Southern Joe Challenges Title Change Rules

Southern Joe challenges some title change rules.

I have stated this before, but its worth stating this again for the purpose of this opinion piece.
I have been a wrestling fan for over 5 decades. I am a month away from turning 61 at the time of writing this article.

Now…

I have seen several evolutions of this business.
I have seen this business go from a sport that would have results printed in the newspaper alongside tennis & football results, to where everyone is let in on the fact that the whole business is predetermined, scripted or whatever precursor you want to apply.

I have seen TV shows go from being filmed in studios amongst 50 to 100 people, to shows where mega sized stadiums are filled with people who travel many miles to see special shows.
But even amongst all that, it came to my attention a couple of years ago that I can no longer accept the premise of a title NOT changing hands due to a count out or a disqualification.
In this article, I will use real world sports examples as to why I believe that if you lose a title match, you have lost the title.

Firstly, let’s look at countouts. It’s basically saying that you have forfeited the match and can no longer continue. In tennis, if a player has an injury and calls for an injury time out, they must be ready to compete again within the allotted time or they forfeit the match. Even as I write this, the dust is still settling on Novak Djokavic’s injury retirement in the quarter finals of the 2025 Australian Open. If that was the grand final, he would have had to hand the cup to his opponent. There would be no, “Oh , he was counted out, therefore the title cannot change hands”.
Even during the pandemic, my beloved Sydney Kings basketball team were in the middle of a championship play off series. Their opponents, The Perth Wildcats, were due to host the Kings in a mid week game 4 of a best of 5 series that they were leading 2-1 in. The Kings made the brave call to put families first and decided not to travel to the other side of the country because Western Australia were about to have a hard border shutdown because of COVID. Yet in that instance the NBL (National Basketball League) decided to award that year’s title to Perth. It wasn’t exactly a win by countout, but the title change still occurred.

As for disqualification, if we were to look at this from a legitimate sports’ perspective, wouldn’t a competitor who cheated to win NOT be worthy of being hailed a champion?
This has happened where the perpetrator has gotten away with it ( Like Maradonna’s “Hand Of God” goal) to where people were caught out and innocent athletes suffered.
Here I am talking about Spain’s 2000 Sydney Paralympics intellectual disability basketball team, where 10 of the 12 players faked their disabilities & had to hand their medal back, even the 2 players that were genuinely disabled.

To me, the greatest example of someone cheating to win a championship was at the 1988 Summer olympics in Seoul, South Korea. Then, a fast rising Ben Johnson of Canada won the 100m final in a then record time of 9.79 seconds.

The legendary Australian commentator Bruce McAveney famously quipped (almost accidentally prophetically), “ I hope it’s legal”. He was actually talking about wind assistance as some world records can be revoked if the wind assistance is judged to be too great. This would still mean that Johnson would have got his gold medal. He did indeed get rewarded his gold medal. However, once the drug tests came back, he was stripped of his medal because he tested positive for steroid use. If this was pro wrestling, he would have kept his ill gotten gain.

So there you have it. I don’t care about protecting a storyline or not having some precious princess have his feelings hurt. If this business is to get back to where it can be even bigger than it is now, & regain credibility, we start by making sure that if you lose a title match, by whatever means, the title belongs to the winner.

Please feel free to reply with your thoughts.

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