ktc

Dueling Chair Shots
by Kurt La Mont
Column date 01/25/2001

As you may recall after Guilty as Charged, I wasn't thrilled with Rhino becoming World Heavyweight Champ after a Sandman 10 minute (or less) title reign. When I thought about it a little more I realized that a majority of the time a heel held each of the ECW titles so I decided to take a look at all of the champions over the past year or so.

World Title
Mike Awesome 12/23 - 04/13 (heel)
Tazz 04/13 - 04/22 (face)
Tommy Dreamer 04/22 - 04/22 (face)
Justin Credible 04/22 - 10/01 (heel)
Jerry Lynn 10/01 - 11/05 (face)
Steve Corino 11/05 - 01/07 (heel/tweener)
Sandman 01/07 - 01/07 (face)
Rhino 01/07 - present (heel)

As you can see, while there are 4 faces and 4 heels the heels held the belts for a much longer period. Tazz last less than 2 weeks, Dreamer last 15 minutes, Jerry Lynn lasted a month, and the Sandman lasted 10 minutes. This totals less then 2 months out of the past 13 months. That's a lot of time with the top belt on a heel. The fans come out to see their favorites win, and if you don't give them that enough, you risk alienating them. While I'm not suggesting a face wear the belt all the time, I think it needs to be a lot more then this for the top belt in the company. Ideally, for me it would be between 40-50% of the time.

TV Title
RVD held the title for almost 2 years before he was stripped of the title. At that time a tournament was held with Super Crazy winning at Living Dangerously on March 12.

Super Crazy 03/12 - 04/08 (face)
Tajiri 04/08 - 04/22 (heel)
Rhino 04/22 - 08/26 (heel)
Kid Kash 08/26 - 09/09 (face)
Rhino 09/09 - present (heel)

After Van Dam's long reign as TV champ we again began to see the trend towards heel champions. Super Crazy won the tournament but it was just a few weeks before he lost it to Tajiri, who then lost it a few weeks later to Rhino. Kid Kash briefly interrupted Rhino's reign until he was defeated a few weeks later.

Once again, the heels time of possession was overwhelming, even though there have been 2 different faces winning and 2 different heels winning. Since March of 2000 the faces have held the TV belt for about 6 weeks while the heels (mostly Rhino) have held the belts for over 9 months.

Tag Team
For the tag team belts we'll begin with the Impact Players who took the titles from the odd combination of Dreamer and Raven who are tough to classify as a heel team or a face team. Also, the titles were vacant for 4 months after Justin Credible threw them down at Cyberslam.

Impact Players    01/09 - 02/26 (heel)
Tanaka & Dreamer 02/26 - 03/04 (face)
Awesome & Raven 03/04 - 03/12 (heel)
Impact Players    03/12 - 04/22 (heel)
Vacant   04/22 - 08/25
Whipwreck & Tajiri 08/25 - 08/26 (face)
FBI 08/26 - 12/03 (heel)
Doring & Roadkill 12/03 - present (face)

More of the same, once again, as the heels dominate the length of time holding the belts. Tanaka & Dreamer were short term champions, holding the belt for a week. Mikey & Tajiri, despite being the best tag team only held the tag belts for one day. Now Doring & Roadkill have their shots with belts and have held them for nearly 2 months (although they have only wrestled as champs a handful of times). Total time the faces have held the tag belts: 2 months. Total time the heels have held the tag belts: 6 months.

I always knew that heels generally wore the belts in wrestling (in all promotions), I didn't realize that it was this pronounced in ECW. While I am a Monday morning, armchair booker at best this seems to be a curious pattern. To me, it says you are not giving the fans enough of what they want, i.e. seeing their favorite wrestlers win and hold the titles. As I mentioned earlier, I think the heels should hold the belt a majority of the time (50-60%), but not so much that things are predictable and/or take enjoyment from the fans.

At Guilty as Charged the fans wanted Sandman to win the title. He won the title and the fans were thrilled. Taking the belt off of him less than 10 minutes later pissed the fans off. I think this booking runs the risk of turning more fans off then drawing interest in seeing Rhino be defeated in the future.

If you have any questions or comments let me know at [email protected]. If you have any column ideas let me know, it's not exactly easy writing a weekly column about ECW when they are running every week; it's especially tough when nothing is going on in ECW.

Past editions of Dueling Chair Shots
10/4/99
10/16/99
10/27/99
11/5/99
11/10/99
11/17/99
11/19/99
12/03/99
12/10/99
12/17/99
01/03
01/19
01/29
02/04
02/14
02/22
02/29
03/06
03/13
03/20
04/12
04/28
05/08
05/18
05/23
05/30
06/05
06/13
06/21
06/29
07/06
07/11
07/17
07/24
08/01
08/07
08/20
08/30
09/06
09/14
09/20
09/27
10/05
10/12
10/24
11/01
11/06
11/16
11/28
12/04
12/09
12/28
01/04
01/11
01/18