Whenever there's a big show coming up, like WWE Saturday Night's Main Event this weekend, it can be instructive (not to mention fun) to go back and watch some older, related matches in the lead-up to the event. There are as many different ways to watch wrestling as there are individual wrestling fans, but here at Wrestling Inc., we love to cut up and rearrange wrestling history in interesting and unique ways, selecting a variety of matches with some sort of through-line connecting them and placing them side-by-side. And since the big headline of this particularSNME is CM Punk and Jey Uso fighting for the vacant World Heavyweight Championship, this time around we're looking at other notable matches that have been contested for a title that had for some reason been vacated.
This Watchlist spans nearly 30 years of wrestling and takes us through four different promotions and five different vacated titles, from 1990s WCW to Japan in the 2010s. Saying any more might give too much away, so let's jump straight into it and get you ready for SNME by digging into the long and fascinating history of vacated championships!
Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat clashed for the WCW World Championship held by Flair at Spring Stampede in April 1994, but the bout ended in a double-pin draw and the title was vacated as a result.
Their rematch for the vacant title was booked for May 14 in Atlanta, Georgia, and thus followed an almost 40-minute classic between two of the most revered names in the industry. Steamboat took a leaf out of his opponent's book to lock in the figure-four leglock, though Flair would ultimately return it with a typically dirty twist, making use of the ropes for leverage.
The closing stretch was exactly what you would have expected from a technician's battle, exchanging near-falls and roll-ups, locks, submissions, and grappling aplenty. Everything came to a rather abrupt end with Flair taking the win when all was said and done. But for all of the action that came beforehand, it still stands as one of the more rewatchable and enjoyable bouts for a vacant title. Flair and Steamboat was always a guaranteed clinic and to have this one so casually thrown out on TV with the stakes involved ... maybe actually makes sense for the company that died off ... but it was still a good outing nonetheless. One might say that booking a double-pin finish only to then have Flair reclaim the title is a little odd, but one might also say that a good wrestling match is a good wrestling match either way, worth a rewatch before casting that judgment.
Written by Max Everett
In 2004, multi-time WWE Tag Team Champion Edge was well on his way to becoming a singles star. As part of his sustained push, Edge had captured the WWE Intercontinental Championship for the fifth (and final) time in July, defeating future Rated-RKO partner Randy Orton to win the belt. Unfortunately, less than two months into the title run, Edge was injured and stripped of the Intercontinental Championship.
While certainly untimely, the injury did open the door for an excellent match between Edge's former tag team partner Christian and Christian's own former tag team partner, Chris Jericho. As summed up in a melodramatic video package that's just as worth viewing as the match itself, while Jericho and the now-injured Edge were feuding over the title,Christian returned from an injury of his own by brutalizing Jericho with a chair, reigniting an intense rivalry between the one-time friends. With Edge on the shelf, "WWE Raw" GM Eric Bischoff booked Jericho and Christian in a ladder match for the title at Unforgiven 2004.
Fittingly for a feud that dated back toWrestleMania and beyond, Jericho and Christian spilled out into the crowd to brawl early in the match, with the ladder being used as a weapon and Jericho even briefly choking his opponent with an A/V cable. Another highlight saw Jericho toppling the ladder, leaving Christian hanging in the air, only for Jericho to hit his opponent with the ladder, forcing Christian to fall to the mat. Following a Walls of Jericho spot at the top of the ladder, Jericho also got knocked off and landed on top of the ladder in a nasty-looking moment.
If the match has a flaw, it's the finish, which feels just a little anti-climactic, especially for its place as the culmination of the Jericho-Christian feud. However, the journey there did not disappoint, and it remains one of the best battles over a vacant championship in WWE history. Following a couple more tag matches on "WWE Raw," the feud finally came to an end, with Jericho and Christian going their separate ways. Both men would end up leaving WWE the following year (though they'd both later return, then leave again), and this match serves as one of the many memorable moments in their WWE careers.
