The ins and outs of booking and promoting have always interested me. Hot-shotting World or heavyweight titles were always a curious piece of booking.
As explained before, hot-shotting is when the belt doesn’t stay on a champion for a significant period. What constitutes lengthy or “significant varies.
I always went with three to six months minimum. The question of hot-shotting the belt arose while I was researching the WCW and WWE World Championships.
Stats are my jam and looking at the reigns of the belt as you get into the mid-90s, you notice that reigns are shorter.
It seems like something distinctly Attitude Era until you dig into the territories.
The Product Encourages Hot-Shotting the World Championship
One reason is because of the “Memphis Fire” style as Jerry Jarrett called it. It’s that really heated, energetic match style.
The bigger matches were either outright brawls or devolved into wild brawls. In part one, it was pointed out that Jerry Lawler held the USWA Unified World Championship twenty-eight times in roughly nine years.
With that kind of environment and style, a title isn’t going to stay on anyone long. Another example of this from the same period is the Funk-family operated Amarillo territory.
We Can’t Forget The NWA World Championship
We know that a lot of the promotions at the time were NWA members. A couple of promotions were unaffiliated or “outlaw” promotions.
Basically, there was a main alliance title that had more lengthy, impressive reigns and a bunch of these regional heavyweight titles.
In 1988, Jim Crockett Promotions morphed into WCW. Eventually, the NWA World Championship became more of a company title than an alliance title.
However, when it was the NWA World Championship, a territory benefited from this belt that didn’t change hands frequently as it allowed them to keep their heavyweight title in play.
The third reason ties into this.
Wrestlers Moved Through The Alliance Regularly
As Cornette pointed out about the territories—guys moved through a territory frequently. Promoters had a core group of guys who were territory natives.
In many cases, family members were in that core group. My hometown was part of the Continental territory and the Fuller/Welch and Armstrong families made up a chunk of that core group.
This “home team” of talent was reliable and while many appeared elsewhere for brief periods, you’d see them weekly in said territory for years.
Promoters had the flexibility to shoot the title on its native talents after a roving heel has been put down or run out of a territory.
Also, it spiced things up so that a lengthy reign was killed before it got boring or to break up the humdrum of this handful of wrestlers we’ve seen for several years hold the World Championship.
Can It Work Now?
Hot-shotting can work and a champion holding the belt for longer than a month can come off as dominant with a three- or four-month reign.
In modern wrestling, it only works if that’s just the promotion’s product. For instance, the WWE World Championships shouldn’t change hands often.
The product doesn’t present itself as fast-paced, exciting, and dangerous at the top on a regular basis. Doing it once in a while with screwiness would work but we’re not in the Attitude Era anymore.
It’s been said that it tarnishes the title. I’d say that’s mostly true because then you end up with a title that has been ridden hard and hung up wet in a year’s period.
Ultimately, it comes down to if the product is about that life. If the AEW World Championship was in constant title change mode, it would be fitting.
All Elite Wrestling has always been presented as being noticeably edgy compared to WWE. With that edginess comes a degree of danger and excitement in the product.
A title staying on a champion a long time would be an achievement in such an environment. It would work in that case but for the most part, it’s a booking approach that would be hard to pull off.
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