10 More Strange Things WWE Champions Did With The Belt
Crazy customisations, cracking them open with hammers and carrying them to other companies...
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00:00 From sending them for an impromptu swim, to feeling the need to make them a little too
00:05 personal, this group of WWE champions felt the need to do some very strange things to their
00:10 titles. I mean belts, I mean gold, I mean those things with Velcro. I'm Gareth from What Culture
00:15 Wrestling and here are 10 more strange things WWE champions did with the belt.
00:20 Oh and yes, we've been a bit cute with the parameters here just so we can present this
00:24 as a bit of a sequel to the original. So here's the compromise. All of the people featured here
00:29 have been champions in WWE at some point, even if it wasn't or isn't that specific strap involved.
00:35 And if that isn't enough, well...
00:37 Number 10. Hulk Hogan buries it in another country
00:40 There was once a time where putting the WWE Championship on Hulk Hogan made all the sense
00:45 in the world. Five very specific times, in fact. Hogan's first four reigns and his earnestly sweet
00:50 and thankfully short nostalgia run in 2002 all spoke to the frenzied popularity of wrestling's
00:56 biggest star. His 1993 victory at WrestleMania IX spoke only to Vince McMahon's panic. McMahon
01:03 thought he'd found the magic again as the show of shows went off the air with the Hulkster squashing
01:08 Yokozuna seconds after the sumo star had cheaply defeated Bret Hart. But the chairman confused it
01:14 with a mere illusion akin to the double doink phenomenon earlier in the show. Over in Japan,
01:18 where he thought he wouldn't be seen nor heard, Hogan called the belt a toy and a trinket during
01:24 a New Japan Pro Wrestling press conference to leverage a future there instead. His arrogance
01:29 laden tour de force literally knew no bounds, but McMahon saw sense enough to make a clean break
01:35 shortly afterwards. Number 9. The Rock throws it off a bridge
01:38 WWE used to be so great at making backlash feel like anything but a rehash. Even after
01:44 WrestleMania XV's end of the world victory for Stone Cold Steve Austin, the hero didn't just want
01:49 his belt back, he wanted HIS belt back. Turning an old Austin trick on its head in 1999, The Rock
01:56 went one further than just hoeing the smoking-skulled WWE Championship into the Detroit River. Just as
02:02 the rattlesnake had once done to his Intercontinental title, he knocked Stone Cold into
02:06 the drink too. The dramatic scene played off a vintage moment from their original 1997 series
02:12 that saw Austin hand the Intercontinental Championship over to the Great One, only to
02:17 hold it hostage before lobbing it over the Belle Isle Bridge into the briny Deep Below.
02:22 Spotting the opportunity for a cute callback when the pair were back waging war during a return to
02:27 the city two years later, Rock's dangerous assault perfectly set the stage for their
02:31 pay-per-view rematch, especially when he revealed that he still had possession of it one week later.
02:37 What an a-hole! Number 8. Mr Perfect smashes it with a hammer
02:41 Between 1988 and 1990, Mr Perfect did everything but win the WWE Championship.
02:48 Having executed his vast array of perfect sporting skills in some very fondly remembered vignettes,
02:53 Perfect went on an unbeaten streak befitting of his name, and would later claim the
02:58 Intercontinental Championship while becoming the crown jewel of the Heenan family. Before that
03:02 though, he famously took out his rage on a belt he wasn't quite able to snare.
03:06 Smashing up the cherished WWE Championship following Hulk Hogan's Saturday Night's
03:11 main event clash with the Genius was an inspired way to try and get in the Hulkster's head,
03:16 and developed a new life nearly a decade later when Vince McMahon presented mankind
03:20 with the Hardcore Championship. The urban legend was eventually debunked,
03:24 though the broken-up winged eagle design patronizingly offered to Mrs Foley's baby boy
03:29 was not the carefully kept version Kurt Hennig battered with a hammer. But it was certainly
03:33 nice to think of the diligence needed to keep such a thing in the first place.
03:36 The Fiend Puts His Face On It Yes, they sold at $6,000 a pop. Yes,
03:42 there was a certain disconnect between Bray Wyatt's clown-faced oddball holding the glistening
03:47 Universal Championship belt. And yes, there was something ever so slightly disarming about The
03:52 Fiend wearing his own face around his face. And finally, no, it still didn't really look
03:57 like a title. How was this ever actually a thing? In the age of nuanced free debate and
04:01 ultra-definitive hot takes, almost certainly mindful of the furore it would cause from those
04:06 celebrating and castigating the thing, the organization capitalized on the controversy
04:11 and parted some rich fuels with some clearly inconsequential cash. And that's why all of
04:16 this happened, obviously. Just in case you thought it was something foolish like, I dunno, law.
04:21 6. Chris Jericho Has It Stolen When Chris Jericho first became a world
04:26 champion in wrestling, he was made aware of the news via a joke. Infamously, it was an
04:30 overheard Vince McMahon gag about the business going to crap that confirmed Y2J's impending win.
04:36 Fitting then that his most recent and arguably most important reign atop an organization built
04:41 to rival McMahon's monopoly, triggered an iconic pro wrestling meme and a tale that sounded like
04:46 a joke in the aftermath. Following his little bit of the bubbly celebrations after defeating
04:51 Hangman Page at All Out 2019, Jericho found that the physical belt had been stolen, and put out a
04:57 video from his hot tub requesting its return from the low-life scumbag who'd taken it.
