Mike Looks Back

Welcome once again to Mike Looks Back!

When we left things last week; Kurt Angle had claimed WWF gold within 3 months of his initial WWF main roster debut when he felled Val Venis on an episode of SmackDown. Angle made sense as someone to hold the European belt. He was an up and coming fresh talent who could get a boost from claiming the ailing championship, whilst the belt benefitted from being associated with a star that was demonstrably on the rise. However, Angle’s reign suffered in the same way that D’Lo Brown’s third run with the belt had done, in that the European Title quickly had to share space around the Pittsburgher’s waist when Angle also began a quest to hold the WWF Intercontinental Title.

Welcome again to Mike Looks Back!

When we left things last week; Val Venis had downed Davey Boy Smith and D’Lo Brown at Armageddon 1999 to become the European Champion for the first time. Venis’ Adult Film Star gimmick may have been starting to get a bit stale (a view reinforced by the WWF themselves when they tried repackaging Venis later in 2000) but he was a decent hand in the ring who could wrestle with most people on the roster. Venis didn’t do much to raise the European Title’s profile as champion , but he was a competent mid-card talent, so the belt’s prestige at least wasn’t damaged during his reign.

Welcome once again to Mike Looks Back!

When we left things last week; Davey Boy Smith had just snared his second European Title reign thanks to the help of his new lackeys The Mean Street Posse. Smith had returned to the WWF in the autumn of 1999 with a reasonable amount of fanfare and had found himself mixing it up in the ring with big hitters like Triple H, The Rock and Kane. However, Bulldog had quickly slipped down the pecking order due to a combination of poor interviews, ebbing star power, a body that was failing him and some deep rooted personal issues. Rather than just move Bulldog off the board entirely though the WWF decided to try and give Smith a boost with a European Title win. However, Smith had fallen so much by that point that his claiming of the belt felt less like a coronation and more like a consolation prize.

Welcome once again to Mike Looks Back!

When we left things last week; D’Lo Brown had managed to win the European Title for the fourth time after felling Mark Henry at WWF Unforgiven 1999. Whereas Brown’s first two reigns had seen Brown raise the prestige of both the belt and himself, his third reign had seen the belt be “little brothered” in deference to the Intercontinental Title as part of Brown’s Euro-Continental run. Brown’s win over Henry represented the second time that he had rescued the Euro belt from a champion who had been handed the gold rather than being charged to win it in the ring, as Henry had been gifted the belt by Jeff Jarrett, who had no need for it due to also being the Intercontinental Champ.

Welcome all to Mike Looks Back!

When we left things last week; D’Lo Brown had liberated the WWF European Title from the uninspiring clutches of Mideon at the Fully Loaded 1999 pay per view, giving Brown his third taste of Euro gold. However, Brown’s victory didn’t lead to him focusing on re-building the European belt’s fractured lineage. Rather, Brown used the momentum gained from his win to target yet more gold, namely the WWF Intercontinental Title, which was currently held by Jeff Jarrett at the time. Jarrett had spent the opening months of 1999 in a tag team with Owen Hart. Jeff and Owen’s team had been a successful one, with them winning the tag belts and holding them through WrestleMania XV until dropping them to the unlikely duo of X-Pac and Kane.

Following Owen’s tragic passing in May 1999, Jarrett refocused on the singles ranks and quickly dethroned The Godfather to collect the IC strap. With a new slightly harder edge, and with valet Debra wowing audiences with her increasingly skimpy collection of pay per view outfits, Jarrett became a solid upper mid-card presence in the WWF. It didn’t hurt Jarrett that he had the backing of head WWF writer Vince Russo, meaning that Jarrett was always going to be “figured in” in some form. What brought Jarrett into the European Title’s sphere was an event on Raw is War towards the end of July 1999. Ben Stiller, yes THAT Ben Stiller, was guest starring on the show in order to hype up his new movie, Mystery Men.

This led to Jarrett and Stiller having an in-ring confrontation after Stiller let slip that he was a big fan of Debra and her “puppies”. Ever the jealous bully, Jarrett attacked Stiller, which led to D’Lo Brown sprinting down to rescue the movie star. The payoff to this was Brown putting up his European Title against Jarrett’s IC Title on the 2nd of August 1999 episode of Raw. Despite the best efforts of Debra and her dog pound, Brown was able to overcome her wayward distractions and ended up blasting Jarrett with one of the belts in order to leave Raw as a double Champion. Thus Brown made history by becoming the first Euro-Continental Champion in WWF history by holding both belts at the same time.

