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The Intercontinental Championship is a prize with a rich history in WWE, but it has so often been neglected over the years, with the last fifteen years especially seeing it reach unfathomable lows in terms of its importance and status. In 2008, WWE’s resident comedy character, Santino Marella, picked up the Intercontinental Title. On paper, this wasn’t a great move, but in execution, it became a successful title run full of several fun moments, and it was all down to the ‘Honk-A-Meter’.
Santino Marella Wanted To Become The Greatest Intercontinental Champion In History
In 2008, the IC Title belt was experiencing a decently booked time, but nothing overly special or different had been done with it for quite a while to make it stand out. When Marella won the title for a second time, he was fully invested in his comedy gimmick as one half of Glamarella, alongside Beth Phoenix. When the pair won both the IC and Women’s Titles in a mixed tag team match, they became somewhat of a power couple, with Marella declaring that he wanted to become the greatest IC Champion ‘of all the times’ as he so eloquently put it.
This is a common thread when it comes to IC Champions, with the words usually being empty, but Marella went one step further by directly targeting the Honky Tonk Man’s record IC Title reign, which totaled 64 weeks and 454 days. The simple fact that Marella had mentioned this record added some intrigue into the minds of fans, especially as the weeks went by with him keeping hold of the belt. It wasn’t long until Marella created the ‘Honk-A-Meter’.
Week-to-week, Marella would pull up the Honk-A-Meter, which would compare the number of weeks that the Honky Tonk Man held the IC Title to the amount weeks Marella was currently champion. With Marella’s wonderful comedy timing (most of the time at least), his promos during this time were excellent, and even though he wasn’t the most serious competitor, it provided the belt with a strong and unique gimmick, not damaging it in the slightest.
The Honk-A-Meter Was Fun Whilst It Lasted
Just a simple thing like this added stakes to Marella’s title matches, as losing the belt would put an end to his attempt at breaking the record. Marella would survive the challenges of D-Lo Brown, Kofi Kingston, and Charlie Haas, and whilst he would often escape with the title due to nefarious means, it made it realistic to imagine that he would somehow find a way to keep his reign going. The most notable of his title defenses came at the Cyber Sunday PPV.
With Marella’s proclamations at becoming the best IC Champ ever, he was faced with three former champions – Roddy Piper, Goldust, and Honky Tonk Man, with the WWE Universe naturally voting for the latter. This was more of a segment than a match but bringing in the longest reigning IC Champion for Marella’s Honk-A-Meter gimmick was a brilliant move on the part of WWE, and the appearance was certainly a fun one.
After just 12 weeks, Marella’s reign came to an end when he was squashed by William Regal, but it was a very entertaining 12 weeks. Whilst Marella got nowhere near to the all-time record, it certainly felt as though he had a shot at certain points, especially with such a focus on the Honk-A-Meter. This was a case of WWE thinking slightly outside the box and doing something new in order to not only raise interest around a title belt but to utilize a specific talent in the best possible way, with Marella working wonders in his role as champion, albeit for just a few months. Perhaps WWE could have run with this further, but in hindsight, it could have gotten old after a while. Either way, the Honk-A-Meter was a genius gimmick.