Mike Looks Back

Welcome once again to Mike Looks Back!

When we left things last week; Triple H was a two time European Champion and had been the first wrestler to defend the belt on a US broadcast pay per view event since August 1997. However, following his victory over Owen Hart at the Unforgiven In Your House event in April 1998, Triple H’s next defence didn’t come until the end of July 1998 on an episode of Raw. Triple H and his D-Generation X faction had begun a rivalry with The Rock and his Nation faction, with the plan being that Tri and Rocky would meet at the Fully Loaded In Your House event in a Two out of Three Falls match with both HHH’s European belt and Rock’s Intercontinental belt on the line. However, it was finally decided that just letting Chyna hang the belt over her shoulder whilst it was never defended was doing little for Triple H or the European Title, so the decision was made to take the belt off Triple H.

D’Lo Brown, a member of Rock’s Nation faction, was chosen as the one to dethrone HHH, and he did it on Raw with help from Rock in order to heat up the HHH Vs Rock issue. Brown had been part of the WWF roster since 1997 when he had appeared as an unnamed heavy for The Nation’s then leader Faarooq. It wasn’t the first time that Brown had been part of a militant African American group, as he’d previously been an associate of Da Gangsta’s when that group was part of Smoky Mountain Wrestling. Brown was heavyset and didn’t do a lot of wrestling for most of the first half of 1997, with him instead filling the role of “big dude who can take bumps for the stars” and doing a good job with it, including a memorable moment with Ahmed Johnson gave Brown a Pearl River Plunge on top of a car. However, as 1997 rolled on, Brown began to drop some weight and started wrestling in the ring more often, with him becoming a solid addition to the mid-card by the time 1998 began.

After being “injured” in a King of the Ring match with Dan Severn, Brown started wearing a chest protector and, in classic Pro Wrestling tradition, the storyline soon became that Brown didn’t actually need the protector any more but he was wearing it anyway as a way of getting an unfair advantage in his matches. Brown was a good choice to hold a tertiary belt like the European Title as he was a solid in-ring performer and he was also reasonably over for a mid-card act. Rather than being an overly big star who didn’t need the belt, or a lower level wrestler who wasn’t deserving of it, Brown was at just about the right level to be European Champion, as he was over enough that he could justify holding the belt and the belt itself would be capable of giving him a bit of a boost on top of that. What also helped was that Brown really leaned into being the Champion and made it his own.

Welcome again to Mike Looks Back!

When we left things last week; Shawn Michaels was the reigning WWF European Champion and was treating the belt as little more than an inconvenience. Indeed, the belt had become little more than a joke, with Shawn mockingly referring to it as “the prestigious European Championship” and acting like he couldn’t possibly care less about it. When Shawn added the WWF Title to his collection at Survivor Series 1997 (in a match you might have heard about) it became even sillier for Shawn to still be carrying around the European Title at that stage, so the WWF finally decided that it was time to take it off him. Shawn was still very much in the “will not lose” phase of his career though, so rather than having Shawn drop it to someone in a proper match and give them a rub, they instead just did a comedy match on Raw where Triple H “defeated” Michaels for the belt.

They had actually teased some dissension between Michaels and HHH when the bout was booked by Commissioner Slaughter, but it was of course all a SWERVE (one guess who was writing the show at the time, bro) and in the end the two goofed around in the ring and HHH eventually got a three count in order to crown him as Champion. Despite the ludicrous way the belt changed hands; on paper Triple H seemed like a good pick if you wanted someone to help rebuild the European Title’s tattered image. Triple H wasn’t yet the Main Event Superstar he would go on to become, but he was a solid act in the upper mid-card and an associate of top Heel Shawn Michaels both on and off-screen. Tri was also a solid wrestler within the ropes, and was starting to find a character that worked for him as his existing “generic Heel with the muscular manager who is more over than he is” role was slowly morphing into one of an arrogant degenerate who always talked about how big his…appendage was.

Triple H defending the European Title in good matches with actual finishes would have likely helped increase the belt’s prestige pretty quickly. So of course he pretty much got immediately injured upon winning the belt and they had to find a way to get the belt off of him. Rather than just stripping HHH of the belt and doing a tournament of some kind, the WWF instead decided to get creative. Goldust, who was doing a gimmick at the time where he’d dress up as other wrestlers or celebrities (including his father Dusty Rhodes and Marilyn Manson at different points), was recruited by Triple H to wrestle the challenger in his stead. The Bizarre One dressed up as Tri, complete with ludicrous fake nose, and battled Owen Hart on an episode of Raw, with The King of Harts then defeating the Triple H attired Goldust to seemingly win the belt. They did at least present this as Triple H being an overconfident Heel who tripped himself up, as HHH did not treat the bout as a serious match where the belt was up for grabs. However, Commissioner Slaughter decided to get one over on the villains by saying that he was so convinced by Goldust’s impression that he’d let the belt actually change hands, thus making Own the official new champ. Though this was a clever way for a babyface authority figure to stick it to degenerate Heels and their antics, it was yet another controversial Title change in the young belt’s history, and that didn’t help its standing in the wider WWF ecosystem.

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.

Welcome to Mike Looks Back!

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.