Mike Looks Back – The WWE European Title – Part Six: Mideon’s Improbable Reign

Welcome once again to Mike Looks Back!

When we left things last week; Shane McMahon had just retired the European Title for the second time and it looked like the belt had finally fallen by the wayside for good. However, a strange situation would lead to the belt making an unexpected return to WWF screens in the summer of 1999. During Shane McMahon’s reign with the belt, the two top Heel factions in the WWF had joined together, with The McMahon’s Corporation group joining up with The Undertaker’s Ministry of Darkness, leading to The Corporate Ministry being formed. This alliance saw the likes of the newly Heel turned Triple H, Chyna and The Big Boss Man rubbing shoulders with the likes of Viscera and The Acolytes (Faarooq and Bradshaw). Outside of Undertaker and Triple H, none of the group really had much in the way of Main Event credibility, but Faarooq and Bradshaw were at least efficient muscle and enjoyed a couple of WWF Tag Team Title runs during this period.

One of The Ministry members was Dennis Knight, a lumbering brawler who had mostly tagged with Mark Canterbury in his wrestling career, first as The Texicans in WCW and then as The Godwinns in the WWF. With Canterbury’s career being put on hold due to neck issues, Knight found himself abducted by The Ministry and gave up his hillbilly overalls for an eyeball in a jar. Now renamed as “Mideon”, Knight became the lowest ranked member of The Ministry and often found himself getting beaten up, with even Vince McMahon himself laying a beating on poor Mideon in the spring of 1999 when Mideon approached McMahon at a TV studio when Vince was afraid that The Undertaker would end up abducting his daughter, Stephanie. Due to his, often quite miserable, win/loss record it seemed unlikely that Mideon of all people would be the one to bring the European Title back, but that’s just what happened in June of 1999.

So how did Mideon win the European Title I heard you ask (possibly)? Did he win a gruelling 16 man tournament made up of some of the toughest competitors the WWF had at the time? Did he survive 19 other competitors in a monstrous Battle Royal, where he eliminated a former Champion like Triple H or X-Pac along the way to really give his reign some credibility? Or did he just find the belt in Shane McMahon’s bag and ask if he could be Champion, at which point Shane essentially said “Err, yeah sure, why not”? Considering the prior less-than-stellar history of the European Title up to this point, I think it will be unlikely to shock you dear reader that the WWF decided to go with the third option. Thus, just like that, the European Title was back, and it probably meant even less now than when it had been retired.

I don’t want to be too unfair to Knight here. Yes, he was hardly a thrilling bone-bender once the bell rang, but he looked imposing and could have a passable brawl in the right setting, so he could have potentially been an acceptable European Champion if the WWF had actually deigned to build him up with some wins first before thrusting him into the spotlight. However, Mideon was one step above the bottom rung of the Corporate Ministry ladder, and that was only because the Mean Street Posse had somehow managed to become members somewhere along the way. There were plenty of other mid-card talent who could have won the belt in the proper manner and actually gotten a bit of a boost from it, whilst also making the belt itself look more prestigious in the process.

Hardcore Holly had been getting a decent push as “The Big Shot” in the summer of 1999, so coming out on top in some kind of tournament to win the re-instated belt could have given his push outside of the hardcore division a bit of additional weight and could have allowed him to transition from hardcore scraps to more regular matches. Al Snow was another hardcore contender who could mix it up in a regular match if given the chance and was reasonably over with the crowds during the time, so him winning the European Title would have been good for both himself and the ailing belt. Elsewhere, up and coming hungry grapplers like Edge, Christian and Test could have all benefited from winning the belt, and given the belt a jolt of respectability as well. Billy Gunn was enjoying a renewed push as the King of the Ring, and the WWF could have put the re-instated belt on the line in the KOTR tournament as an additional prize that would have given Gunn some singles gold to go along with his new singles push.

Compared to all of those other candidates, Mideon ranked far lower down the pecking order, and the way he won the belt just made the belt itself look unimportant that a new Champion could claim it in such a frivolous and unserious manner. Granted, this was during the Attitude Era, where belts were often treated like “props” that didn’t really matter. However, a Title belt in wrestling is meant to mean something to the wrestlers themselves so that, when they fight each other to try and have one, the fans actually get invested. If the belts are unimportant, then matches for them become equally unimportant, and they lose all of their effectiveness as a narrative tool that can enrich the story you’re trying to tell. By making Mideon “win” the European Title in such a lame manner, it made the belt itself look lame and not worth having.

It also didn’t help that Slimy Shane got away with never having to drop the belt in the ring, and thus face his deserved comeuppance. Shane bringing the belt back only to get smashed by a hot up and coming babyface would have not only gotten the babyface in question over but it would have made the belt look like a valuable prize again. Still, despite the weak as diluted fruit juice manner in which Mideon captured the Euro belt, both he and the belt itself could have been built back up again had Mideon been presented as any kind of threat between the ropes. Sadly for both Mideon and the long suffering belt, this didn’t happen. Mideon defended the European Title once on television, as he defeated Al Snow on the 4th of July 1999 edition of Sunday Night HeAT.

On paper that doesn’t have to be too bad. Snow, as mentioned earlier, was a competent performer who was generally popular with the fans thanks to his well-performed crazy man act. Mideon toppling Snow clean in a competitive bout would have been a credible way of boosting his reign. Of course that didn’t happen, as Mideon instead won by disqualification following a scant two minutes of action when D’Lo Brown ran in to attack Mideon. Lousy a finish though this assuredly was, the result did put former Champion Brown back in the Title picture once again, with the storyline essentially being that Mideon was an undeserving Champion that Brown wanted to dethrone in order to bring some credibility back to his beloved Euro belt.

Brown would eventually do so by defeating Mideon in an average outing at the Fully Loaded 1999 pay per view event in Buffalo, New York. Brown’s third reign with the European Title would see him barely defend the belt itself, but it would see the belt intertwined with another one leading to a scorching battle at SummerSlam 1999, but we’ll cover that next time in Part Seven. As for Dennis Knight, this brief stint with the European belt would be his only major singles run in the WWF, and it barely lasted a month. Knight was seemingly well liked amongst his peers and this quickie reign almost felt like it was a pat on the back from the WWF higher ups for being a good soldier during the bad old days of 1996. His middling wrestling ability aside, Knight’s reign could have been more than it was, but sadly he was yet another victim of the European Title being treated as a worthless trinket rather than a genuinely important belt that could elevate someone who won it.