At Dynamite Grand Slam last night, Hook defeated Roderick Strong to defend the FTW Championship. It would be the last defence of the championship.
Hook retired the championship and handed it back to his father Taz. The win against Roderick Strong would be the 39th time in AEW that the championship would be defended in the company.
Fuck The Franchise
Taz actually introduced the championship in Queens, New York in Extreme Championship Wrestling. It was an event on May 14, 1998 called It Ain’t Seinfeld. Yes. That was the name of the show. No I won’t explain it to you.
That night in Queens (Grand Slam’s Arthur Ashe Stadium is in Flushing, Queens which is why it was important for the championship to be defended and put to rest by Hook at the event) Taz brought up the fact that Shane Douglas, the ECW World Heavyweight Champion, had been ducking him and refusing to wrestle him. Fans often called Taz the uncrowned ECW Champion at the time.
Because Douglas wouldn’t give him a match, Taz pulled the FTW (Fuck The World) Championship out of a black bag and proclaimed himself the champion. He wanted Shane Douglas to face him to unify the two championships.
Shane Douglas, who had won the ECW World Heavyweight Championship against Bam Bam Bigelow on November 30, 1997, would hold onto the title for 406 days with 34 successful defences. Shane did have a good reason to duck Taz. The two did face off in 1997 twice, both times for the ECW World Television Championship. Both times Taz smashed Shane in record time (2:51 and 3:13) so it’s no surprise that in those 34 successful defences? None of them were against Taz.
Taz would get to defeat Shane Douglas at Guilty as Charged on January 10, 1999. It wouldn’t, however, be the unification match Taz originally wanted. Taz lost the FTW Championship to Sabu on Hardcore TV back on December 23, 1998 (taped on the 19th.)
While he got his win finally on Shane Douglas, the entire purpose of the FTW Championship, it wasn’t the unification moment. Taz wouldn’t get his moment to unify until March 21, 1999, when he faced Sabu at Living Dangerously. Taz would win back his FTW Championship, unified with the ECW World Heavyweight Championship, eventually forgotten in the annals of wrestling history until July 2, 2020.
Fuck the Paradigm Shift
Taz justified bringing it back in a similar reason to the original creation. The match between Brian Cage and AEW Men’s World Champion Jon Moxley was supposed to happen at Fyter Fest but would get delayed to Fight for the Fallen a week later.
While I haven’t heard Taz say it in an interview, he did mention in making Cage championship that it signified he was the baddest motherfucker on the planet. I wonder, even if FTW predates it, if the FTW Championship in AEW was meant to resemble the BMF Championship in UFC. The Baddest Motherfucker In The Game belt was first materialized at UFC 241, and first defended at UFC 244. Dwayne Johnson, better known as Maui from Moana, introduced the first physical championship.
So even though Taz had a similar pretense of a World Champion ducking the challenger, it wasn’t about unifying the titles like it was for him. It was about presenting who was the baddest in the game. An outlaw championship for outlaw minded wrestlers.
Brian Cage wouldn’t win the match against Jon Moxley but would defend the FTW Championship until July 14, 2021, when Ricky Starks, also of Team Taz, would defeat him. It was the way to push Brian Cage out of Team Taz, with Hook and Powerhouse Hobbs ensuring Starks got the victory.
Starks would be FTW Champion for a year, defended against everyone from Jungle Boy to Swerve Strickland to… Danhausen. It was that Danhausen defence that Ricky decided to defend the title for a second time in the same night, with Taz making it clear on commentary that Starks decision wasn’t smart.
The Cold Hearted Handsome Devil would defeat Ricky Starks and win the championship his father created, winning with the Redrum (Tazmission) at Fight for the Fallen. It felt like the FTW Championship was pretty much made for Hook and it was now time for him to be champion.
Hook would also hold the championship for essentially a year, once again dropping it in the month of July just like Ricky Starks. Jack Perry, having recently turned heel on Hook, would beat him for the FTW Championship. Perry would also defend the FTW Championship against ECW alumni Rob Van Dam, before Hook would beat him for the title at All In 2023. Not even real glass could stop Hook from regaining the FTW Championship.
It was around this time people started to see that the FTW Championship was a bit of an albatross (not the bird) for Hook. At the time 24-years-old, Hook was basically stuck in limbo only showing up for FTW Championship matches or the occasional multi-man, with a feud here and there, but very little purpose otherwise. He was supposed to be the badass motherfucker as champion, or in some ways, an uncrowned World Champion. He could be a badass but nobody saw him at a level beyond the middle of the pack.
After Chris Jericho defeated Hook for the FTW Championship and renamed it “For The World” just to anger Taz and Hook, it was a good way for Jericho to freshen up his character the way he did as ROH Men’s World Champion. But it wasn’t doing much for Hook, who seemed to be in the same place he had been since he first won the championship from Ricky Starks three years prior.
Hook would beat Jericho for the FTW Championship at All In 2024, and that brings us to this week, where he made one defence against Roderick Strong and ended the FTW Championship.
Fuck The World
“Unrealized potential” rears its ugly head again when talking about the FTW Championship, much like a lot of things in AEW. Even when the company does so much amazing things week in and week out, it’s the unrealized potential that can sometimes crawl into the back of your mind and take it up more than anything good. Which is unfortunate, but it’s unfortunately true for the FTW Championship.
When Taz made Brian Cage the FTW Champion, I had hoped to see someone try to unify the FTW with the AEW Men’s World Championship. We hardly got to see that, with the closest being Hook facing Samoa Joe earlier this year. We never got something like what made Taz, with a World Champion ducking him so he had to instead defend the FTW Championship to tell the fans, “this is the real world championship, this has credibility unlike the coward world champion.”
Instead it was mostly a way for a son to pay tribute to his father, and in a way that tribute ended up stunting his own growth in the company. Hook had to pretty much win most of his matches due to being FTW Champion, at a time when it could have been valuable for him to take an excursion out of AEW and try learning new styles. Hook hasn’t really added any new dimension to his wrestling or personality. He’s the same guy that got really popular three years back, just a little less popular now.
Some worry this means Hook might be departing from AEW soon, and if he does? It’ll be disappointing, but if he can’t grow in All Elite Wrestling he needs to grow elsewhere. If he sticks around, it’s a good time for him to start proving there’s more to his game. He’s still very young at 25 which means there’s a lot of room for Hook to grow, but he still has to actually do it if he wants to be more than just a midcard kid with potential.
I would have liked to see different champions with the belt. Samoa Joe not holding it was a surprise. Brody King would have worked great for it. I don’t know how it would happen but Jamie Hayter feels like someone who would wear the FTW Championship well. Rush embodies everything the FTW Championship meant, so he’d definitely have been good for it.
It’s good that it at least got to be held by the son of Taz, and it got to be created in Queens and be defended for potentially the last time in Queens. So long FTW. Fuck The World Forever.
