Despite its best efforts, WWE’s World Heavyweight Championship tournament simply doesn’t have the juice

The world title tourney has a stellar field, but the prize still feels lacking.

There’s something about tournaments in wrestling that just gets me excited.

Maybe it’s the more traditional sports fan in me that has grown up watching all kinds of  tournaments. Whether it’s single elimination, double round robin, best-of-seven, whatever, I’m usually on board with a tournament.

Tournaments by their nature give ordinarily mundane matches stakes, which raises the excitement level and usually makes for compelling professional wrestling.

You know what I like more? Tournaments with great wrestlers.

On paper, WWE has both of those things going with its World Heavyweight title tournament. First off, it’s a tournament, which you already know is my cup of tea. But the tourney field, man. What a field it is. I can honestly say that I’m a fan of literally everyone involved.

With all of that said, I should, in theory, be all about this method of determining the new world champ … but I’m not. Yes, that goes against my natural instincts, but I have my reasons.

Well, in this case there’s only one. And that’s what is at stake in this particular tournament: a consolation prize.

In theory, someone being crowned the “world heavyweight champion” should not feel like a consolation. It should be the culmination of years of hard work and dedication to the craft. It should be a reward to a wrestler who has earned their stripes and the right to say that they are the very best at what they do — even if that isn’t even true.

But we all know that in reality, WWE’s latest edition of the world title is anything but that. It’s pretty much a giant silver medal to be given to one of the many people who failed to dethrone the WWE’s real world champion, Roman Reigns.

And no, this isn’t some disputed situation like Ric Flair circa 1992, where he just claimed himself to be the “real world’s heavyweight champion” while the title was held up. At least Flair actually beat a champion to earn the big gold belt, and then went on to win the WWF’s version of the world title to boot.

No, this is different. Because Reigns was never beaten for the TWO titles he holds.

Let me be clear. This is not me piling on the wrestlers involved in this tournament, who are all great. This is me lamenting the fact that all of these guys are fighting to climb an easier hill because the other one (Reigns) may as well be Mount Everest. That’s not just the reality of the situation. That is essentially the story WWE is telling, which remains baffling to me.

I know I’m not alone in my feeling toward this tournament and the world title in general. But what makes it even worse is when Paul Heyman, the wiseman/consigliere to the Tribal Chief, tweets out an illustration depicting exactly what everyone already believes: that the world title is equivalent of the kiddie table at Thanksgiving while Reigns firmly sits at the head of his own, much larger table. No pun intended.

I believe Seth Rollins, the winner of the Raw side of the bracket, is above that. I believe whoever comes out of the Smackdown side is as well. The Smackdown side features multiple former world champs, including Edge, who is already in the WWE Hall of Fame after retiring as … World Heavyweight Champion.

WWE will do its best to make the crowning of a new world champ a big deal and make it seem like they are the champion the fans can be proud of, or some other nonsense like that. But we all know the truth: that the winner of this tournament, regardless of how talented they are, will be the personification of the podium meme we’ve all seen on social media.

Soak it in, guys. You’re second place until the actual champ returns.