When I was a kid, I was pretty big into professional wrestling. I caught the tail end of the “Monday Night Wars” and watched WCW, which I loved, come apart. I’ve since grown out of wrestling (that’s not to say it’s for children or anything insulting like that…we just drifted apart, ya know?) but I’ve developed, over the past couple years, a great interest in the history and business side of pro wrestling. I’ve been watching a lot of clips and interviews lately, and something occurred to me.
In 1994, I think, WWF women’s champion Medusa (who had wrestled previously for WCW) showed up on an episode of WCW’s Monday Nitro with her belt…and threw it into the trash. Of course it was a work and whatever, but she really brought the belt with her and really threw it into a garbage can (WWF sued, I think). I was just wondering…does anyone know what happened to that belt? I doubt Eric Bischoff would actually throw it away. Knowing his ego (at least at the time), I always suspected he had it mounted like a trophy. Does anyone know?
Yup. Typically the wrestling promotions own the belts, or an individual wrestler who makes up the title in the first place. Rick Flair kept his NWA Championship Belt (I think it was that one) and wouldn’t return it because he had put a large deposit down on it (I think he basically paid for it). IIRC he returned that belt when they gave him the deposit back. I was going to put this into the thread about reusing the same championship trophy. Since they change styles often and make up new titles the WWE has quite a collection of old belts (or ‘titles’ as they call them wrestling lingo).