Do Mid-Card Titles really matter now?

Every month we see that a WWE pay-per-view gives all the limelight only to those matches that involve the WWE Championship and the World Heavyweight Championship, with little importance for the ‘Mid-Card Titles’ which includes the Intercontinental Championship, the U.S. Championship, the Divas Championship and the Tag Team Championships.

It is considered that only the ‘face’ of the WWE, which includes the likes of Randy Orton, John Cena, CM Punk and Daniel Bryan, gets to hold both WWE Championship and World Heavyweight Championship. Only the build-up of these title matches is given importance as if no other title exists in the company.

This argument is justified by the recurring question in everybody’s mind that “when was the last time we saw a good mid-card title storyline in the company?” How long has it been since Dean Ambrose, the current U.S. Champion put his title on the line?! The WWE creative team needs to answer these questions, especially to the old fans, those who have been watching WWE since the 80s or 90s.

The Attitude Era fans, for example, remember that era for the importance given to the lower division titles such as the Hardcore Championship, in that time the company gave importance to all its wrestlers ranging from low to mid to big by introducing titles for every division, and also contesting those titles very often.

Crash Holly, for example, definitely wasn’t a wrestler good enough for the WWF Championship, but even a wrestler of his stature gained recognition among the fans as he became a WWF European Champion, a WWF Light Heavyweight Champion, a WWF Tag Team Champion and a 22-time WWF/E Hardcore Champion; second-highest of all time. The creative team of that time used the mid-card titles well enough to build their mid-card wrestlers. The scenario is different now; even the Intercontinental Championship isn’t given enough importance nowadays.

Great wrestlers such as ‘The Rock’ and ‘Stone Cold’ were the Intercontinental Champions at that time; we have newbies like Curtis Axel as the Intercontinental Champion nowadays. Stars like them (full of so much capability) could have easily replaced Cena and Orton in the present day wrestling. In simple words, the mid-card champions of those days are better than the present day WWE Champion.

Nowadays, the fans don’t like how the mid-card titles are always undermined. Although, of late WWE started to give importance to the Tag Titles, but the run didn’t last long. They even tried to push the Divas of the company but no other Diva except for AJ did justice to the Divas Championship in recent history; Kaitlyn’s title run wasn’t a memorable one.

Most of the current PG Era WWE fans consist of kids who only like to watch the big stars such as Cena and Punk who are the ‘face’ of the WWE and also the ones who hold the ‘big titles’, and because of this the gap between the big and the mid-card titles further increases because the young fans don’t prefer watching mid-card champions like Dean Ambrose, no matter how much talented these mid-card champions are. Dolph Ziggler definitely deserved another big title run, but the creative team ruined his talent because they had to push the kids-favorite Cena and Orton.

In the end, we only see the undermining of the mid-card wrestlers and titles in the present day WWE, with all the emphasis given to the WWE Championship and the World Heavyweight Championship.

Despite all of this, we can still remain hopeful as after TLC there will only one ‘big’ title in the company; the Unified Championship. With only one big title in the company, even the wrestlers who are the ‘face’ of WWE will also fight for the mid-card titles and just like the old days, the mid-card titles will get back the recognition they always deserved.