This was of course great for Brown, but less beneficial for the European Title itself, as it was pushed very much to the background and used more as a bargaining tool for Brown to climb up the belt ladder. Rather than Brown being a proud European Champion who had managed to add yet another belt to his collection, it instead felt like Brown was primarily focused on being the IC Champ, with the European belt being an extra thing to go along with it. Indeed, outside of Title for Title bout on Raw and the subsequent rematch at SummerSlam 1999, Brown didn’t defend the European Title on its own on television once during his third reign. Brown wasn’t openly disrespecting the belt at least, but the belt very much felt like the “little brother” of the two he carried to the ring.

This point was punctuated by the fact that Brown deigned only to defend the IC Title on television once he became a double champ. Brown took on Val Venis on Sunday Night HeAT and battled Prince Albert on Shotgun Saturday Night, but on both occasions the European Title was little more than set dressing as only the “big brother” belt was up for grabs. It was a shame to see Brown, someone who had actually helped give the Euro Title some prestige back in 1998 when it desperately required some, now treating the belt as an afterthought in favour of the IC Title. Why the European Title couldn’t have also been on the line in these matches as well was never really explored, but the fact it wasn’t made the belt once again feel like it didn’t matter.

Brown and Jarrett eventually collided again at SummerSlam 1999, with both of Brown’s belts up for grabs. During the build-up to the pay per view event, Brown had been trying to help friend Mark Henry out by putting him through a rigorous training regimen. Brown showed Henry plenty of “tough love” in the process, but it always looked like Brown had Henry’s best interests at heart and was just being firm in order to help his buddy in a time of need. However, Henry ultimately got sick of Brown’s tactics and decided to turn on his harsh taskmaster by blasting Brown on the bonce with Jarrett’s signature acoustic guitar. Despite the usual screwy Attitude Era finish, Jarrett and Brown had a good match and Brown in particular received a strong reaction from the crowd in Minnesota, who gave him genuine star treatment.

With Jarrett now holding the distinction of being the second ever Euro-Continental Champion, he had the choice of defending both belts or giving one of them up. Jarrett chose the latter option, and it should surprise no one that the European belt was the one he decided to give up. Thus on the following night’s episode of Raw, Jarrett relinquished the belt and handed it over to Mark Henry as thanks for a job well done. Yes, Jarrett not only gave up the Euro belt after holding it for barely 24 hours, he also just handed it to another wrestler. Once again the European Title had gone from being a prize that folks fought hard in the ring to win to being just a trinket that one wrestler could pass to another like they were handing over a sausage casserole at a neighbourhood cook-out.

From a storyline perspective it did at least give Henry a solid reason for betraying Brown and scuppering their friendship. Not only did the lazy and feckless Henry no longer have to contend with Brown’s training regimen, but he’d also been handed his first singles belt in the WWF for good measure. However, despite the storyline reasoning for it all falling into place nicely, Henry was already a poor choice as champion, and the way he won the belt just made an already weak candidate feel even worse. That might come as a surprise to those who only remember Henry for his Hall of Pain days, where he was a competent monster Heel who could work at the top of the card. In 1999 however, Henry was genuinely one of the worst in-ring performers the WWF had at the time. Therefore, Henry being gifted a belt that he was thoroughly unqualified to hold, after the WWF had already done the same storyline just a few months earlier with Mideon, drove yet another truck through the poor Euro belt’s dwindling prestige.

Henry defended his newly acquired belt on television twice, against Steve Blackman and X-Pac on episodes of SmackDown. Neither match really set the world on fire, with the Blackman match barely lasting past the one minute mark and existing mainly so that it could continue Val Venis’ feud with “The Lethal Weapon”. Henry’s bout with X-Pac was received a little better, but the focus of the match was how Henry was out of shape and unable to keep up with his nippier opponent, leading to X-Pac getting the count out win. So not only did Henry not do much inside the ring of any note as champ, but he was also presented as an undeserving holder of the belt for good measure. As previously mentioned in our journey, having an undeserving champion can work as a storytelling device, but Henry was the third European Champion in 1999 alone to be presented that way and it was beyond overkill as a storytelling device by the time Henry got his turn at it.

