Mike Looks Back – The WWE European Title – Part Two: The Prestigious European Title

Welcome again to Mike Looks Back

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.

Shawn was notoriously difficult to do business with during this stage already, as this was long before he became born again and cleaned his act up somewhat. On top of his already existing aversion to losing (I believe the official medical term is “Idontwant’todoajobus”, and it’s something many in the wrestling profession seem to suffer from) Shawn also was in the midst of a very real-life dispute with Bret Hart. Bret and Shawn had scrapped together backstage for real back during the summer and were very much not on good terms, so Shawn’s pre-existing dislike for losing was only reinforced when he learned that he’d have to lose to a member of Bret’s family. One could argue that Shawn was currently in the midst of a Main Event push whilst Davey was a mid-card player outside of his home region, so Shawn would have some cause to be miffed at being required to put Davey over.

However, one could easily counter that by noting that the pay per view wasn’t going to be shown in the USA and that Bulldog catching Michaels after a good match wasn’t going to do Shawn much in the way of damage, especially as there were plenty of ways to protect Shawn in defeat. Not only were Bret and Owen Hart in the building, but Undertaker was also at the event and he could have easily got involved to cost Shawn the match somehow. This would get around Shawn doing a clean job and would have also added some extra heat to Shawn’s ongoing issue with The Phenom. The fans in attendance probably wouldn’t have cared whether Bulldog won the bout cleanly or won because Bret, Owen or Undertaker clobbered Shawn somehow so long as their countryman prevailed in the end. Shawn refused to do the honours though and instead demanded to win, although he was “generous” enough to promise to return the favour to Bulldog when the WWF returned to the UK for a show in Manchester in the spring of 1998.

As Shawn seemingly had some kind of hypnotic control over Vince McMahon during this time (seriously, find someone to love you the way Vince McMahon loved Shawn Michaels between 1995-97) he got his way and got to beat Bulldog via referee stoppage after destroying Davey’s leg whilst poor Tracy looked on weeping. Yes, not only did Shawn get to win but he got to do it in a thoroughly dominant and humiliating manner for good measure. And that big rematch that was due to happen in Manchester in 1998? It will shock you all I’m sure to learn that the match never ended up happening due to Bulldog leaving the WWF following the Montreal Screw-job and Shawn being out with a back injury. The match between Shawn and Bulldog was very good at least, as battles between them tended to be, but it was small comfort for the fans and Bulldog’s family, as the home nation hero got destroyed and humiliated, and never got his revenge. Ah, wrestling politics, they’re fun aren’t they?

An even bigger issue of course was that now HBK was the European Champion, in a decision that made very little sense and added very little either to the belt’s prestige or Shawn’s resume/curriculum vitae. Shawn was a Main Event star, so in theory him winning the belt would have made it seem more important, but a truck got driven through that concept when Shawn started treating the belt with bemused contempt on every appearance. Shawn would regularly refer to the belt as “my prestigious European Championship” in a mocking tone and lugged it around like it was more of an inconvenience rather than something to be treasured. Granted, the belt had hardly had a high level of prestige when it belonged to Davey, but Davey had at least treated it as something valuable that he was happy to have. Davey would display the belt proudly and seemed to care about it, but under Shawn Michaels the belt became even more of a prop.

There isn’t really much to say about Shawn’s actual run as European Champion aside from one notable bout, as he never defended it on pay per view and only defended it twice on television. The most interesting aspect of the reign was an Intercontinental Champion Vs European Champion match with Owen Hart on the 20th October 1997 episode of Raw, but that ended in a No Contest and was more there as a vehicle to hype up Owen’s match with Stone Cold Steve Austin at Survivor Series 1997. Add in a DQ loss to Ken Shamrock on Raw and that was all she wrote for Shawn’s title defences. It was a shame that one of the best in-ring performers of all-time did so little to elevate the European Title, but then again it was dumb to give Shawn the belt to begin with.

Michaels was feuding with both The Undertaker and Bret Hart in Main Event matches when he was the European Champion and neither of those two were going to be challenging for that belt during those feuds, so sticking the belt on HBK amounted to nothing more than a colossal waste of time when the belt could have been on someone who would actually defend it. The next Champion would seem to suggest that the WWF was going in that direction, but things didn’t really work out that way and we’ll cover that in more detail next week when Mike Looks Back.