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Thursday 20 October 2016

"Dude, He's Raggin On Your Cord" The Worst Belts in Wrestling History

Belts are big news right now with the debut of several new belts, sorry championships, on in the WWE. The Universal title, the Smackdown womens championship, tag team titles, and the Southern States States Heritage Six man TV Titles, business has never been better for belt maker / designers.

Not since the heady days of Mike Tysons peak when new boxing feds were set up almost weekly, just so promoters could milk more 'unification bouts against  the diminutive, squeaky voiced sex offender.

Unfortunately, this 200% increase in hardware has not been met with Universal praise. Quite apart from the obvious gripes about ‘diluting the value’ of the titles.  (As if that means anything anymore after Zach Ryder’s epic one day reign, and the fact that somehow The Miz is not only still employed but holds what was once the second most prestigious title in the world) Rather, at the moment, fans are revolting against design of the belt, which the fans feel is, well, revolting.

The mere fact that the debut of the Universal belt at Summerslam generated a stronger negative fan reaction than the three top heels, Rusev, Reigns and Rollins, combined shows that fans are becoming increasingly concerned with the aesthetic rather than the meaning of what they see.  A principle that kept  Sid Vicious in the main event for so many years
But did the Universal title deserve such derision?  Yes, it looks like the product of that unfortunate month when the company took the gimmick of Corporate Kane too far and actually put him in charge of the design team.  (he was a disaster in HR so they gave him a sideways move) but at least it’s clear which company the belt is from. The WWE logo occupies 43% of the face of the belt, with the tiniest font possible used to state which title it represents, just in case anybody was unclear what the values of the company are.
wwe-universal
The only way it could have been more blatant is if they had stuck a Polaroid of Stephanie McMahon mid-rant on it
Grotesque as many are accusing it of being, it’s main crime is not being as aesthetically pleasing as the legendary Winged Eagle Belt, it is by no means the ugliest belt in wrestling history.  For that honor, we have a number of contenders….
(Note: for the purposes of this article, we are ignoring 'gimmick' belts like the Cena’s Spinning belt, the mashed up hardcore title and the million dollar belt, and obvious jokes like the TNA championship and anything won by Randy Orton)

Western States Heritage (1980's, probably)
NWA_Western_States_Title_2015 Average belt, but the greatest name for a title ever.
Why only the Western States? Where does the border lie? And what is this heritage that they speak of that merits a wrestling championship?
If this writer were to take a guess as to how it all came into being,  I would suggest the belt maker was a persuasive fellow who charged by the letter and had a couple of kids to put through college.  Whilst it is not a bad looking belt overall, there is one glaring problem, or two in fact.

Exactly why are there two homunculi on either side of the red oval?  One presumes they are meant to be wrestlers, but could just as easily be dogs, chimpanzees or some inhuman hybrid from the Island of Dr Moreau. Either way, they turn a relatively attractive belt into the inspiration for a simian themed nightmare.

WWE Divas Belt (2000's)
Designed by the same geniuses (Genii? Genipodes?) that brought the world the ‘Powered by Fairydust’ rear windshield stickers, that pair oh so well with the giant eyelashes  on the headlamps. Because that’s how to reverse the stereotype of women being bad drivers – dress the car up like it’s a My Little Pony!

Car
Party in the front, Set back the Womens movement by 50 years in the back, wooh!
Divas In the same vein, we have this…thing.  If it were made of sugar frosting, it couldn’t be more sickly.  Most notably however, is that it has wings.  Do you know what else has wings? Certain types of sanitary towel. 
And of course, its pink – really, really pink., which makes it hard to believe that anyone would put their life on the line trying to win it.  In fact the only time anyone in wrestling fought over anything this pink was when Terry Garvin and Pat Patterson first saw Caden, the fresh faced, teenage ring boy in Poughkeepsie in '86.

AWA Belt (1968)
awabelt68
It's sooo metal, Judas Priest are jealous
The first thing that strikes you about this vintage AWA belt is the distinct lack of leather.  Where there would ordinarily be cowhide, there is metal, thus necessitating the use of more metal to link the plates together..
Where did the leather go? Possibly it was all used up to make that guys thong?  We will never know, and frankly we are better for not knowing.   All this over reliance on metal to make the belt means as well as losing some visual appeal, it must have chafed like a mo-fo when you were wearing it.
What really sets this off is the attention to detail. Where other belts will feature a discreet plate with the champions name, this one features a little pic of said champion, juuuust above the twig and berry area.  Glossing over the deeply homoerotic tones of the belt, the use of the picture does explain why short, chubby and balding Verne Gagne kept himself as champion for 27 of the 31 years the promotion existed. It wasn't because he was a shameless self promoter whose ego ultimately caused the downfall of his business, it was because the cost of recreating a passport photo in metal was prohibitively expensive. Mystery solved!

