At Wrestlemania 20 on March 14 2004, Chris Benoit & Shawn Michaels challenge Triple H for his WWE Raw World Heavyweight Title. With Eddie Guerrero defeating Brock Lesnar for the Smackdown Title, and based on the fact that Hunter needs time off to finish his movie, it is a pretty good bet that someone, probably Chris Benoit will dethrone Hunter and relieve him of his World Title. This is not a problem for me. The problem is the fact that Hunter is once again competing for the title in a match where he is facing multiple opponents.

ECW established a history of contesting matches, particularly with title implications, in elimination style matches where the last man not to be defeated leaves the ring as the winner or the champion. On February 23, 2004, on an episode of Raw, Molly Holly competed in such a match, but was unfortunately eliminated as Victoria survived to win the WWE Women's Title. The WWE has, however, established a history of holding multiple combatant matches for titles, but the difference is that there is only one pin fall and the winner of the match does not actually have to pin the champion to win the title. Triple H is an 8-time champion, which means that he has won the title 8 times and lost it 7, which adds up to 15 match where the title actually changed hands. Of those 15 matches, and I am sure countless more where the title did not change hands, 1/3 of those matches were contested with multiple opponents. What this means is that either Triple H is not made to work very hard in a number of his matches, or he is not allowed to be defeated, especially in matches with seemingly inferior competition.

In contrast to Hunter, The Rock is a 9-time former champion, which means that he has been involved in 18 matches where the title changed hands. Of those 18 matches, only twice has Rocky been involved in matches where there were more than two combatants, and both of those two were victories, which means that all of Rock's 9 losses were in one-on-one situations. The Rock has been defeated on his own 9 times for the WWE title! What does this mean?

It is obvious that Triple H is a huge star in the sport of professional wrestling, but is not The Rock as big a star as Triple H? Then why is Rocky forced to win and lose the title on his own while Hunter seems to have someone else in the ring sharing the workload in many of his matches? Could it be that since he was dating and is now married to the boss's daughter that he gets special privileges? That is very possible. Could it also be that he needs someone to carry him in his matches because since he has bulked up as much as he has he does not have the fluid movement and the stamina that he used to? I doubt this because several of his title matches have been 60-minute matches against true "athlete" like The Rock & Shawn Michaels. So why does he compete in so many of these type of matches?

That question might only be answerable by Vince McMahon and by the creative staff of the WWE. Only they know why they keep booking Triple H in matches where titles are won and lost without the champion suffering the defeat while still trying to pass Triple H off as a dominant World Champion. One thing is for sure, these types of matches with controversial finishes create enough of a stir that it makes it real easy for the writers to create story lines following pay-per-views because if the title changed hands but the champion was not actually defeated, then there is an automatic feud for the next PPV between the new champ and the former champ who never actually lost his title. That is where the problem is for me.

This situation makes things very easy and very convenient for the writers, which keeps them from having to look deep inside to create compelling story lines, the types of story lines that fans of the sport expect and will shell out their hard-earned money to watch each week and each month. That could be an even bigger problem, but for the federation, not for me.

by Eric Jenkins (Wrestling: In Your Face)..