Smark Out Moment

The 2018 CHAMPSGIVING tournament has come to a close and you've decided who you think is the best world champion in the history of World Wrestling Entertainment (up until now).

This tournament was comprised of everyone who has ever held the WWE Championship, World Heavyweight Championship or Universal Championship, as well as a handful of spots dedicated to people who have unofficial title reigns.


After six rounds, the finals came down to Stone Cold Steve Austin and CM Punk, and the results are in. With a score of 48 votes (57.8%) to 35 votes (42.2%), STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN has been declared your winner.



CLOSEST CALL

One vote separated Steve Austin from The Undertaker in round 5, as they were 38-37 with Undertaker just coming up short with 49.3% of the vote to Austin's 50.7%

Only two votes were between Bob Backlund (52 / 51%) and Ted DiBiase (50 / 49%) despite DiBiase's title reign not officially counting at all, and Backlund being one of the longest-tenured champions. That just goes to show how much of a bias there is to different generations, which makes me think for future editions of this, instead of ranking the seeding based on number of days they held the title, I might have to split the brackets up into eras just to be more fair.

BIGGEST LANDSLIDE VICTORY

Technically speaking, the two bye-matches were the biggest landslides, as it was impossible to vote for anybody else other than Bruno Sammartino and Hulk Hogan, who got 100% by default.

However, ignoring that The Rock defeated Jack Swagger in round 1 with 99.1% of the vote (105 to 1), as did AJ Styles defeating Bray Wyatt with the same amount.

BIGGEST SHOCKERS

To me at least:

Round 1 = Ric Flair beat JBL, Goldberg beat Ultimate Warrior, Bob Backlund only narrowly beating Ted DiBiase (crazy)
Round 2 = Daniel Bryan beat Hulk Hogan (really??), Roman Reigns beat Bob Backlund, Goldberg beat Bret Hart (travesty)
Round 3 = Undertaker beat Bruno Sammartino

THE PROBLEM WITH THIS TOURNAMENT

I was surprised to see so many people say that they were ignoring the idea behind this and voting based on something else. Instead of judging based on the world title reigns and nothing more, people 30% of the people voting admitted that they just voted on who they liked better as an overall superstar, rather than their world title reigns.

That kind of defeats the purpose of this tournament concept, and it makes me think that there's no point in doing it again in the future if people will not be able to keep themselves in check. After all, what's the point in having a Best Intercontinental Champion Ever tournament if people are going to judge based on things other than someone's IC title reign? By that rationale, Finn Balor was a good universal champ just because you like him, even though he only held the title one day.

I don't know if this tournament will return next year, based on that voting principle, or if there's any way for me to stop that kind of bias from happening.



Big thanks to everyone who participated in this tournament. If you have any suggestions of what you'd like to see happen in the 2019 tournament or ideas of how we can improve this, make sure to leave us a comment or shoot us an email to send that message our way!