I suppose it is appropriate that the King of the Ring has been messed up so royally. These are the 9 biggest mistakes WWE made with King of the Ring.
0:00 - Intro
0:45 - Honourable Mentions
1:12 - 9
2:14 - 8
3:23 - 7
4:30 - 6
5:35 - 5
6:38 - 4
7:45 - 3
8:56 - 2
9:55 - 1
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0:00 - Intro
0:45 - Honourable Mentions
1:12 - 9
2:14 - 8
3:23 - 7
4:30 - 6
5:35 - 5
6:38 - 4
7:45 - 3
8:56 - 2
9:55 - 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/
Unlock the secrets to working in professional wrestling, sign up to https://www.wrestlingmasterclass.com/
Read more Feature content here on WrestleTalk.com: https://wrestletalk.com/features/
Youtube Channel Comments Policy
We appreciate the comments and opinions our viewers provide. Do note that all comments are subject to YouTube auto-moderation and manual moderation review. We encourage opinions and discussion, but harassment, hate speech, bullying and other abusive posts will not be tolerated. Decisions on comment removal are made by the Community Manager. Please email us at support@wrestletalk.com with any questions or concerns.
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SportsTranscript
00:00 My lord, the King of the Ring concept is dead.
00:04 While there have absolutely been fantastic King of the Ring tournaments and winners,
00:08 I don't know if there has been a WWE staple with more misses than King of the Ring.
00:13 The Cape and Crown has had a rough go of things, especially since the death of its titular pay-per-view in 2002,
00:19 and with the tournament making its bi-annual return,
00:22 I think it is time to take a look back on the lineage of kings and their coronations,
00:26 and throw ye olde tomatoes at them.
00:28 I'm Tempest Hailing from PartsFunKnown, and these are the 9 biggest mistakes WWE made with King of the Ring.
00:34 But before we get on with this list, make sure of course that you like this video, subscribe,
00:37 and enable notifications to always on so you never miss a fun list just like it.
00:41 And make sure you stick around to the end to see a clip from the newest episode of Survival Series.
00:45 Honorable mention, the Queen's Crown.
00:47 I am all for a women's equivalent of the King of the Ring,
00:50 but the entire tournament going a combined 19 minutes and 35 seconds is f*cking lunacy.
00:57 And also, why not just call it the Queen of the Ring?
00:59 Do Alex's lawyers really have WWE in such a stranglehold?
01:03 WWE appear to be getting it right this time around.
01:06 Surprise, surprise, things are better now than in 2021,
01:08 so we can all just forget the Queen's Crown ever happened.
01:12 Number 9, the Dollar Store Crowns.
01:14 If you want to be a star, you gotta look like a star.
01:17 That's why Kazuchika Okada drives a shoot Ferrari.
01:20 So, by extension, if you want to be the king, you gotta look like a king.
01:24 So explain to me why WWE would continue to trot these poor f*ckers out there,
01:29 looking like they had just gone with the second cheapest option for a crown at Spirit Halloween.
01:33 Like, look at the absolute state of this crown they had Sheamus wearing in 2010.
01:38 Not the brown Irish woodland crown,
01:40 the crown that he was given when he won the tournament.
01:43 Did they pick this up at Dollarama?
01:45 And this trend hasn't really gotten better over the years.
01:48 Some of them have had designs that were a little bit more unique,
01:51 but even when King Woods finally got his King of the Ring win that he wanted so dearly,
01:56 he was given a flimsy plastic crown.
01:58 And I know it was plastic, because when Roman Reigns stomped on it, it looked like this.
02:03 Listen, man, I'm not trying to say we must go back to the days of the big,
02:06 poofy purple crowns of the 90s,
02:08 but those things looked like they had some f*cking production value behind them.
02:12 It's a new era, let's get a new crown.
02:14 Number 8, those early ones.
02:16 The King of the Ring, prior to 1993, is a bit of a strange animal.
02:20 Like, yeah, the tournaments happened,
02:22 but I don't know how many fans could have told you that.
02:24 The King of the Ring pay-per-view made its debut in 1993,
02:27 and it had its peaks and valleys, many of which we'll get to,
02:30 but before that, there were six tournaments held between 1985 and 1991.
02:35 And man, were they weird.
02:36 First of all, they were all held at untelevised house shows,
02:39 which as we know, is the best place to have someone win a new accolade.
02:43 Some of the winners made a big deal of winning,
02:44 like Harley Race, who dubbed himself King Harley,
02:47 but some of the winners simply came and went with Mary Atreus.
02:50 But try and follow along with this and tell me that this is anything but nonsensical booking.
02:54 See, King Harley Race won the crown in 1986, but got hurt in 1988,
02:59 and Bobby Heenan granted the crown to Haku.
