A Journey In Time – The WWE European Title – Part One: The Bulldog’s Bite

Welcome to A Journey In Time!

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.

Introducing the European Title was supposed to be a way to add some interest to the House Shows when the WWF crew travelled across the pond, and the WWF decided that the best candidate to become the inaugural Champ was “British Bulldog” Davey Boy Smith. This was sound reasoning, as Davey Boy was not just a huge star in his native England, but he was beloved across the European continent as well and was arguably one of the WWF’s biggest stars in the region along with Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker, who all enjoyed strong support from WWF’s European faithful at the time. Seeing that Bret, Shawn and Taker weren’t European, and were all too busy going for the WWF Title, Davey Boy was a logical choice to win the new belt. He was both European and also a big enough star that he could give the belt some instant prestige.

WWF held a tournament for the new belt in Germany, with Davey Boy and Owen Hart eventually making their way to the Final match. Owen got a Count Out win over brother Bret in one Semi-Final whilst Davey Boy defeated Vader in his Semi-Final, so both wrestlers got some sizeable scalps on the way to the Final match. When the bout in Berlin between Owen and Davey took place on the 26th February 1997, it was a technical classic and one of the best matches in Monday Night Raw history. Owen and Davey were the WWF Tag Team Champions at the time and were teasing a split in the build-up to WrestleMania 13, so them being opponents here made sense as a way to continue that storyline, and the resulting match was sensational. As far as matches to introduce a new belt go, the European Title couldn’t have had a better debut, as it was contested by two genuine stars in front of a raucous crowd and the match itself was of high quality. Davey managed to catch Owen in a pinning hold, giving the fans both a clean finish and also opening the door for more possible matches between the two, but things changed dramatically following WrestleMania 13.

Bret Hart’s Heel turn at that event not only changed his own career direction, but also that of both Davey and Owen. Davey and Owen had continued their gradual breakup as a team following the match in Berlin, with a rematch eventually being booked between the two on the 31st March 1997 live episode of Raw. Owen and Davey wrestled another good match, with this one having a surprise twist at the end as Bret Hart came down to the ring to essentially stop the match and get the two back on the same page. This led to what would normally have been a very emotional and heart-warming moment, as Bret told his brother and brother-in-law that he loved them and didn’t want to see them fighting any more. However, in a humorous subversion, the moment was drowned in boos due to all three wrestlers now being despised rule breakers. Jim Neidhart and Brian Pillman were soon added to the new Bret, Owen and Davey trio, forming the new Hart Foundation in the process.

Owen would soon win the Intercontinental Champion from some random kid with a bum-bag/fanny-pack called Rocky Maivia (not sure what happened to him. I’m told he might have made a couple of movies) and that meant that Owen and Davey both had a singles belt each to go with the tag belts they held. Though The Hart Foundation were a great act in 1997, and were high up the card for most of the year, this did mean that the European Title itself was marginalised significantly. Indeed, despite holding the belt for over 200 days, Davey Boy only successfully defended the belt once on pay per view (SummerSlam 1997 against Ken Shamrock) and three times on television. Not only that, Davey never managed to actually pin any of his challengers, with DQ wins over Vader and Ken Shamrock, a No Contest with Owen in the aforementioned bout where Bret Hart wandered out, and a Double Count Out with Goldust.

Ultimately the combination of terrible non-finishes, and scarce defences, made the European Title look like nothing more than a prop rather than a real Championship that fans should care about. It was just something that Davey Boy carried around and was almost treated more like Ted DiBiase’s Million $ Belt, where it was more something that Davey wore down to the ring in order to add some flavour to his character rather than a prestigious belt that people really wanted to win. It didn’t help that Bulldog never actually pinned anyone once he’d actually won the belt, as it made him look like an undeserving Champion and that didn’t help the fledgling belt’s reputation. Despite being a pretty mediocre first Champion, Davey’s popularity remained strong in Europe, so much so that the WWF was able to promote a live pay per view event exclusively in the region on the 20th September 1997 in Birmingham, with Bret Hart even managing to get the WWF to agree to show the event in Canada as well.

Davey Boy was set to have arguably his biggest match for the belt since winning it, with him taking on Main Event star Shawn Michaels at the top of the bill. Not only was Davey getting a prestige bout with one of the biggest stars in the business at the time, but he was even going to get to retain his belt as well, possibly even by pin-fall this time. However, things didn’t quite work out that way and we’ll cover that in more detail next week when our Journey In Time continues.

Before I go, I’d like to thank Conor Renshaw for creating the feature image for me!