Henry and Brown eventually met at the Unforgiven 1999 pay per view event and had a so-so battle for the belt that ended with Brown claiming his fourth European Title. Brown did at least look good in the bout en route to nabbing the belt, although Henry wrestled a pretty miserable contest from his end (which was very much the norm at the time for the hapless big lug). Henry’s reign had been built around him being a lazy womaniser who focused more on spending time with Godfather’s ladies of the evening rather than his wrestling, with Henry even taking a slap from Lillian Garcia at Unforgiven prior to his bout for one lecherous comment too many. Brown relieving the wrestling equivalent of a Snorlax of the European belt gave fans some optimism that the belt might finally be looking at some brighter days at least. Meanwhile, the inaugural holder primed himself for an improbable return to the limelight, but we’ll cover that next week when Mike Looks Back.

Welcome once again to Mike Looks Back!

When we left things last week; Shane McMahon had just retired the European Title for the second time and it looked like the belt had finally fallen by the wayside for good. However, a strange situation would lead to the belt making an unexpected return to WWF screens in the summer of 1999. During Shane McMahon’s reign with the belt, the two top Heel factions in the WWF had joined together, with The McMahon’s Corporation group joining up with The Undertaker’s Ministry of Darkness, leading to The Corporate Ministry being formed. This alliance saw the likes of the newly Heel turned Triple H, Chyna and The Big Boss Man rubbing shoulders with the likes of Viscera and The Acolytes (Faarooq and Bradshaw). Outside of Undertaker and Triple H, none of the group really had much in the way of Main Event credibility, but Faarooq and Bradshaw were at least efficient muscle and enjoyed a couple of WWF Tag Team Title runs during this period.

One of The Ministry members was Dennis Knight, a lumbering brawler who had mostly tagged with Mark Canterbury in his wrestling career, first as The Texicans in WCW and then as The Godwinns in the WWF. With Canterbury’s career being put on hold due to neck issues, Knight found himself abducted by The Ministry and gave up his hillbilly overalls for an eyeball in a jar. Now renamed as “Mideon”, Knight became the lowest ranked member of The Ministry and often found himself getting beaten up, with even Vince McMahon himself laying a beating on poor Mideon in the spring of 1999 when Mideon approached McMahon at a TV studio when Vince was afraid that The Undertaker would end up abducting his daughter, Stephanie. Due to his, often quite miserable, win/loss record it seemed unlikely that Mideon of all people would be the one to bring the European Title back, but that’s just what happened in June of 1999.

So how did Mideon win the European Title I heard you ask (possibly)? Did he win a gruelling 16 man tournament made up of some of the toughest competitors the WWF had at the time? Did he survive 19 other competitors in a monstrous Battle Royal, where he eliminated a former Champion like Triple H or X-Pac along the way to really give his reign some credibility? Or did he just find the belt in Shane McMahon’s bag and ask if he could be Champion, at which point Shane essentially said “Err, yeah sure, why not”? Considering the prior less-than-stellar history of the European Title up to this point, I think it will be unlikely to shock you dear reader that the WWF decided to go with the third option. Thus, just like that, the European Title was back, and it probably meant even less now than when it had been retired.

I don’t want to be too unfair to Knight here. Yes, he was hardly a thrilling bone-bender once the bell rang, but he looked imposing and could have a passable brawl in the right setting, so he could have potentially been an acceptable European Champion if the WWF had actually deigned to build him up with some wins first before thrusting him into the spotlight. However, Mideon was one step above the bottom rung of the Corporate Ministry ladder, and that was only because the Mean Street Posse had somehow managed to become members somewhere along the way. There were plenty of other mid-card talent who could have won the belt in the proper manner and actually gotten a bit of a boost from it, whilst also making the belt itself look more prestigious in the process.

Hardcore Holly had been getting a decent push as “The Big Shot” in the summer of 1999, so coming out on top in some kind of tournament to win the re-instated belt could have given his push outside of the hardcore division a bit of additional weight and could have allowed him to transition from hardcore scraps to more regular matches. Al Snow was another hardcore contender who could mix it up in a regular match if given the chance and was reasonably over with the crowds during the time, so him winning the European Title would have been good for both himself and the ailing belt. Elsewhere, up and coming hungry grapplers like Edge, Christian and Test could have all benefited from winning the belt, and given the belt a jolt of respectability as well. Billy Gunn was enjoying a renewed push as the King of the Ring, and the WWF could have put the re-instated belt on the line in the KOTR tournament as an additional prize that would have given Gunn some singles gold to go along with his new singles push.

