Apparently it's news, because the WWE Title that John Cena won on Sunday Night is his 9th. This ties him with the Rock for total number of WWE Championships.
Is this news? Really? Back in the days of NWA - when the sport was real, and real men really wrestled for title belts - the number of belts was a really big deal. Ric Flair's unprecedented 16 World Titles were a big deal. Bruno Sammartino held the WWWF World Championship (the very title John Cena holds now) for seven years, eight months, and one day. THAT was a big deal. And what is the REAL record anyway? How is it determined? Let's try a jacked up history lesson.
The World Championship (Jericho's Belt - which is formally the WCW World Championship) used to be the NWA World Title. (The one Ric Flair won 10 times. In both NWA and WCW. Yes, I said ten times. Six of the changes weren't sanctioned by the NWA, and therefore do not count. Don't you feel like someone just lied to you?) Oddly enough it first belonged to a little known territory called the WWWF. (Yep, the Juggernaut known today as WWE.) Vincent J. McMahon got tired of the NWA's crap, and withdrew from the NWA. Deciding to go it alone, which in the 1960's seemed like a bad idea. Bet those people feel really stupid now.
Territory wrestling continued, and in 1988 Ted Turner bought a floundering promotion that performed well on his little cable station, and turned it into WCW. They were members of the NWA. In 1993 the NWA board refused to acknowledge Ric Rude as NWA Champion, and WCW withdrew their membership from the NWA. Except, WCW owned the belt design, and they continued to use it. The audience was none the wiser. The biggest company still being televised and having a standing membership was this little promotion you may have heard of, ECW. (Eastern Championship Wrestling. Which later became the ECW we knew and loved.) Yeah, that's right - Shane Douglas was the NWA Champion. Same belt Ric Flair, Terry Funk, Dusty Rhodes, and Ricky Steamboat held. Shane Douglas won that title by putting someone through a flaming table. Except, the NWA thought Shane Douglas was an unprofessional buffoon - and that pissed Shane and Heyman off, so they withdrew from the NWA and NEVER looked back.
From that point on, the NWA World Championship was defended in independent territories. They made a bid for WWE in the late 90s, but... you guessed it, WWE ran that storyline into the ground, and it didn't work out. In fact, a champion was never named.
Of course, in 2002 - a little show called NWA:TNA got the licensing to use the NWA World Championship as it's belt. That deal ended in 2007. The belt went back to the independent circuit and now belongs to ROH. So wrap your mind around this. The first and original wrestling championship: The NWA World Heavyweight Title, arguably the only belt that matters - because it's the FIRST and REAL belt. The one RIC FRIGGIN' FLAIR said belonged to the "REAL WORLD'S HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION", yeah it belongs to some guy named Adam Pearce. Who's Adam Pearce you ask? What? You don't know? Forget Cena, Forget Jericho - he's the REAL WORLD CHAMPION!
The NWA belt is the real belt. Plain and simple. It changes hands about once a year (except when it was in TNA) - and not on some quarterly Orton/Cena/Batista/Triple H rotation. Does it matter that John Cena has 9 titles? (Or that Triple H has 13, etc.) Sure, it matters for WWE History I suppose.
What becomes insulting is WWE's insistence that this is some HUGE deal. Wrap your brain around that. It took Ric Flair nearly 20 years to win 10 NWA World Titles. John Cena comes in and wins 9 WWE Championships in six years - and WWE wants us to think the guy has reinvented the wheel. I'm not some independent promotion pusher, but the ROH Title is the one that is deeply rooted in wrestling culture. Don't let the WWE fool you with their sullied belt and multi time champions.
/end rant
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