Ambrose, Rollins and Hero.
As for a WWE Women's Tag Team Championship, well, they've had constant off and on female tag teams with their own names and entrance themes ever since the PG Era with The Bella Twins and Team Laycool as lame and sloppy and overrated as they usually were. And to this day, we still see frequent short lived tag teams like Becky and Nataliya or Charlotte and Dana Brooke. Why not end the string of random pairing tag teams, and build an actual women's tag division? You could bring Emma back and reform her tag team with Dana Brooke, or make her tag with Alexa Bliss as The Blissful Dillemma. With the catchphrase "It's a Blissful Dillemma. Because your suffering, brings us bliss." You could (AND SHOULD) sign The Owens Twins. Maybe have Nikki Bella turn heel again, (which she works better as,) and have her tag with Eva Marie right before you mercifully fire that waste of space Eva so you can focus on actual workers like Asuka or Naomi or Bailey or Becky Lynch. Liv Morgan can tag with Carmella for a month before one of them turns on the other. (Or you could AND SHOULD turn Carmella face and plop her back with 'Zo and Cass as they are so much better together.) There's endless possibilities. Just as long as you do a better job than last time, and as long as you do way better than TNA did.
Anyway, I'm very pleased with the new Cruiserweight title and I hope that this time, they actually treat the Cruiserweight division with respect and don't treat them as a joke. Like they eventually did in 2004.
Base them mostly around the old school tag belts everybody loves, while sticking to the Cruiserweight theme just for the center. Transpose the eagles just like the how the NXT Tag Team titles are transposed so both holders have their own unique belt to take home with them. It's a nice gesture! Use just a little bit of the current Tag team title's gladiator belt design as a banner for the current holder rounds, and give the tag team champions the same treatment you give the Cruiserweight, World Heavyweight and Women's champions. Their own custom current holder rounds. The possibilities are endless! For example, The Usos can have their respective face paint on their rounds perhaps painted in glow in the dark paint to contrast off of Naomi now that she's a part of the Anoai dynasty by marriage. The Hype Bros can have blinder glasses that can flip back and forth between "HYPE!" and "BROS!" The New Day's could have glitter or they could be 808 drums to clap along to "New! Day rocks!" The Club's rounds can make machine gun sounds when pressed. Again, a toy like gimmick that can be replicated perfectly for the real toy version that only select Superstars can have, not all of them. Just to have a little fun while keeping honor to the championships.
Beyond unifying and making new versions of the Women's, World Tag Team and World Heavyweight championships, maybe at least two new championships need to be made WWE Trios Champions, and perhaps WWE Women's Tag Team Champions. Neither of which I've designed belts for, but hopefully the previous examples can give you a guideline to how to make them properly.
The WWE needs a Trios title because ever since the Reality/Network Era, they've had an a=off and on stellar trios division! Whether it was The Shield, The Wyatt Family, The New Day, The Club with AJ Styles, intergender stables like Enzo Cass and Carmella, female trios like B.A.D, (though I found it a bit racist the black, token half black and samoan women had to be heels for telling the truth about The Bellas and how bad off the Diva's division was at the time when Paige was a face for saying the exact same thing,) there have been a lot of long lasting and pretty successful trios over the years not counting previous eras like the NWO revival in the late Attitude early Ruthless Aggression Era or Team Xtreme and the 5-6 person rotating cast that had a lot of 6 man tags in D-Generation X. They need belts to accommodate that! Instead of just having the trios go for the two person Tag Team titles and one singles, why not go all Lucha Libre and develop a World Trios championship and actually build a decent and well written trios division? You could (AND SHOULD) sign Jack Gallagher and add him to the Vaudvillains (or jut sign him for the hell of it because he was over and he's awesome.) You could have The Usos jump shift to Raw and reform The Bloodline with Roman Reigns as top heels. You could make a new version of The Shield, either with Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins and maybe sign back Chris Hero this time wrestling as Chris Hero and not Kassious Ohno, making them form The Shield that CM Punk wanted, or if you must keep Seth Rollins heel (and why? He came back with so much momentum and fanfare even when he dissed the fans,) have Seth Rollins form a brand new even more evil version of The Shield with The Authors Of Pain. seeing as how The Authors Of Pain are dressed just like The Shield and basically have their old gimmick just silent and with the legendary Paul Ellering. Either way there are still hardcore faithful fans of The Shield, and it could work! More so with the babyface edition with Ambrose, Rollins and Hero.
As for a WWE Women's Tag Team Championship, well, they've had constant off and on female tag teams with their own names and entrance themes ever since the PG Era with The Bella Twins and Team Laycool as lame and sloppy and overrated as they usually were. And to this day, we still see frequent short lived tag teams like Becky and Nataliya or Charlotte and Dana Brooke. Why not end the string of random pairing tag teams, and build an actual women's tag division? You could bring Emma back and reform her tag team with Dana Brooke, or make her tag with Alexa Bliss as The Blissful Dillemma. With the catchphrase "It's a Blissful Dillemma. Because your suffering, brings us bliss." You could (AND SHOULD) sign The Owens Twins. Maybe have Nikki Bella turn heel again, (which she works better as,) and have her tag with Eva Marie right before you mercifully fire that waste of space Eva so you can focus on actual workers like Asuka or Naomi or Bailey or Becky Lynch. Liv Morgan can tag with Carmella for a month before one of them turns on the other. (Or you could AND SHOULD turn Carmella face and plop her back with 'Zo and Cass as they are so much better together.) There's endless possibilities. Just as long as you do a better job than last time, and as long as you do way better than TNA did.
Anyway, I'm very pleased with the new Cruiserweight title and I hope that this time, they actually treat the Cruiserweight division with respect and don't treat them as a joke. Like they eventually did in 2004.