Smark Out Moment

Who is the greatest World Wrestling Entertainment Champion in history? In this tournament, every person who has held the WWWF, WWF, Undisputed, and WWE Championship titles was given a chance to claim the notoriety of being the best of the best.

The finals that you voted on ended up being CM Punk vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin. So who ended up being voted as the best WWE Champion ever?

The Austin Era has begun and apparently never ended

Here is how things broke down if you're interested in how we got to those finals.


THOUGHTS: Steve Austin was one of the four people that I thought was almost guaranteed as a finalist if not the winner. The other three were Hulk Hogan, The Rock, and John Cena. I had thought CM Punk would be knocked out by one of those men or Randy Savage and he stuck on due to his popularity until the end, but thankfully people voted for Austin. I say thankfully because I think despite CM Punk's impressive current title reign, in the grand scheme of things, you have to weigh all of their accomplishments as champion together and Steve Austin has just made more impact with the championship than CM Punk.

My winner, however, was different. I had knocked out CM Punk previously in his round against John Cena, who then went on to lose to Hulk Hogan. In my finals match of Hulk Hogan vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin, I went with HULK HOGAN. The entire company wouldn't be there if it weren't for Hulk Hogan and that includes Steve Austin's title reign. Though seeing as how Austin was my runner-up, I'm glad he won your vote against CM Punk. He's a worthy choice to say the least, but I just felt like Hulk Hogan was a little higher on the totem pole - enough to justify giving him my vote instead of Stone Cold.


SOME INTERESTING NOTES

What was the most voted on poll?
The very first one, Dave Batista vs. Ivan Koloff had the most votes, almost equal to the vote going into the finals of CM Punk and Hulk Hogan which was only 4 behind.

What was the least voted on poll?
The Undertaker vs. The Rock.

What was the biggest landslide victory?
The Rock beat Big Show with 97% of the vote.

What was the closest match?
Chris Jericho vs Kurt Angle where one vote separated them.

What were some of the biggest shockers to me?
CM Punk beating Hulk Hogan was probably the biggest. Ric Flair losing to Brock Lesnar was surprising.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

It's time to shake things up again, as Vince McMahon would say. It's also time for a bit of a break. Originally, I intended on doing another tournament after this, either the Best Divas/Women's Champion or Best World Heavyweight Champion, but in all honesty, this tournament performed rather poorly from what I expected. The page views were considerably lower than the Hottest Divas and Knockouts Tournament and the video views on Smack Talk were lower as well. There would be hundreds of votes for each match on that previous tournament but on this one, we averaged around 30 with virtually no comments on the site and not many on the YouTube channel. I'm very disappointed with it, as I thought this would be a fun thing that you guys would enjoy and it doesn't really seem like it. If you did have fun with this, let me know, as I personally enjoyed doing it, so I'd like to do more in the future for the other championship titles.

That being said, the idea of having a special weekly feature has become ingrained in this website as well as Smack Talk, so just because we won't be having a big tournament soon doesn't mean the extras are stopping. The next focal point is the Best & Worst of WWE in 2012 Awards which is a year-in-review special I do at the end of December. Go ahead and pick your choices for those categories and watch out for the December 29th episode of Smack Talk dedicated to that.

In January, the primary special feature is going to be our big breakdown prediction of the Royal Rumble. It is a contest where we guess the winner, the person who gets the most eliminations, the one who lasts the longest, the one who gets eliminated the fastest, and EVERY entrance of the 30 spots. This year, I'm hoping to get you fans involved in it as well, and I might be giving a prize out to whomever gets the most points and wins the competition.

On top of that, I'm toying with the idea of introducing the other segments that I've put on the backburner for several years now and putting them as weekly features on a rotating basis. These include Finisher vs. Finisher (debating who performed a move better), Belt or Bury (should this person be given a push or a release), Better Face or Heel (debating if a wrestler was better as a good guy or a villain), Superstar Scores (ranking a wrestler on a scale of 100 in 10 different categories), Top Rope Lists (a simple list format), Wrestling with the Past (discussion about old topics), One to Watch (picking one person that could be a big star in the new year) and more. Ain't no stopping Smack Talk, as Shelton Benjamin would say.

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