Before Paul “Triple H” Levesque had Nikki Cross throw the 24/7 Championship in the trash on an episode of RAW, effectively leaving the title where most folks felt the belt had been booked into, there was the Hardcore Title, a belt so extreme that it had to be defended 24/7 even in the airport if WWE opted to send a camera crew along with some unfortunate Superstar.

Discussing a belt that, like its successor, started out fairly strong before becoming a bit too gimmicky for its own good, Road Dogg noted on his  Oh… You Didn't Know? podcast that, unfortunately for WWE, the belt lost its muster and became a burden for the publically-traded company.

“Now we’ve gone too far. It totally lost its luster. … When they went away from the violence of it is when it went away, you know what I mean? That’s what it was,” Dogg said via 411 Mania. “And look — from a business standpoint, especially now that it’s a publicly-traded company, it’s just crazy to have too much of that going on all the time, you know what I mean?”

Fortunately, Road Dogg isn't against incorporating hardcore style into WWE, he just thinks it has to be utilized tastefully.

“I totally could make the argument [not normalizing] the hardcore stuff for corporate responsibility reasons,” Dogg said. “Also, you know, people ain’t going to pay for that all the time. And I think some people will, and there will be a spot for it, and it’ll utilize it at the right times, and it’ll mean something then.”

From making Liv Morgan embrace violence ahead of Extreme Rules last fall to whatever might be coming down the pike for Cody Rhodes and Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam, it's clear WWE is open to the hardcore style from time to time. Whether a performer like Mick Foley ever calls the promotion home again, however, remains to be seen, as it's hard to imagine the promotion ever topping the sort of wild light tubes into glass door spots GCW puts on Fite TV on a random weeknight.

Road Dogg believes Michael Cole is this generation's Jim Ross.

Elsewhere on his Oh… You Didn't Know? podcast, Road Dogg turned his attention to a fun anecdote about how Michael Cole, who was just starting out at the time, got absolutely embarrassed by himself, Billy Gunn, and X-Pac in a DX-themed Super Soaker commercial.

“So truth be told, we did a Super Soaker commercial way back when me and X Pac, and Billy did it. Michael Cole, it was like his first week there and he was in the commercial with us and he had his makeup all done and they came to us and said, ‘No matter what, don't shoot him in the face. We have changes for his clothes, but don't shoot him in the face,'” Dogg recalled via Fightful. “I mean, good lord. You know what I mean? Really? You're thinking about it. So they go, ‘Okay. You guys ready? Here we go.' So Kip [Billy Gunn] looks at me he goes, ‘In his face, right?' [Laughs] Bless his heart because those Super Soakers, and I'm not kidding, they shoot you, man. We were six feet away from him tops, and we both just doused him.”

While it's always nice to poke fun at Cole's expense, it's practically become an art form at this point, Dogg noted that, in his opinion, Cole is this generation's Jim Ross, aka the voice of WWE wrestling for a whole segment of the fanbase.

“It was horribly mean, and very degenerative. Oh, no, he [Cole] does [remember]. Very clearly. I'll tell you why. Because he's still there today doing it. I'd say this, he is our generation's Jim Ross. The generation before that was Gordon Solie or Vince and Gorilla, or whoever, you know. Michael Cole is the deal. He's the voice of the WWE no doubt. Having said that, he's still there and X-Pac has literally apologized to him for that about 25 times. It's a big running rib for Sean [X-Pac] and Michael Cole. Just say, you know, ‘Hey, remember we did the Super Soaker commercial?' I go, ‘Dude, I apologize to you.' He'll say, ‘Yes, you and X-Pac have both apologized.' But at the time, dude, we were in our heyday and we were probably high and he was the new kid on the block. We were the last of a dying breed and maybe there's a reason that that attitude was hot for a brief minute, and then it was not for a brief minute.”

There was a time when Cole was absolutely annihilated by fans for not being JR. And yet, as the decades piled up, to some fans, he's the only voice of wrestling they know; a WWE stalwart who has become an institution of WWE's weekly television.