by Matthew Moseley

Created on: November 27, 2008

A common debate among myself and my friends are that of the prestige of todays championships in the WWE. It's always a fun thing to debate about, because there is no factual evidence that any title within the WWE is more, or even less prestigous than they once was.

The WWE Championship is the most prestigous title in professional wrestling history. The title dates back to the 29th of April, 1963, after "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers won the championship in a tournament in Brazil. Since then, the biggest names in history of the sport have held it; Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, The Rock & Ric Flair to name but a few. Since 2005, there has been one man synonymous with the title - John Cena. John Cena is, by the criteria of the WWE, the best professional wrestler in the world today. The man is a workhorse in everything he does, his passon for this business can be matched by very few, past or present. 2006 & 2007 marked two of the best years in the titles prestigous history. Those years defined what a champion should be - long, interesting feuds with intriguing storylines and quality matches to back them. Through these two years, we saw John Cena defend his title monthly, sometimes weekly to an amazingly diverse amount of opponents - Edge, Shawn Michaels, Bobby Lashley, Rob Van Dam, Umaga and Triple H being the more memorable ones. What John did within these two years was bring back a sense of prestige to the belt which had been lost - the few years before consisted of largely forgettable matches and feuds, with TV ratings dropping month by month, clear signs that fan interest was lowering with every title change.

With the WWE Title coming off of that high, we have since seen several champions hold it, notably Randy Orton, who is arguably the top and best heel in the business today, and Triple H, one of the best workers in modern history. The recent feuds between these two have been stellar and of great quality. With these things in mind, I'm going to say that the WWE Championship means just as much as it has in the past and carries just as much prestige as it ever had.

Does the criteria of intriguing storylines, solid matches and intriguing feuds meet for other titles in the company? Probably not. The tag-team titles are rarely defended in poor build-ups with no interesting payoff, both divas titles are pretty worthless and I still don't understand the introduction of a second womens championship. The United States and Intercontinental championships both carry incredibly history and prestige with them, with the US championship seeming to shine a litte more over the last few years, the MVP/Benoit and MVP/Hardy feuds were both highly entertaining. The World Heavyweight championship is still in it's infacy, the WWE seeming to deem it a relatively new championship and not trace its history back to as far as it can be - several sources have cited these as 2002, others as 1991.

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