Is the champion losing non-title matches, yet prevailing in the money match, played out? Steve Cook lays out some talking points to consider!

When I’m not writing things for websites, I’m typically hanging out on a message board. How 2005 of me, right? Well, offtheteam.com has a number of my old running buddies from back in the days when wrestling websites had message boards instead of comment sections & social media wasn’t a thing yet. It was a sim-no, no it wasn’t really a simpler time, things were complex as hell back then too. But OTT’s a pretty solid place for good rasslin’ convo.

When you know each other & have talked the pro wrestling for as long as we have, certain talking points get repeated over & over again. One of our posters, who is one of several people with either “Mike” or “Ray” as part of his name but is the only one with both, has become synonymous with the idea that champions should never lose non-title matches. WWE has had a tendency over the years to job their champions out in such matches all the time, and it drives this fella bezerk.

As it should.

It’s a lazy trope that WWE trots out all the time. If you watched Raw on Monday night like I did, you probably noticed a bit of a trend when it came to how folks with championship belts were featured. Let’s take a look…

-Intercontinental Champion Bobby Lashley teamed with Jinder Mahal in a losing effort against Finn Balor and…well…nobody actually. Just Finn Balor. This isn’t even the first time Lashley has been on the losing end of a match where he had a partner & Balor didn’t.

-Raw Tag Team Champions, The Revival, lost to Aleister Black & Ricochet for the second time in the last month. They hold one victory over Black & Ricochet, albeit by disqualification.

-United States Champion Samoa Joe made a rare visit to Raw in order to take part in Kurt Angle’s farewell tour. Of course, Joe ended up with his shoulders down while trying to choke out Angle and lost the match.

-Women’s Tag Team Champion Sasha Banks was lucky to emerge with a win by disqualification because Nia Jax & Tamina attacked her before they could get to Natalya. Women’s Champion Ronda Rousey won her match with Sarah Logan, but she lost the Beat the Clock challenge since it took her longer to do that than it did for Becky Lynch to finish off Liv Morgan.

It’s a darn good thing nobody was defending their titles on Monday night!

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the logic behind a champion losing a non-title match. I understand the idea of a champion losing a match that ensures a future title opportunity. Challengers need to be built up. What better way to make somebody look like they could be a champion than having them beat the current champion?

Well, in an ideal world, there would be plenty of contenders with enough credibility that an up & coming challenger could beat them and work their way into a title shot. Black & Ricochet could beat other tag teams before stepping into the ring with the Revival, instead of beating the Revival over and over again in non-title matches.

In an ideal world, the Intercontinental Champion wouldn’t constantly be booked in handicap matches where his challenger is out-numbered. He damn sure wouldn’t be losing those handicap matches, even if he’s saddled with incompetents like Lio Rush & Jinder Mahal.

I can somewhat excuse Joe losing to Angle since it’s part of Angle’s farewell tour & such. Still, had they bothered to plan out the idea of a Kurt Angle farewell tour before a couple of weeks ago, Joe could have wrestled Angle one last time before winning the United States Championship. Hell, why wouldn’t Angle demand that the title be on the line? After all, it doesn’t get more “United States” than Kurt Angle. He only held that championship one time, for 21 days during the weird Invasion period where WWF & WCW championships changed hands more often than wrestlers changed their jockstraps.

Confusing times.

I don’t mind a champion occasionally taking an L to a challenger. I remember the buildup to WrestleMania IX, where Tatanka defeated Shawn Michaels in a non-title match on WWF television. Then it was part of the build for the match. Could Tatanka make lightning strike twice? It worked because they didn’t have every single champion losing on television every week like they do now.

Hell, can anybody blame Brock Lesnar for not showing up more often? They’d have had Seth Rollins pin him a few times by now. The only way a WWE champion can be protected in 2019 is if they work part-time or have a UFC championship on their resume.

I’m sure some out there will say that this isn’t an issue at all. Some will say that the whole idea of championships is outdated anyway. We all know wrestling is fake, right? We all know the championships aren’t awarded legitimately. What does it matter if the champions lose all the time?

It’s not so much about the belts losing their viability. The champions make the championships. Samoa Joe losing to Kurt Angle one time doesn’t hurt him. Joe’s still a fearsome individual that can cut a heck of a promo, so the US Championship means more over his shoulder than it did when R-Truth was hanging around with it off of television.

That Revival, tho.

But when you’re The Revival, whose whole character is based around being the best in-ring tag team in the business & lack that fear factor that a man like Joe possesses, you might want to win a match once in awhile. When they lose all the time, their losses lose all meaning. It’s more surprising at this point when Dash Wilder & Scott Dawson actually win a match.

This is so easy to fix. Have contenders beat other contenders. Let the champions beat some scrubs every once in awhile. Lord knows there are enough of them on the roster these days. I’m not going as far as Michael Raymond and saying that champions should never lose non-title matches, but it matters a lot more when it happens a couple of times a year instead of a couple of times a night.

Championships are supposed to be rewards, not death sentences.