A WWE Championship Belt Is Almost Certainly Sitting on the Bottom of the Grand River in Lansing

Once one of the hottest feuds in the history of wresting was between the Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin. An important chapter of that saga took place in Michigan and resulted in what is likely a championship belt being someone on the bottom of the Grand River in Lansing.

The event took place as part of a WWE swing through Michigan 1999. Throughout the evening, vignettes were shown featuring Dewayne 'The Rock' Johnson goading Stone Cold Steve Austin into a fight. The Rock appears along a bridge over a river. That bridge is the Shiawassee Street Bridge crossing the Grand River near Lansing Community College.

An eagle-eyed wresting fan in the Lansing area spotted the video and shared it with the Lansing subreddit on Reddit.

READ MORE: Michigan Just Quietly Killed an Iconic State Highway in Lansing

The story goes that the WWE did a house show (meaning not broadcast on television) at the Breslin Center in East Lansing and taped this segment while in the capital. The live TV broadcast was in Detroit, so some fans thought this bridge segment happened in Detroit but it's certainly Lansing.

The Rock refers to the Shiawassee Street bridge, in his character's vernacular of the time as the 'Roody-Poo Bridge' leading to calls to rename the bridge or establish a memorial plaque.

Take a look at the video:

I feel like this is a crucially under appreciated piece of Lansing lore.
byu/Jakexriviera inlansing

As the vignettes progress Stone Cold and the Rock do confront each other with Stone Cold going in the River (almost certainly a stunt) and the championship belt that Austin bore also is flung into the river. What that the magic of TV or did a belt really go into the Grand River? If so, was it ever recovered? Magnet fishermen have certainly pulled many sundry and interesting items in Lansing where the Grand and Red Cedar meet, maybe a wrestling belt will be next.