When the WWE Hardcore Championship was first introduced it quickly became one of the more interesting titles in professional wrestling, but unfortunately things changed pretty quickly for the belt.
During a recent episode of his Oh You Didn’t Know? podcast Road Dogg talked a little bit about what was going on with the belt during the Attitude Era, and he made it clear that he thinks things went downhill for the Hardcore Championship when WWE introduced the 24/7 rule.
“Now we’ve gone too far. It totally lost its luster. … When they went away from the violence of it is when it went away, you know what I mean? That’s what it was. And look — from a business standpoint, especially now that it’s a publicly-traded company, it’s just crazy to have too much of that going on all the time, you know what I mean?”
“I totally could make the argument [not normalizing] the hardcore stuff for corporate responsibility reasons. Also, you know, people ain’t going to pay for that all the time. And I think some people will, and there will be a spot for it, and it’ll utilize it at the right times, and it’ll mean something then.”
The 24/7 rule allowed anyone to challenge for the Hardcore Championship at anytime which made for some interesting scenarios to say the least. WWE tried to recreate that same dynamic with the 24/7 Championship, but that belt was quietly retired last year.
H/T Wrestling Inc.