Mid Atlantic TV Belt (1978)
Mid Adtlantic TV Belt
Funk-eeee!
This was from the late 70’s where everything was beige. Shirts were beige, couches were beige, bathroom suits were beige, hell, even the color Red was beige for a few months in 1978. So it should come as no surprise that it was into this gloriously bland period that this abomination was born.
If you were the champion at the time, you would have paired that puppy with a white polyester suit, black (shiny) polyester shirt and some lethally high stacked heels and strut your way down to Studio 54. The only question is whether the strap was made of leather or some petroleum based, man made material that temporarily slips my mind.
As a bonus, its immense width offered a second purpose – as a medical support (or ‘truss’ as it would have been called in those halcyon days). Given yourself a hernia defending the title? No problem, just wrap this around your middle and you are good to go.  Groovy

ICW Tag Team Titles (1981) 
ICW Tag This blocky beauty is from the infamous ‘renegade’ promotion, ICW. Famed for running against Jerry Lawler in the Memphis territory and for being owned by the Poffos – Angelo, Lanny and Randolph, who, unsurprisingly changed his surname to Savage.  Why? because he was as mad as a box of cheese and the name Poffo just didn’t get that message across properly
Whats the first thing you notice about this belt? Apart from the distinct lack of curves or course?  It’s overwhelming whiteness, which is not normally a color used for championship belts because there aren’t many white metals out there. There are none in fact - that's just science.  This leads your writer to believe that the panels were made of either:
  • Compressed cocaine (it was the early 80’s so that is definitely in play) and was therefore used as a way to transport the colombian nose candy from place to place without being hassled by the man, or,
  • Ivory from elephants who were recently alive until Randy, full of  the aforementioned coke, appeared on the scene ad thought how sweet a white-panelled belt would be
Proof of the success of the concept is the overwhelming absence of white belts you see these days. In fact, you can barely turn up at an indie show without not seeing anything that looks like this.

NWA TV Title (1980's)
NWA TV Title
Was this the red leather that was the inspiration for the Universal title? It might be the actual leather
A fairly standard belt in overall design, but with one major difference - the unmissable use of red leather that simply screamed 'Jobber!'
This may be a case of tail wagging the dog, perhaps
Also,  one can't help but notice there isn't an actual tv depicted on it, although there are the amusing attempts at making it tv relevant by having the ABC and CBS logos on the side. Can't help but notice there's no TBS - foreshadowing??

NWA World Title / Big Gold Belt (1980's, early 1990's, revived in early 2000's. Fuck You HHH!)
A controversial pick when you consider that it may be the most beloved title belt in history, but it's time to lay down the railroad tracks of truth, shovel some coal into the boiler and slam this steam engine of realism into your face.  First things first, it was affectionately referred to as 'The Big Gold Belt'. Just one problem with that - it was fucking silver!!!  At best, in a strong yellow light, if you squinted and thought really hard about gold, it would look like slightly tarnished silver. Case in point:
gold belt
Go ahead, try and convince yourself it's gold, we can wait
Secondly, it lacks color, and I don't mean the lack of gold (we covered that in the previous sentence), I mean it lacks all color.  if it was a person, you would tell it to eat more vegetables and get some sun, which may explain why so many wrestling fans can relate to it.   Frankly, it looks like a large piece of crumpled aluminium foil, which it may have been for  period just before the Ted Turner buyout, when money was tighter than Dusty Rhodes' speedos. (get that image out of your head sucker). 
flair belt
Does your dad know you borrowed his belt?
Finally, its oversized. The NWA / was never the home of the big man so they overcompensation by having the biggest title belt around. Kind of like every guy who ever bought a Humvee.  All this did was serve to make the champions look like a Mexican Mini.
Were this the WWF, with it's Hogans, Andre's, Undertakers, et al, the belt would have been more in proportion, but the NWA's list of champions included Ronnie Garvin, Ricky Steamboat and of course, Charlotte's father, Ric.

All fine men to be sure, but at a maximum of 6 feet tall, that belt make them look ludicrous by reaching from nipple to knee.  Good for defending against snipers though.
The first time it looked appropriate was when The Giant beat Flair, but thats barely any succour when you consider it.



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