FORGOTTEN CLASSICS: Jeff Hardy vs. Rob Van Dam
The year 2002 just seems to be cropping up constantly in this series, but I guess I have a slight bias to this particular year as it was when I was first exposed to the the WWE product as an avid fan, so a lot of matches from that period stick out in my mind.
But 2002 is also quite historic in that it featured many Championship unification, or “Title for Title” matches. Yes a concept that is quoted as being “an incredibly rare occurrence” this past summer due to John Cena and Seth Rollins putting the WWE World Heavyweight Title and the United States Title on the line in the same match, was a bit more common just over 13 years ago. In fact between July 2001 and October 2002 (15 months), there were 7 championship unification matches. You see, in 2001 WWE purchased WCW and ECW, and acquired much of those promotions assets. One thing people point out a lot with these is the number of characters from WCW and ECW that came over to the WWE product, thus resulting in the Brand Split which lasted nearly 10 years, but one thing people seem to forget is the titles. In 2001 alone WWE had the following belts floating around the company:
– WWE Championship
– WCW Championship
– WWE Intercontinental Championship
– WWE European Championship
– WCW United States Championship
– WWE Hardcore Championship
– WWE Tag Team Championship
– WCW Tag Team Championship
– WWE Light Heavyweight Championship
– WCW Cruiserweight Championship
– WWE Women’s Championship
That is 11 different championship belts, so naturally the WWE wanted to start streamlining the belts that they had in their arsenal. Many belts were unified with each other, but on todays segment, I want to look at when the WWE started to merge their own belts with each other, and not just WCW belts.
Rob Van Dam was the Intercontinental Champion and Jeff was the European champion. Around a year before, the two had an epic ladder match for the Hardcore title at Invasion, so their feud was still fresh in their mind. But with the invasion storyline being done and dusted, Van Dam was a full blown babyface along side Jeff. However this didn’t stop the two battering each other to try and unify the belts in the same match type…
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