Compared to all of those other candidates, Mideon ranked far lower down the pecking order, and the way he won the belt just made the belt itself look unimportant that a new Champion could claim it in such a frivolous and unserious manner. Granted, this was during the Attitude Era, where belts were often treated like “props” that didn’t really matter. However, a Title belt in wrestling is meant to mean something to the wrestlers themselves so that, when they fight each other to try and have one, the fans actually get invested. If the belts are unimportant, then matches for them become equally unimportant, and they lose all of their effectiveness as a narrative tool that can enrich the story you’re trying to tell. By making Mideon “win” the European Title in such a lame manner, it made the belt itself look lame and not worth having.

It also didn’t help that Slimy Shane got away with never having to drop the belt in the ring, and thus face his deserved comeuppance. Shane bringing the belt back only to get smashed by a hot up and coming babyface would have not only gotten the babyface in question over but it would have made the belt look like a valuable prize again. Still, despite the weak as diluted fruit juice manner in which Mideon captured the Euro belt, both he and the belt itself could have been built back up again had Mideon been presented as any kind of threat between the ropes. Sadly for both Mideon and the long suffering belt, this didn’t happen. Mideon defended the European Title once on television, as he defeated Al Snow on the 4th of July 1999 edition of Sunday Night HeAT.

On paper that doesn’t have to be too bad. Snow, as mentioned earlier, was a competent performer who was generally popular with the fans thanks to his well-performed crazy man act. Mideon toppling Snow clean in a competitive bout would have been a credible way of boosting his reign. Of course that didn’t happen, as Mideon instead won by disqualification following a scant two minutes of action when D’Lo Brown ran in to attack Mideon. Lousy a finish though this assuredly was, the result did put former Champion Brown back in the Title picture once again, with the storyline essentially being that Mideon was an undeserving Champion that Brown wanted to dethrone in order to bring some credibility back to his beloved Euro belt.

Brown would eventually do so by defeating Mideon in an average outing at the Fully Loaded 1999 pay per view event in Buffalo, New York. Brown’s third reign with the European Title would see him barely defend the belt itself, but it would see the belt intertwined with another one leading to a scorching battle at SummerSlam 1999, but we’ll cover that next time in Part Seven. As for Dennis Knight, this brief stint with the European belt would be his only major singles run in the WWF, and it barely lasted a month. Knight was seemingly well liked amongst his peers and this quickie reign almost felt like it was a pat on the back from the WWF higher ups for being a good soldier during the bad old days of 1996. His middling wrestling ability aside, Knight’s reign could have been more than it was, but sadly he was yet another victim of the European Title being treated as a worthless trinket rather than a genuinely important belt that could elevate someone who won it.

Welcome once again to Mike Looks Back!

When we left things last week; D’Lo Brown and X-Pac had collided in a thrilling feud for the WWF European Title. It was a rivalry that not only delivered in the ring but also gave the ailing European belt a much-needed jolt of credibility after previously being treated as more of an annoyance by some of its previous owners. Eventually the former 1-2-3 Kid ended the feud on the up, with X-Pac and Brown having a well-worked corker at the Judgment Day pay per view event in October 1998 that saw X-Pac counter Brown’s Lo-Down splash into the X-Factor face buster for the three count. With X-Pac now top of the European Title mountain for the second time, he spent his time divided between defending his belt and also targeting the top prize in the promotion. X-Pac was an entrant in the WWF Title tournament at Survivor Series 1998, where he was eliminated in the first round after fighting to a draw with “Real Man’s Man” Steven Regal.

However, X-Pac did get a couple of shots at eventual tournament winner The Rock, with him facing Rock on an episode of Raw in December 1998 and also at the UK only pay per view Capital Carnage in that same month. In both cases, the matches between the two were good, with Rock getting to bully the smaller X-Pac around whilst the former Kid sold well and made some good comebacks. Frustrating though it somewhat was to see the European Title put on the back burner whilst the Champion prioritised winning other gold, it certainly didn’t hurt X-Pac that he was presented as a gutsy underdog who could hang in there with the promotions top stars. Indeed, it’s often forgotten how good a babyface Sean Waltman was in 1998-99 before his popularity gradually declined and he became associated with the groan-inducing ‘X-Pac Heat’ phenomenon of the early 2000s.

