The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 US Pro Wrestling Title Inceptions

The wrestling business is driven by championships. Feuds and colorful personalities are a selling point, but in the grander narrative of promoters selling pro wrestling as a sport, it has been vital for the wrestlers to have something to prove—an objective claim to being the best wrestler of their time, or in their division. Titles do that.

Every title has to start somewhere. This week, I’m taking a look at the top seven title inceptions. Criteria included the long-term impact and historical importance of that title inception, the reveal of the new championship, the quality of the match(es) or surrounding build leading up to the first championship holder, and, as always, a healthy dose of personal opinion.

Note: For the sake of my own sanity, and in recognition of my own limited knowledge of wrestling abroad, I only included titles that were primarily contested (if not necessarily first awarded) in the US.

#7. The WCW Light-Heavyweight Championship

The WCW Light-Heavyweight Chamionship would only last a year, but was a deceptively influential championship on the US wrestling scene that paved the way for later WCW and WWE Cruiserweight Champions, and arguably play a role in helping US fans and promoters alike recognize the abilities and potential of men like Rey Mysterio, Chris Jericho, and Eddie Guerrero who would go on to become such major players in the WWE main event scene.

But back to the inception of the Light-Heavyweight Championship, it happened over the course of a tournament across the late summer and early fall of 1991, culminating in Brian Pillman besting Richard Morton at that year’s Halloween Havoc to become the first champ. The tournament highlighted Pillman’s exciting style of fast-paced, high-flying wrestling that was still relatively new to a US audience, and that he would go on to showcase in a back and forth title feud with Jushin Liger.

#6. The WWF European Championship

The WWF European Championship was a reasonably respectable secondary championship during the Attitude Era. While its long-term impact may not be as significant as other championships in the WWF or other major promotions, when you talk about the way in which a title was first decided, there were few better inceptions than the one for this strap.

The European Championship was the objective of a hotly contested tournament in Germany in 1997, which culminated in an off-beat match between heel frenemies, Owen Hart and Davey Boy Smith. Hart and Smith would go on to put on a forgotten classic of a bout in which Smith ultimately picked up the win in his home continent.

Smith is on the shortlist of biggest stars of his era to never get a run with a world title. Thus, becoming the very first European Champion comes across as something of a consolation prize—winning a big tournament with a great final for a title that he would hold for over half a year before dropping it to no lesser talent than Shawn Michaels.

#5. The WWE World Heavyweight Championship

The wrestling business has seen championships awarded based on tournament or battle royal victories, in epic matches between two major stars, and in phantom contests that the promotion at least claimed had happened abroad.

In 2003, with the WWE brand split in full effect, reigning world champ Brock Lesnar announced his allegiance to the Smackdown brand. And so, the Raw roster was in need of its own title to pursue, the invention of a second world title was not altogether surprising. How the title was awarded on screen was a surprise, though, when GM Eric Bischoff handed the new WWE World Heavyweight Championship to Triple H.

(Note: I understand that WWE claims a more steady lineage of the big gold belt from the NWA to WCW to WWE; that’s all well and good for storyline purposes, but in terms of continuity that makes little sense, given Chris Jericho unified that championship and the WWE strap at Armaggedon 2001.)

Folks have questioned the choice to gift a new world title to Triple H. After all, when a man didn’t need to fight for his title, how does that legitimize the title? Doesn’t the decision of who the champ will be come off as arbitrary or contrived?

Yes.

And it was brilliant.

Triple H’s character at the time was that of an entitled heel, and so the decision for the heel powers that be to hand him the title fit perfectly as unfair, and a reason for the faces to give chase and become more legitimate champions—meanwhile, in the process of fending off all of them, Triple H legitimized himself and the title. This is off-beat, superficially counterintuitive booking to achieve a greater goal at its very finest.

#4. The Extreme Championship Wrestling World Heavyweight Championship

After this point in the countdown, you may notice a stark shift from the moment of championship inception to what that inception meant in historical context, and its long-term implications.

