WWE: History of the World Heavyweight Championship (2009)

As a huge wrestling fan, I was pretty excited for a video collection covering a title that could be traced all the way back to the early 20th century. For the most part I wasn't disappointed.

The documentary does a pretty good job of telling the history of the title. I was surprised about a couple of notable events that they didn't cover but, I guess they didn't want to risk getting sidetracked. I wish they spent more time talking about the 90's and beyond. It felt like they jumped almost straight from Flair's dominant run as NWA champion to the title being revived in WWE and even that didn't get very much attention. I realize that with the much more frequent title changes since the early 90's, it would have been impossible to go into detail about every champion but, more attention could have been spent on the era. I think the bio also was too short. It would have been better with another 30 or 45 minutes to tell the history of the title.

I think the match selection was good enough. They did a good job showcasing some matches from the 50's, 60's and 70's without overdoing it. There aren't many of the most historic WHC matches included but, most of those have been included in countless other collections, so you can overlook that for the most part. It's nice to see some lesser known contests although, it keeps the collection from feeling quite as important as it should at times. For example one of the Flair/Steamboat or Flair/Rhodes classics would have better shown the prestige of the belt than a random Flair/Scott Steiner match.

Overall it's worth the price even if it's not quite as great as it could've been.