Nobody saw the WWE 24/7 Championship coming, and now that it’s here nobody’s really sure what the plan is for it. Sure, it gives the undercard guys something to do, and R-Truth can take any weird thing and spin comedy gold out of it, but it seemed like a weird time to introduce a new WWE Championship. It didn’t exactly light the world on fire when Mick Foley debuted it, and it’s hard to imagine where it leads in the long term. While we obviously won’t know what the future holds until it gets here, we do now have a report about the new title’s origin, and it’s a bit surprising.
According to Dave Meltzer at the Wrestling Observer, the 24/7 championship wasn’t WWE’s idea at all:
In recent weeks, the ratings for Raw’s third hour got bad enough that WWE recognized they had to do something. The big move was basically to allow the top stars from Smackdown to appear on Raw, and to make sure Smackdown doesn’t become a secondary show while it’s getting ready to move to FOX, to do the same. USA Network of late was sending in all kinds of ideas to WWE to bring up the third hour ratings. One person with knowledge of the story said the ideas were all terrible, but the 24/7 idea was the best one and McMahon knew he had to take one of them. While the idea is 24/7, Foley in announcing it said that it would be there for the third hour of Raw, which made no sense if it can be defended at any time. But that’s the reason he said it. I guess it’ll be mostly part of the third hour even though the idea is can be defended at any time.
My greatest hope for this story is that the entire list of USA’s idea for improving ratings eventually leaks, because I’d love to see what else is on it. It’s hard to say whether the rest of us would agree with Vince McMahon about which of their ideas was the best one. Also the whole thing about a belt where the entire gimmick is that it’s on the line every moment of every day being introduced specifically to improve ratings for one hour a week does seem pretty bizarre. Maybe things will become clear next Monday. Or maybe things will become completely different and we’ll be left with new questions. I guess that’s the key to must-watch television: You never know what might happen next.