The creation of the ECW World Championship is important in wrestling history, Equally important for the purposes of this countdown, the moment when the title was born was arguably the most startling, memorable, and apropos-to-its-time title inceptions ever.

Eastern Championship Wrestling had been in operation for two years, and emerged as the NWA’s hottest territory. Thus, it was decided that the Philadelphia-based promotion would play host to a title for the vacation NWA World Heavyweight Championship. Shane Douglas beat 2 Cold Scorpio in the tournament final, only to throw the title to ground and announce that he was not the NWA World Heavyweight Champion, but rather the ECW World Heavyweight Champion.

Douglas’s program, inaugurating the new world title, set a tone for ECW groundbreaking, rebellious, and utterly untraditional. ECW featured a brand of violence, diverse athleticism, and risqué storytelling that changed the business—arguably laying the groundwork for WCW to grow edgier, and most certainly helping to shape the WWF’s wildly successful Attitude Era.

As the US’s third most popular wrestling promotion of the day, ECW’s championship became one of the most prized in the business for about a five-year period. Despite that short history, the moment that championship remains iconic and fundamentally important to the wrestling business.

#3. The WWWF World Heavyweight Championship

In the 1960s, Northeast regional promoter Vince McMahon Sr. elected to break off from the NWA. Buddy Rogers dropped the NWA World Champoinship, but McMahon kept him on as champion, hosting an imaginary tournament in Rio De Janeiro that ended with Rogers standing tall as the first WWWF Champion. Before long, he would drop the title to Bruno Sammartino who, with the backing of New York wrestling magazine press, would become arguably the most famous wrestler in the country.

While we can credit Vincent Kennedy McMahom’s national expansion for fundamentally changing the wrestling business and starting an empire, when it comes to championship innovation, his father deserves recognition for founding what was essentially a regional championship, but a regional championship in a region with enough viewership and exposure to get over as a world title in its own right. The creation of this championship paved the way for Hulk Hogan to win it twenty years later when VKM took over, and to start a true revolution.

#2. The NWA World Heavyweight Championship

In the aftermath of Hackenscmidt and Gotch (see below), wrestling championship glory grew decentralized in the United States with dozens of different regions claiming their own championships. The formation of the National Wrestling Alliance thus lent a sense of legitimacy to the “world champion” moniker. While regional champs would remain, the NWA had its traveling champion who worked with the best of the best across the country and abroad to justify calling their belt-holder the champion of champions. A collective board of promoters made joint decisions to determine who got his hands on the strap, thus (more or less) preventing individual regional bias or nepotism in the process.

The concept of the NWA Championship may seem outdated now. Indeed, nowadays, the title is at best the third most prestigious in the US behind WWE and TNA’s top straps (or arguably even those promotions’ secondary titles, and the championships of top indies like ROH, Lucha Underground, Chikara, and PWG). But when there was a less clear hierarchy of territories and no truly national promotion, the NWA Championship, first awarded to a founding member of the board—Orville Brown—was an instantly credible title and that gathered steam quickly in the hands of its second holder, Lou Thesz, who proceeded to unify it with the top titles in the land and legitimize a true world championship.

#1. George Hackenschmidt’s World Championship

Yes, I’m going all the way back to “championship zero” to proclaim the greatest pro wrestling championship inception to be the original one. George Hackenscmidt was a legit world-class amateur wrestler who so dominated the field in Europe and the United States that promoters worried he was killing interest in the sport. Thus, they urged him to start wrestling in some worked exhibitions in addition to his legit wrestling matches, and encouraged greater showmanship.

I haven’t been able to find a clear transition point between pro wrestling as a true sport and as a worked form of entertainment. Just the same, when it comes to recognizing a champion on a national or world scale, the consensus seems to be that you start with Hackenschmidt, who passed the torch to Frank Gotch as true world champions. As I stated at the onset of this column, championships are nothing if not the fundamental driving force in telling the stories of pro wrestling as a sport, and thus there was no greater invention of championship glory than Hackenscmidt’s rise to glory and ultimate willingness to share that glory for the good of creating an entertainment industry.

Which title inceptions would you add to this list? Let us know in the comments section.

Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.