03:01 But in the meantime, Randy Savage won the King of the Ring,
03:04 and then King Haku lost the crown to Jim Duggan.
03:07 But in the meantime, Ted DiBiase won the King of the Ring,
03:10 and then Randy Savage beat Duggan to win the crown that originally belonged to Harley Race
03:15 and dubbed himself the Macho King, but in the meantime,
03:18 Tito Santana won the King of the Ring.
03:21 Nonsense.
03:22 Number 7, King Nakamura.
03:25 Now I know this is a list of mistakes WWE made,
03:28 but I will deviate from that plan for a moment,
03:30 because at least they had the foresight to have Nakamura give up his stupid crown
03:34 when a new King of the Ring tournament was announced in 2021.
03:37 Take notes, 80s.
03:38 Now, back to your regularly scheduled negativity,
03:40 because my god, I don't know if there is a better example of 2021-era WWE bullsh*t
03:46 than Nakamura's feud with King Corbin.
03:48 I recently watched back all of the SmackDowns from 2021 for project purposes,
03:53 and I sh*t you not that in the six SmackDowns from May 14th to June 18th,
03:58 Nakamura and Corbin have five completely identical singles matches.
04:03 Do you see why people collectively agreed that Vince couldn't remember
04:06 what was booked on the previous week's show?
04:08 The only reason given for why Nakamura wanted Corbin's crown was because,
04:12 well, he's the King of Strong Style, so he should want a crown.
04:15 I mean, at least Nakamura uses winning the crown to catapult himself up to winning the IC title,
04:20 but maybe I'm just salty about having to re-watch all of this recently,
04:23 because this really does stand out to me as the dirt worst of the presentation
04:28 attached to the recent stretch of King of the Ring characters.
04:30 Number 6, the DX tournament.
04:33 1999 was honestly a particularly bad year of WWF programming,
04:37 made acceptable by the best main event seen in the company's history.
04:41 Steve Austin, The Rock, Mick Foley, Undertaker, Kane, an emerging Triple H,
04:45 but if you weren't one of those chosen few, oh man, you were gonna have a bad time.
04:50 Such was the case with the appallingly poor King of the Ring in 1999,
04:54 or as I refer to it as, the DX tournament.
04:57 The final four is X-Pac, Road Dogg, Kane, and William Ass himself,
05:01 and Chyna is eliminated in the round prior.
05:03 But while it might be kinda cool to see a faction represented in the end of a tournament,
05:07 a sort of stable establishing showcase,
05:10 this tournament is just f***ing awful in a time where the in-ring product
05:14 was very much not the focus of WWE programming.
05:17 Not only is the tournament utter s*** as you're watching it,
05:20 but it does a horrible job at trying to make a new star,
05:23 but I guess that is what happens when your supposed new push star likes to go by the name Mr. Ass.
05:28 The summer of Gunn was a horrible time for old Billy,
05:31 and it reflected particularly poorly on the tournament in which he was crowned.
05:35 #5 The Loser Kings
05:38 You know what has always, always, always baffled me to my core?
05:42 It might just be me, but WWE's old philosophy of giving someone an accolade
05:47 and then beating them into a fine paste for months afterwards
05:50 has always seemed a little bit counterproductive.
05:53 It has been a thing with many a Money in the Bank winner in the days of yore,
05:56 like Daniel Bryan, Dolph Ziggler, The Miz,
05:58 but in the case of Sheamus and Wade Barrett,
06:00 the King of the Ring crown on their head may as well have been an anchor on their foot.
06:04 From the time Sheamus wins the cheap-ass crown,
06:07 he wins just one match in the next four months.
06:11 And in the case of Barrett,
06:12 this man was getting beat on Raw by R-Truth after winning the tournament.
06:17 Like, why bother?
06:19 Do you think that the other guy will look good by beating the Geek of the Ring?
06:23 Somehow, I think this new era will get this concept a bit better,
06:28 especially with who appears set to win the thing,
06:31 but my goodness, it's a wonder why anyone would be lining up to enter the tournament,
06:35 given what we've seen the last 15 years.
06:38 Number 4 - Shorty G
06:40 Audible sigh
06:42 For as unfun a time as 2019 was in WWE,
06:45 they had a surprisingly good King of the Ring tournament.
06:48 Maybe it shouldn't have been that surprising,
06:50 given the quality of the roster they had at the time,
06:52 but again, this was the same month as that Hell in a Cell match and Brock beating Kofi,
06:57 so I'd be surprised anything WWE did was good.
07:00 That being said, the biggest highlight of the tournament came in the form of its final.