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When we left things last week; Triple H was a two time European Champion and had been the first wrestler to defend the belt on a US broadcast pay per view event since August 1997. However, following his victory over Owen Hart at the Unforgiven In Your House event in April 1998, Triple H’s next defence didn’t come until the end of July 1998 on an episode of Raw. Triple H and his D-Generation X faction had begun a rivalry with The Rock and his Nation faction, with the plan being that Tri and Rocky would meet at the Fully Loaded In Your House event in a Two out of Three Falls match with both HHH’s European belt and Rock’s Intercontinental belt on the line. However, it was finally decided that just letting Chyna hang the belt over her shoulder whilst it was never defended was doing little for Triple H or the European Title, so the decision was made to take the belt off Triple H.

D’Lo Brown, a member of Rock’s Nation faction, was chosen as the one to dethrone HHH, and he did it on Raw with help from Rock in order to heat up the HHH Vs Rock issue. Brown had been part of the WWF roster since 1997 when he had appeared as an unnamed heavy for The Nation’s then leader Faarooq. It wasn’t the first time that Brown had been part of a militant African American group, as he’d previously been an associate of Da Gangsta’s when that group was part of Smoky Mountain Wrestling. Brown was heavyset and didn’t do a lot of wrestling for most of the first half of 1997, with him instead filling the role of “big dude who can take bumps for the stars” and doing a good job with it, including a memorable moment with Ahmed Johnson gave Brown a Pearl River Plunge on top of a car. However, as 1997 rolled on, Brown began to drop some weight and started wrestling in the ring more often, with him becoming a solid addition to the mid-card by the time 1998 began.

After being “injured” in a King of the Ring match with Dan Severn, Brown started wearing a chest protector and, in classic Pro Wrestling tradition, the storyline soon became that Brown didn’t actually need the protector any more but he was wearing it anyway as a way of getting an unfair advantage in his matches. Brown was a good choice to hold a tertiary belt like the European Title as he was a solid in-ring performer and he was also reasonably over for a mid-card act. Rather than being an overly big star who didn’t need the belt, or a lower level wrestler who wasn’t deserving of it, Brown was at just about the right level to be European Champion, as he was over enough that he could justify holding the belt and the belt itself would be capable of giving him a bit of a boost on top of that. What also helped was that Brown really leaned into being the Champion and made it his own.

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When we left things last week; Shawn Michaels was the reigning WWF European Champion and was treating the belt as little more than an inconvenience. Indeed, the belt had become little more than a joke, with Shawn mockingly referring to it as “the prestigious European Championship” and acting like he couldn’t possibly care less about it. When Shawn added the WWF Title to his collection at Survivor Series 1997 (in a match you might have heard about) it became even sillier for Shawn to still be carrying around the European Title at that stage, so the WWF finally decided that it was time to take it off him. Shawn was still very much in the “will not lose” phase of his career though, so rather than having Shawn drop it to someone in a proper match and give them a rub, they instead just did a comedy match on Raw where Triple H “defeated” Michaels for the belt.

They had actually teased some dissension between Michaels and HHH when the bout was booked by Commissioner Slaughter, but it was of course all a SWERVE (one guess who was writing the show at the time, bro) and in the end the two goofed around in the ring and HHH eventually got a three count in order to crown him as Champion. Despite the ludicrous way the belt changed hands; on paper Triple H seemed like a good pick if you wanted someone to help rebuild the European Title’s tattered image. Triple H wasn’t yet the Main Event Superstar he would go on to become, but he was a solid act in the upper mid-card and an associate of top Heel Shawn Michaels both on and off-screen. Tri was also a solid wrestler within the ropes, and was starting to find a character that worked for him as his existing “generic Heel with the muscular manager who is more over than he is” role was slowly morphing into one of an arrogant degenerate who always talked about how big his…appendage was.

