Welcome to another eWrestlingNews Question of the Day!

Tonight will be the next chapter in All Elite Wrestling with another episode of AEW Dynamite, wherein one of the fallouts from All In this past weekend will be the start of HOOK’s record-breaking third run with the FTW Championship.

A talking point from the media conference after the pay-per-view that blew up as one of the major noteworthy moments of the talk was when reporter Sam Smith referred to the FTW as a “joke” in ECW, originally.

Naturally, he didn’t quite mean it in the harshest of tones, and both Taz and Tony Khan defended the title as not being a joke, but it does bring up a worthwhile enough argument that some people have expressed Smith did choose the right words for it, and that it is, in fact, a joke belt.

My question for you today is “Is the FTW Championship a joke?”

Remember to answer with your response in the comments below.

As far as my answer…

I’ll bury the lead with this and say no, the FTW Championship isn’t a joke title. “Joke” is not the right way to phrase it, and sometimes, semantics can be everything.

But I can see where Smith was coming from, and I’d like to defend that in some fashion.

Clearly, the belt doesn’t have the same origins, look, notoriety, placement in a company, or ANYTHING that denotes it being on equal footing to things like the AEW International Championship or the ECW Television Championship or anything along those lines. It was created as a response to Shane Douglas not being able to defend the ECW World Championship as an “unrecognized” title that Taz would defend instead.

That is basically the same as the Million Dollar Championship being created because Ted DiBiase wasn’t recognized as the true WWF champion. And that, in and of itself, was kind of a joke storyline. It’s something you can laugh at for being ridiculous and hokey in the world of pro wrestling, because this type of stuff just doesn’t happen elsewhere. And the fact that the FTW Championship continued to remain “unrecognized” and still is to this day does put it in a special category of it being something you can smirk about.

And if we’re being honest about the design and name itself, that is also something you can roll your eyes at, if you’re not feeling jovial that day. It’s the FTW Championship, for God’s sake, has Taz’s name on it, a middle finger, and was originally an orange-strapped knockoff of the Winged Eagle WWF Championship design. Does that not sound like something that some indie fed would do?!

But the belt has taken on a second life in AEW that has definitely upgraded it. Even though it’s still being used as a lower championship than the three men’s midcard titles (TNT, International, Continental) and can at times come across a little hackneyed, it’s given people something to do. This feud with Chris Jericho is better for having the FTW Championship associated with it than if it were just Jericho and HOOK fighting over nothing. In general, HOOK holding any title—even if it is his dad’s—has upgraded him and made him feel like a bigger deal.

There are benefits to this title. I’ll admit that I do keep suggesting I’d like to see it go away and be retired, but that’s partially because I don’t see them doing what I’d rather them do as an alternative, which is to make it similar to the ROH Pure Championship in that every time it is defended, it is an FTW Rules match, with no exceptions. I think this would give it a true identity beyond just being a non-AEW title, as it would then function as the AEW Hardcore Championship, essentially, without having to go by that name. If they ever decided to part ways with Taz and wanted to keep it going, they could just create a new AEW Hardcore Championship or whatever else they’d want to call it, roll that into the title with some storyline switch-up with the FTW name, and be done with it.

That would also play into the idea of it being “unsanctioned”, as any title defense would be assumed to be the equivalent of a Lights Out match. Basically, “this belt is not an official part of AEW’s championship tiers, and by agreeing to wrestle for it, you not only agree to fight in FTW Rules matches, but you also agree to not hold AEW responsible for any of the brutality you suffer in those fights.” I think that would be a cool way to legitimize it further, while keeping the “unrecognized” aspect of it, that at this point basically needs to stick around forever, or it will defeat the title’s purpose.

But think of it the way that WWE never acknowledges the Million Dollar Championship as being the same as the Intercontinental or United States. When LA Knight won the US title from Logan Paul, they referred to that as his first title win in his WWE career. The Million Dollar Championship is an unrecognized, joke-esque title, in the sense that it is a “wink wink, nudge nudge, this is only something that would happen in wrestling” storytelling plot device where part of the fun is acknowledging how it isn’t acknowledged.

So no, it isn’t a “joke” title, but it is a “gimmicky” concept. And in the grand scheme of things, what’s the harm in that?

What do you think? Drop your thoughts below!