07:04 Chad Gable and Baron Corbin had arguably Corbin's best ever main roster match,
07:09 which saw him become the King of the Ring,
07:11 but oh, don't worry, Chad,
07:13 Baron isn't the only one that's gonna get a new character out of this.
07:16 Maybe this is a bit King of the Ring adjacent for some people,
07:19 but I can only see this 2019 King of the Ring tournament as the root cause
07:23 of Chad Gable's descent into purgatory as just after this excellent tournament final,
07:29 King Corbin decreed that Chad would henceforth be known as Shorty G.
07:33 He looked like a f***ing 8th grader, bro.
07:36 I'm so glad my boy Chad is finally getting his moment now,
07:40 but he truly had to drag himself through blood and bone to get there.
07:45 Number 3 - The King Character
07:47 Listen up, WWE, just because King Booker was very entertaining
07:51 doesn't mean that every heel that wins the King of the Ring after him
07:54 needs to be a cartoon character.
07:56 We had a good mix in the 80s and 90s of people who could pull off the over-the-top King character
08:01 and people who were smart enough not to try,
08:03 but since then, it has been one King Sheamus after King Barrett after King Corbin,
08:08 and I'm sick of it!
08:09 At the very least, Xavier Woods was a babyface who enough people love unconditionally
08:14 to be a goofball King character and get away with it,
08:16 but the heels have no shot.
08:18 It just reduces all of them down to one bullet point on a character sheet.
08:22 King Booker was funny, he was charming, he had Queen Charmelle in the King's court,
08:27 and he also WON enough to become World Champion at the same time,
08:31 so there were enough layers to the character to be memorable in the best way.
08:36 Ain't nobody trying to willfully remember King Corbin forcing Roman Reigns to eat dog food.
08:40 And also, have you ever seen a King?
08:43 They don't potter around with a cape and crown,
08:45 they wear suits!
08:47 William Regal came close!
08:48 Have an imposing heel, suited up, looking dapper,
08:51 and I guarantee you, they will see greater results than these folks did.
08:55 Now those cartoon King gimmicks are stupid,
09:00 but they are made even worse when you consider that these days,
09:03 that is the only reward for winning the King of the Ring tournament.
09:07 People have often brought up Survivor Series as a stupid show,
09:10 with no stakes, with years of red vs blue evidence to point to in that regard,
09:14 but for most of its existence, King of the Ring has had a similar problem.
09:18 A handful of the tournament winners from the pay-per-view days
09:21 had a World Title shot come packaged with their new crown,
09:24 and it led to some very memorable Summerslam moments,
09:27 but I have no idea why winning the tournament isn't rewarded in the highest order more often.
09:32 Like you have your Royal Rumble to get a title shot at Mania,
09:35 King of the Ring should get you a shot at Summerslam.
09:37 It seems like such an easy decision,
09:40 but for the vast majority of these tournaments, they just haven't done it.
09:43 Owen Hart and Brock Lesnar getting follow-up title matches
09:46 make their tournament wins feel 100% more important.
09:49 But I suppose to be fair to this argument,
09:51 I do have to talk about the other side of that coin, don't I?
09:55 Number 1 - Mabel
09:57 Maybe this is the reason why King of the Ring doesn't get a title shot anymore.
10:00 We've talked about it to death on this channel,
10:02 but why WWE thought the way forward from the steroid scandal of the early 90s
10:07 was to equate muscle mass to body mass and find the largest man they could to be on top,
10:12 even if by large I mean wide, I will never ever know.
10:15 Mabel won the King of the Ring in 1995,
10:18 already considered by most to be the worst year in WWE history,
10:21 but made considerably worse by this victory,
10:24 which subsequently gave us the Mabel vs Diesel Summerslam main event
10:28 that us list writers love to talk about oh so much.
10:32 Shawn Michaels was in this tournament, man.
10:34 Think about how much better this tournament lineage would look if it went Brett,
10:38 Owen, Shawn, Austin, Triple H, rather than having a 500 pound albatross in the middle of it.
10:44 I don't want to disrespect those who are no longer with us by any means.
10:47 I'm sure Nelson Frazier was a very nice man,
10:51 but when you are talking about the biggest mistakes WWE made with King of the Ring,
10:55 Mabel fits that description in more ways than one.
10:58 And that's our list. Make sure of course that you like this video,
11:00 subscribe and enable notifications to always on,
11:03 and check out this clip from the latest Survival Series.
11:06 Davis, I need you to name me every single NXT champion.
11:13 Oh you mother f*****.
11:14 Okay, okay, okay.
11:16 Okay.
11:17 In reverse chronological order.
11:19 Oh for f***** sake.
11:20 Oh god damn. In reverse chronological order.
11:25 Yes.
11:25 I'll be better doing it.