Mike Looks Back – The WWE European Title – Part Ten: The American Hero

Welcome again to Mike Looks Back!

When we left things last week; Val Venis had downed Davey Boy Smith and D’Lo Brown at Armageddon 1999 to become the European Champion for the first time. Venis’ Adult Film Star gimmick may have been starting to get a bit stale (a view reinforced by the WWF themselves when they tried repackaging Venis later in 2000) but he was a decent hand in the ring who could wrestle with most people on the roster. Venis didn’t do much to raise the European Title’s profile as champion , but he was a competent mid-card talent, so the belt’s prestige at least wasn’t damaged during his reign.

Whereas Smith’s physical limitations and personal issues combined to make his reign less-than-stellar, Venis’ main problem was one shared by Brown during his fourth run with the belt. Venis held the European Title for 8 weeks, but only defended the belt on Raw, Smackdown or pay per view on one occasion, a quick 4 minute victory over Edge on the 10th of January 2000 episode of Raw is War. Aside from this battle with the future Rated R Superstar, Venis’ televised Title defences were relegated to weekend shows Jakked and Sunday Night HeAT. The bout with Edge did at least have a storyline attached to it, as Venis was a bit perturbed by Edge’s engagement to Val’s sister at the time, leading to the bout between them getting a little bit intense as the two Canadian athletes went at it.

Venis would go on to play a hand in Edge getting eliminated from the Royal Rumble Match, with it seemingly leading to an extended storyline and feud between the two grapplers, with the European Title being the ultimate prize they would battle over. Edge was a legitimate rising star at the time, and was also growing as a performer both inside the ring and on the mic. A prolonged series of tussles over the European belt could have benefited both wrestlers and, just as importantly, the belt itself, as it would become a valued prize that two up and coming stars would be clashing over. Sadly though, the storyline didn’t end up getting to go anywhere.

Unfortunately for Val, he ended up suffering a neck injury that would require him to take roughly a month away from in-ring competition. Rather than find a way to keep the storyline with Edge cooking along, the WWF instead decided to move Edge back into the tag ranks with Christian whilst taking the Euro belt from Venis and going in a different direction. It was a shame to see the European Title actually get a proper storyline and feud, only for it to be abruptly ended like this, as competitive and interesting feuds for the belt were going to be the best way to repair its fractured prestige at the time.

With the WWF in search of a new person to carry the belt, they ended up turning to a recent newcomer to the company who was starting to gain some traction. Kurt Angle had made his main roster WWF debut in November 1999 after over a year working dark matches and appearing for the WWF’s development leagues. Angle had famously won the Olympic Gold Medal in Freestyle Wrestling at the 1996 Atlanta games, but had declined to turn Pro at the time, instead trying out a career as a broadcaster. When that didn’t really work out for Angle as he would have liked, he decided to watch some of the WWF’s product and felt that it was worth giving the world of Sports Entertainment a try, leading to him signing a development deal with the promotion in 1998.

Angle impressed the right people with his strong combination of athletic ability, natural charisma and insane work ethic, leading to the WWF running vignettes to hype up his debut in the autumn of 1999. Whereas an All-American Olympic Gold Medallist would have been the perfect babyface character for the WWF in the 1970’s or 80’s, the 1990’s were a far more cynical age. The fresh faced “white-meat babyface” was the thing of the past, with cool edgy characters being far more in vogue. Realising this, the WWF decided to avoid trying to make Angle the smiling babyface and instead make him a conceited villain. What made the character so great was that Angle was in effect a “Meta-Heel”, where he was supposed to represent all of the traditional Face traits, but he was such an unlikeable dork whilst doing so that it made him a Heel.

Angle was tremendous in the role, playing an insincere American Hero to the hilt, with his promos carrying a great mixture of arrogance and idiocy. Angle wasn’t bad between the ropes either, although it would take time for him to reach the heights he would eventually get to as an in-ring performer. Angle’s initial in-ring style would see him do a lot more punching and kicking than he did further into the 2000’s, when he would focus on a more technical and MMA inspired style. Angle was more of a standard WWF worker at first, with a few nice suplexes and submission holds to distinguish himself from the rest of the pack. Angle was certainly a star on the rise at any rate, so having him win the European Title would not only be a good thing for him but it would also arguably help the belt itself to find a home with someone the WWF clearly had plans for.

Venis and Angle battled on the 10th of February edition of SmackDown, fresh off Angle laying out the seemingly invincible Mae Young on the prior edition of Raw with a suplex. This did allow Angle to humorously state that, despite suplexing an elderly pregnant woman, he was still a role model to children and adults alike. Yes, I did say pregnant, as this was the time period where Mae gave birth to a hand. Google that if you want more information as I already had to live through it the first time and I don’t really want to revisit here. Venis’ injured neck was actually worked into the contest, with Angle targeting that part of Venis’ body and eventually winning the bout with an Olympic Slam to a chorus of boos.

It was a shame for Venis that more couldn’t be made of his reign with the belt, as it looked at one stage like his reign might have been starting to go in a possibly interesting direction. Venis certainly didn’t disgrace the belt during his time with it. His matches on HeAT and Jakked were all “perfectly cromulent” battles as Scott Keith might say, and he carried himself well enough as a mid-card champion. Venis, and arguably the likes of Steve Blackman and D’Lo Brown, were established middle of the pack talents that were very present during the Attitude Era years in 1998 and 1999 but gradually found themselves maxing out in the mid-card whilst young in-house talents like The Hardyz, Edge and Christian, along with outside talent brought into the promotion like The Dudleyz, The Radicalz and Chris Jericho essentially took their places as the future stars the promotion was banking on.

The WWF would try and make Venis more of a serious Heel threat later in 2000, pairing him up with Trish Stratus and having him shave his head to a crew-cut, but the fans didn’t really buy Val in the role and even a second run with the Intercontinental Title didn’t work. By the end of the year Venis had joined the Right To Censor group and was floundering in the lower reaches of the mid-card. Venis would never hold a major singles Title after his summer fling with the IC belt, with the European Title being the penultimate time that Venis would be able to get a run with a serious singles belt. Venis was a serviceable European Champion, who could have potentially been more if it wasn’t for his neck injury bringing his run to a premature end. Ultimately though, Venis’ main legacy as European Champion was that he was the person who lost his belt when Angle won the first major singles Title of his career. For now, Kurt Angle was set to be the European kingpin, but we’ll cover that next week when Mike Looks Back.