Corey Graves Is Not A Fan Of The Fiend's Custom Title Belt

From The Ultimate Warrior to Stone Cold Steve Austin and John Cena, we have seen many custom title belts that seem to capture the persona of the holder.

A week ago on SmackDown, Bray Wyatt announced that The Fiend would have a Universal Title of his own. We are then shown the skin covered strap with a replica of the Fiend's mask as the centerpiece, as well as the inscription of Hurt and Heal stitched into the strap.

On the most recent episode of After The Bell, host Corey Graves discusses his hangups and issues with the customization of title belts.

Below are some excerpts from the episode:

"Its cool," Graves said. "I think it's very, very cool. I am a big fan of Tom Savini, one of the greatest special effect artists to ever work in the motion picture industry, I think it's cool that our worlds have collided. The championship is very cool visually but I have a problem with these customized championships. I always have, I hated when Stone Cold had the smoking skull belt, yeah it was cool but all of a sudden the WWE Championship with all its history now is customised to one guy.

"I didn't have a problem with the blue Universal Championship because it's now on FOX, SmackDown and the blue brand, so it kind of made sense, it still looks like the WWE Championship.

"I didn't hate when The Ultimate Warrior would change the strap on his WWE Championship to the different colors I thought that was kind of an OK customization, but all of a sudden The Fiend will defend a title which is just his face - I'm not a huge fan of it."

"I think it devalues the championship as a whole," Graves explained. "In our business everything is fluid, it's constantly evolving, the one thing that we've always kind of got is history, revisionist as it is, but the WWE Championship to me personally is still the championship despite the positioning of the Universal title.

"The WWE Championship is the one that I grew up wanting to hold when I was a kid. That was the one that Hulk Hogan had, Macho Man and all of the greats had. Understandably different brand, you need new championships, the universal title comes into effect - it is what it is. But the more you change the design of the championships, to me, the more it devalues it. Could you imagine in the NHL if the team that won the Stanley Cup got to redesign the Stanley Cup trophy? That thing is iconic. If the penguins win the Stanley Cup and all of a sudden they're presented with a giant trophy of a penguin I think it loses a lot of its luster, it seems kind of weird.

"You get custom Super Bowl rings specified to the team but the overall trophy, the goal of the team in that sport, is always the same. I'm cool with customizable plates on the sides of the titles but the championship being The Fiend's face, I'm unsure. Either way it's cool and if I had $6,500 laying around that I didn't need I would certainly buy one, but I don't love my kids that much."

#LetMeIn! A limited quantity first run of #TheFiend @WWEBrayWyatt Custom Handcrafted Titles by @THETomSavini Studios will be available for pre-order exclusively at #WWEShop tomorrow. #WWE #Smackdown #BrayWyatt pic.twitter.com/TFI5AWfJ0V

— WWEShop.com (@WWEShop) November 30, 2019