05:02 Alongside the Tallahassee police, the appeal worked. Local authorities recovered it from
05:06 the side of the road and returned it to Le Champion in time for the maiden edition of
05:10 Dynamite on TNT just a few weeks later. 5. Kevin Nash & Scott Hall's Belt Basketball
05:17 An infamously horrendous bit of belt abuse made darkly amusing due to the perpetrators.
05:22 This game of basketball with WCW's Television Championship made a mockery of legacy and
05:28 prestige in a company rapidly destroying both. The outsiders seemingly arrived at the pointlessness
05:33 of the belt on the spot. When talking about defending his United States gold, Hall was
05:38 asked about the other around his waist. After calling the piece of tin "useless", he set up
05:43 a 1v1 with Nash, who dunked it in the bin as listless interviewer Chavo Guerrero commentated
05:49 on it as if he wasn't sick of his life too. It's too rooted in cynicism to be one of those
05:53 charmingly self-effacing clicktails, this one. Both were old enough to know better,
05:57 but rich enough to not care. And WCW was left to pick up the pieces, or in Jim Duggan's case,
06:02 the belt itself, from that same bin in the aftermath. 4. The Giant Wears Both Belts
06:08 As lovingly noted and shared by @DeepCutsWCW, the company juggled two pairs of tag-team title
06:15 belts between 1998 and 1999. And while White's partner Scott Hall sported one of each for the
06:21 crack, The Giant kept it slicker by arriving for this bout fronting both. It's the sort of thing
06:26 WWE could, and probably should, do again. Though relatively recent precedents suggest they won't.
06:32 Braun Strowman easily battered the bar at WrestleMania 34, but had to pull Nicholas
06:37 Cone from the crowd to be his partner from the night. The Monster Among Men could probably do
06:41 a better job pulling off two belts than he ever did the single Universal strap in 2020,
06:46 in whatever company he lands in next. If he even does. Wrestling's a bit weird right now, isn't it?
06:51 3. Wrestlers Take Them to the Opposition I'm bundling this into one entry because
06:56 the two most prominent cases from the 1990s are so famous that they've been laboured upon to the
07:01 point of exhaustion, even if the moments still play out as dramatic decades later.
07:06 When Ric Flair and Alundra Blaze took their top titles to the other side in 1991 and 1995
07:12 respectively, they were shot, fired and wrestling wars. Such was the theoretical prestige of both
07:18 straps. The subsequent carnage has convinced others to bring another company's gold to their
07:22 current home. From Team 3D wearing all the belts in their career during a half-decent TNA run,
07:27 and Rhino also bringing his original ECW championship to Impact Zone,
07:32 to Austin Aries and Kenny Omega having runs as wrestling belt collectors. There's a certain
07:37 tension to seeing things in wrestling that are where they should not be, which is perhaps why
07:41 a famously affable chap got himself in an awful lot of bother when he inadvertently disgraced the
07:47 gold. 2. Mick Foley Throws It to the Ground
07:50 It all came up, as it were, when Katus Jack went to Extreme Championship Wrestling for an
07:55 independent wrestling hardcore dream match with Sabu. An amicable talent trade turned a little
08:00 less so when it became apparent just how suited to the surrounds Katus was. Everything from his
08:05 look to the style and energy of his matches, and indeed his character's propensity for danger,
08:10 seemed to jive better with a grubby bingo hall in Philadelphia, rather than the glossy and
08:15 ever-changing face of World Championship Wrestling. Feeling as though he disgraced himself
08:20 against the homicidal, suicidal, genocidal, death-defying maniac, he made the point that
08:25 losing his pride there was worth more than any belt. The phlegm-soaked strap hit the deck,
08:30 as did Foley's WCW prospects. For the duration of his ECW tenure, and especially after arriving
08:37 in WWE by 1996, he didn't appear particularly devastated with his decision. 1. Naomi Makes It
08:44 Glow Naomi's 2017 Smackdown Women's Championship
08:47 reigns may as well have not even happened based on how little they've been spoken of ever since.
08:52 The former two-time champion didn't get much of a look-in after surprisingly dropping the gold to
08:57 Natalya at Summerslam that same year, and has repeatedly found her presence minimised ever
09:02 since. Is it possible the company just didn't want to spend big on customising the belt again?
09:06 During a discussion about her LED-loaded prize on Talkin' Smack, Naomi noted that it had seven
09:12 lighting settings and she was looking for more. Typically, it's when the props look their cheapest
09:17 that they cost the most. The chaotic end aesthetic was an acquired taste, but it was brilliantly in
09:23 keeping with her character, entrance and the rest of her awesome presentation. It's the sort of
09:28 thing that's missed now more than ever too, especially against the tepid surroundings of
09:32 the thunderdome or grim, thinly obscured avarice of NXT's capital wrestling centre. More LED belts,
09:39 less LED fans once the world gets off its ass again, please. And that's our list,
09:44 know of any other strange things WWE champions did with the belts? Let us know all about them in the
09:49 comments section right down below and do not forget to like, share and click on that subscribe
09:53 button. Also, be sure to head on over to WhatCulture.com and find some more incredible
09:58 articles just like the one this video you're watching is based on. I've been Gareth from
10:02 WhatCulture Wrestling, thank you as always for clicking on this video and I'm sure I'll see you
10:06 very, very soon. Bye!