Written byNickMiller
Going into 2010, TNA Wrestling was riding a wave of momentum, withthe arrival of Hulk Hogan looking to be final piece of the puzzle for a company that wanted to be seen as a legitimate threat to WWE. Granted, all that good will had evaporated by the middle of the year, but there were still some gems to be found during this period, perhaps most notably the feud between Beer Money Inc. and the Motor City Machine Guns.
For reasons known only to Hogan and Eric Bischoff, the recently reunited team of Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were the TNA Tag Team Champions in mid-2010, with Eric Young also part of their group, allowing for use of the Freebird Rule. However, whenHall was unable to overcome his own personal demons, The Band were stripped of their titles.This led to a tournament which was won by Robert Roode and James Storm, akaBeer Money Inc.; theywould go on to face Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin known then and now as the Motor City Machine Guns who had earned a title shot earlier in the year, with the vacant TNA World Tag Team Championships on the line at Victory Road.
The rivalry between the two teams wouldn't last long, but Roode, Storm, Shelley, and Sabin made magic together. The series was must-see television and genuinely gave TNA the right to boast about having the best tag team division in the world, based solely on how good Beer Money and The Guns worked together. Their meeting at Victory Road 2010 was a classic case of an old-school, non-nonsense pair of bruisers trying to ground the quicker, more athletic team, updated for the 21st century.
Sabin and Shelley combine excellently, hitting Storm and Roode from every angle imaginable to remain on top, while Beer Money would simply try and ground the Detroit natives into the ground to the point where they simply run out of gas. However, it's Sabin and Shelley who remained in control for most of the match, causing Storm to turn to the bottle for assistance (which would ultimately come back to haunt him).
It's not a perfect match we do have a double pinfall that makes Earl and Brian Hebner the stars of the show, taking some of the steam out of the finish. Despite that, this match was a shining light during a disappointing time in TNA history, and if you enjoy this bout, be sure to watch the best-of-five series that came immediately afterward, which takes things to arguably an even higher level.
Written by Sam Palmer
Every match on this list has a story about why the championship in question was vacated, but none of them are as unnerving, or as gruesome, as the story of why the World of Stardom Championship was vacant on March 29, 2015. About a month earlier, at an event called Queen's Shout, reigning champion Yoshiko defended the title against young upstart Act Yasukawa in a match that saw Yoshiko, for reasons that have not been publicized, legitimately attack and brutalize the challenger, leaving Yasukawa's face a bloody mess. If you've seen it, you know why it's known as The Ghastly Match, and you've probably spent at least a few minutes of your life wondering why it goes on so long without anyone stopping it. The incident resulted in Stardom stripping Yoshiko of the title and suspending her; Yoshiko and her trainer, Stardom co-founder Nanae Takahashi, left the promotion shortly after. Yasukawa suffered fractures in her cheek, nasal, and orbital bones and retired at the end of 2015, though she would stay on with Stardom as a manager and eventually return to the ring.
With Yoshiko gone, a four-woman tournament was held to crown the new World of Stardom Champion, with the finals at The Highest coming down to Io Shirai and Kairi Hojo respectively known to modern WWE fans as IYO SKY and Kairi Sane. It's a great match in and of itself, and you should absolutely go over to YouTube and watch it, but it hits harder if you're familiar with the history. Despite being two years younger than Kairi, Io was the established top star, having previously held the so-called Red Belt for 468 days. Aside from her and foreigner The Alpha Female (who "NXT UK" viewers will remember as Jazzy Gabbert) only Yoshiko and Takahashi (owner of the title's first and still longest reign) had been Stardom's top champion. In contrast, Kairi was just three years into her career, having been in the same training class as Yasukawa. Kairi's well-known pirate gimmick is easily conflated with Yasukawa's rum drinking and eye patch (though Yasukawa wore the patch because she was legitimately blind in one eye) and more importantly, they represented a newer generation of Stardom wrestlers that didn't necessarily accept the "old school" AJW training methods Takahashi had brought to Stardom. In fact, Takahashi herself had already roughed up Kairi in similar fashion to Yoshiko brutalizing Yasakawa, leaving Kairi with massive bruises on her face after a match. When Stardom began to revise its standards in the wake of The Ghastly Match, Kairi was chosen to represent the talent in future conversations with management, and it's difficult to imagine The Ghastly Match wasn't on her mind when she defeated Io to win her first World of Stardom title.
