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Best Intercontinental champion


The Truth

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I only started watching wrestling from 2000 so the Best IC Champion for me is Chris Jericho. He had multiple great moments in each of his title reigns and great matches with Benoit, Mysterio, RVD, Christian etc. Plus, he was great at putting talent over when he lost the belt to them like Kurt Angle and Shelton Benjamin.

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The Rock. Carried the title into wrestling's boom period, and used his IC run to find and develop the character that went on to be one of the biggest stars of all time. Memorable feuds with Austin, Shamrock, Faarooq, and HHH/The Nation. Definite case of the Intercontinental reign displaying someone more and more as an imminent star.

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For me it's always been about the period. 1985 -1996 was just an epic time for the I-C title. Big names held it, the matches meant something (and were sometimes better than the Main Event - Hart vs Piper, Hart vs Bulldog) and it really was a prestigious title. But for me the one person who really summed it up was this man:

 

randy_savage_01.jpg

 

He defended that title with a passion and in fact he seemed to care more about that than the World Title.

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I actually enjoyed Cody Rhodes, recentish run with the belt, Changing it back to the old school and making it to be a belt to be revered again. Shame it didnt last. Jeff Hardy's Run echoed Warrior's in terms of his 2006 return eventually priming him for his 2009 run as champ as well. I think it lost luster for me after they unified it first time around when slimming down the belts after the WCW acquisition.

 

However, it's always been Perfect for me. to the extent I made a plastic key fob in CDT at school of the belt in Perfect's luminous Yellow. The key fob was shite, but it was just such an iconic thing worn by such an iconic and great wrestler that it's always stuck in my mind. Well that and the Bret Hart Summerslam match.

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For me, I always associate it with Bret Hart. I think because it wasn't for heavyweights, and it wasn't for tag teams, there was no clear indication what an Intercontinental Champion should be, and as Bret was the first and main belt holder that I can remember, he became the benchmark of what the IC Champion should be like.

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I don't rate Bret as IC champ. The only memorable matches, although all classic, were the ones where he either one or lost the belt (Perfect, Piper, Bulldog... sadly, Mountie did not make the cut). I'd have to struggle to even think of a memorable title defence.

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I actually enjoyed Cody Rhodes, recentish run with the belt, Changing it back to the old school and making it to be a belt to be revered again.

 

Did it fuck. Belts don't make wrestlers, and belt designs don't make belts either.

 

Yer what? He beat Orton, Sheamus, won a battle royal on Raw?, Lasted ages in the Rumble the following year, and had a half decent feud with Big Show over embarrassing WM moments. This is despite Cody's sounding like he was hammered during promo's.

 

Twas actually a good reign and good attempt at re establishing the thing.

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Cody Rhodeth was a useless champion. Absolute shite, and started the terrible trend of "if I say Mr Perfect and Shawn Michaels enough in promos, people will think I'm a good Intercontinental champion." The last decent one was Santino, and the last really good one was Jeff Hardy.

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Razor Ramon for me. The IC belt at that time was like how Batista would have one belt and Cena would have the other. You could argue Razor was more popular than Diesel in 95. He just looked like a world champion when he held it. The feuds he had with Shawn Michaels were like they were feuding over the world title as well. And that ladder match from WMX is arguably the most mind blowing match ever. There have been better matches since, fair enough (SummerSlam 95 was probably a better match), but when I first saw that it was like a match from another planet. They did things which no average WWF fan had ever seen before. Also when it wasnt held by Shawn or Razor there seemed an obvious dip in credibility and quality when it wasn't on them. When I think of the IC title I think of Razor in the green tights with the gold hanging from his neck.

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Perfect for me was the best intercontinental champion, he carried it so well and made it look important.

 

Honky, for his long reign, schtick and gimmick is the "greatest" champion, synonymous with the belt and of course longevity alone.

 

Give the man credit for doing the job to warrior in about a minute at Summerslam 88

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