Triple H defending the European Title in good matches with actual finishes would have likely helped increase the belt’s prestige pretty quickly. So of course he pretty much got immediately injured upon winning the belt and they had to find a way to get the belt off of him. Rather than just stripping HHH of the belt and doing a tournament of some kind, the WWF instead decided to get creative. Goldust, who was doing a gimmick at the time where he’d dress up as other wrestlers or celebrities (including his father Dusty Rhodes and Marilyn Manson at different points), was recruited by Triple H to wrestle the challenger in his stead. The Bizarre One dressed up as Tri, complete with ludicrous fake nose, and battled Owen Hart on an episode of Raw, with The King of Harts then defeating the Triple H attired Goldust to seemingly win the belt. They did at least present this as Triple H being an overconfident Heel who tripped himself up, as HHH did not treat the bout as a serious match where the belt was up for grabs. However, Commissioner Slaughter decided to get one over on the villains by saying that he was so convinced by Goldust’s impression that he’d let the belt actually change hands, thus making Own the official new champ. Though this was a clever way for a babyface authority figure to stick it to degenerate Heels and their antics, it was yet another controversial Title change in the young belt’s history, and that didn’t help its standing in the wider WWF ecosystem.

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When we left things last week; “British Bulldog” Davey Boy Smith was in the midst of a pretty underwhelming first reign as WWF European Champion. Davey had won the belt from brother-in-law Owen Hart in a fantastic match in Berlin, Germany at the end of February 1997. Since then, Davey had barely defended the belt on either television or pay per view, with all of the defences he did have ending either in DQ, Count Out or No Contest. However, this patchy booking hadn’t dampened Davey’s popularity or star power in the UK or Europe, so when the WWF arranged for a region exclusive pay per view on the 20th September 1997 in Birmingham, England it made sense for the event to be built around Davey and his colleagues in The Hart Foundation faction. This meant that WWF Champion Bret Hart would defend his belt against The Undertaker whilst Davey would defend his European Title against Shawn Michaels, with the Davey Vs Michaels bout being chosen to top the bill.

The “Boy Toy” had recently turned Heel after blasting Undertaker with a chair back at SummerSlam 1997, so it wasn’t going to be a hard sell to get him to be booed in the UK, despite his considerable star power there, especially with home nation hero Davey Boy opposing him. Seeing as Davey was such a big star in the UK and Europe, the decision was made that Davey Boy would get to retain his belt, with Davey upping the ante and tension by dedicating the match to his sister Tracy, who was legitimately fighting a battle with a terminal illness at the time. Tracy would be brought down to ringside to watch the bout and, after Davey had pulled off the upset to defeat Michaels, the show would be able to end with a heart-warming happy ending as Davey would get to give his sister one more pleasant memory by celebrating with her. However, The Heartbreak Kid wasn’t willing to do that.

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At the beginning of 1997 the WWF had just three official Titles. The WWF Title, the Intercontinental Title and the Tag Team Titles. That seems pretty paltry compared to how many belts most promotions seem to have these days. As of the date of me writing this; Main Roster WWE has Two Men’s World Titles, Two Women’s World Titles, Two sets of Secondary belts for both Men and Women, Two sets of Tag Titles for Men, a set of tag belts for the women and the Two belts that they award to the Champion of Champions deal they do in Saudi Arabia and Australia. And they only recently sent the two Speed belts down to NXT, but before they went the WWE had an eye watering 15 (F-I-F-T-H-T-E-E-N) belts upon which people could account for. And don’t even get me started on how many belts AEW seem to have! Let’s just say that both companies are probably putting a series of belt maker’s kids through college at the moment.

However, back in 1997 the WWF had just the three belts, but over the course of the next couple of years they introduced four more belts to the WWF ecosystem, and starting today we’re going to start a journey looking at the first one the WWF brought in, which was the European Title. Introduced in February of 1997, the WWF European Title was designed to capitalise on the WWF’s popularity in the European region. Business had not been good in the United States for the WWF for quite a while. This was due to a combination of bad press from the steroid trials, a lot of the bigger name stars from the Hulkamania Era either getting old or moving on, and a resurgent WCW that had struck gold with the nWo storyline. Business in Europe continued to be strong though, with it being the case of scarcity creating demand, as the domestic scene in the bigger European nations wasn’t up to much at the time. This meant that the WWF coming over to run a show was seen as a big deal to the wrestling starved fans of Europe, so the WWF usually draw well in places like the UK and Germany as consequence.