None of what follows can be proven, but look at the way the match for the vacant title is structured. Io, working heel, is clearly acting the bully her mannerisms and wrestling style seem to reflect Yoshiko at key moments, particularly during the early part of the match; Io is in complete control from the start and ends up dragging Kairi all around the outside area, hammering her the entire time. She's using her own moves, but Yoshiko's shadow remains visible. Io targets Kairi's right arm, but Kairi fights back, ultimately delivering a pair of her patented elbow drops to claim the championship. There's no proof that Act Yasakawa was supposed to win the World of Stardom title at Queen's Shout (though it would explain Yoshiko's resentment and why Yasakawa kept trying to fight back as long as she did) but even if she wasn't, this match feels like Io and Kairi's version of what that match may have looked like, with Yasakawa/Kairi overcoming the previous generation's bullying ways and ushering in a new era for Stardom. Watch Kairi's face and how emotional she becomes throughout her championship celebration especially when she's done smiling for the cameras and sinks to the mat, sobbing, before finally raising the Red Belt in hand and tell me she wasn't thinking at all of Yasukawa in that moment.
Pro wrestling is fiction, but it often works its greatest magic when interwoven with reality. More than any other match for a vacant title, this one represents a cleansing, a purification the triumph of a kinder future over the brutal past, if only for a single night.
Written by Miles Schneiderman
"WWE NXT" in its black-and-gold era, or the TakeOver Era, was some of the best professional wrestling WWE has put on in its history, and the two-out-of-three falls match for the NXT Championship at TakeOver New York in April 2019 is among the era's greatest performances. Johnny Gargano and Adam Cole put it all on the line in an almost-40 minute match, culminating with "Johnny Wrestling" finally winning his first NXT Championship. The victory came after his longtime best friend and worst enemy, Tommaso Ciampa, was forced to vacate the gold due to needing neck surgery, cutting off their years-long feud just before its culmination.
The match was initially meant to be Gargano and Ciampa facing off after Gargano anticipated his friend turning on him (as he had before) following the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic. Cole found his way into the match after winning a fatal five-way alos involving Matt Riddle, Aleister Black, Ricochet, and Velveteen Dream. To make the match for the vacant title even more dramatic, Triple H implemented the two-out-of-three falls stipulation, which has traditionally been a big deal in "NXT."
The crowd in the Barclays Center was white hot for the main event match, with competing chants for "Adam Cole BAY BAY!" and "Johnny Wrestling!" After Cole scored the first fall with a Last Shot, Gargano was unsteady on his feet coming off the knee to the back of the head, and Cole looked to make it two straight. But Gargano evened things up one-to-one when he made Cole quickly submit to the Garga-No-Escape. The pair went on to trade plenty of near falls and big moves, including Cole hitting a Fairytale Ending (Ciampa's finisher) to Gargano on the commentary desk.
Cole's Undisputed Era stablemates interfered when things were tied up and not looking great for Cole. Bobby Fish and Kyle O'Reilly hit a Total Elimination on Gargano, but he wouldn't stay down. Gargano took out the stable both in and around the ring before Cole tried to put him down with another Last Shot. In the end, however, it was Gargano who locked in another Garga-No-Escape, forcing Cole to submit again for the victory.
After the match, Gargano had an emotional celebration with wife Candice LeRae and Ciampa, who made an appearance to congratulate his friend to end the night. The delayed end of their story would end up going in whole different direction, butfor fans of the older school black-and-gold era of "NXT," this is a must-see match. Even with knowing who wins, it's a bout that will make you hold your breath with every pinfall attempt.
Written byDaisyRuth
