Now that AEW’s newest championship has been introduced and the first titleholder (Cody Rhodes) has been crowned, I thought this would be a good time to give my own personal analysis of its appearance and design, as well as opine on the overall presentation.
Although billed as a championship title that sits on equal footing alongside the AEW World Championship, the TNT Championship will carry that moniker of being the proverbial mid card title that could play the stepping stone for competitors to eventually be in contention for the ultimate prize in All Elite Wrestling.
When you’ve got Cody, a veteran sitting on top of that ladder, as well as hungry guys like Jungle Boy, MJF, Darby Allin, Sammy Guevera, Kip Sabian, Lance Archer and others breathing down your neck, the TNT Championship could play that role of having important matches on television every week the way the old Television title did in the WCW days.
Even in an unfinished version, as AEW stated gold plating was not installed on the title due to the pandemic, the design still looks better than the usual generic appearance of standard WWE titles, with the exception of the recent version of the Intercontinental Championship.
I hope they put a globe background on the TNT logo and emboss some gold around the perimeter of the centerpiece of the title as the final version of the belt.
But I think there was a bit of an overreach with this tribute to the network that is giving AEW a permanent home for at least the next five years. The side plates are depictions of the mansion of Ted Turner, the founder of Turner Network Television, also known as TNT.
This makes the TNT Championship sound a bit too much like a vanity project of some kind; perhaps it would be beneficial if the side plates were replaced by something a bit more generally representative of professional wrestling and AEW.
Although it was a big coup to get Iron Mike Tyson to present the title to the eventual winner, I wish AEW tried to present their new title in the way the AEW World Championship was presented when they had Bret “The Hit Man” Hart unveil it at Double or Nothing last year at the pay per view.
For this instance before the finals of the tournament match took place, AEW posted a picture of Tyson posing with the TNT Championship, giving away that crucial moment of surprising everyone before the match started in the ring. When I scrolled through Twitter during Double or Nothing last month, the title pictured with Tyson popped up and I was just like “oh, okay.”
As a fan that was a mild disappointment. Perhaps when the title is finally finished, they will find a better way of making the presentation to the champion.
An average professional doing the 9-5 grind who really loves wrestling across all platforms. Here's hoping wrestlers finally get some basic workers rights in 2021.
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