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World Heavyweight Championship vs WWE Championship

8K views 61 replies 33 participants last post by  KeepinItReal 
#1 ·
For years now the WWE has had two “World Championships”, the WWE Championship and the World Heavyweight Championship and many fans of pro wrestling may be wondering exactly which championship is the top championship in the sport of professional wrestling. In this piece I will explain to you exactly which belt is the top of the top and the reasons as to why one belt is above the other as well as my own personal views of the title's and what each one means. But before going into my explanation I'm going to spoil my answer early as a way to tickle your palms before I unload the salt on the snowy road. The answer is the World Heavyweight Championship.

The WWE Championship is NOT the same championship as the WWF Championship or the WWF World Heavyweight Championship despite what many may think. When the WWE changed it's name from the WWF it had to basically re-design the company and all copyright’s and assets (including championships) had to be reset to reflect the name change. By doing this the WWE basically became a “new” company, and even though it seemed nothing more than a name change on the surface there was a lot more going on behind the scenes than what fans got to see on television or on paper. The WWE Championship is a direct descendant of the old WWF Championship (sometimes referred to as the WWF World Heavyweight Championship but does NOT share the lineage despite the ruse that the WWE puts on toward it's fanbase. Sure, you could just simply connect the two and that's usually what people do, but deep within it's core by legal definition the two championship's are separate from one another and should be seen as such.
So, why do I not place the WWE Championship above the World Heavyweight Championship, you ask? Well, the WWE Championship is a company title, that means that the holder is the champion of the WWE as defined by the name of the championship. The holder of the title is defined as the champion of World Wrestling Entertainment and is promoted as such, but that's really as far as it goes. The WWE Championship is considered to be a “World Championship” because it is the top championship in the WWE and the WWE is indeed a world-wide company which is aired on television all over the world, as well as the internet and since the holder of the belt is holding the top title in the WWE they are noted as being a “World Champion”. But, with that title comes limitations. There is a ceiling there that you can't break and that's the ceiling of the title being named after a single company, you cannot claim to be anything higher than that despite the WWE Championship usually getting the main event slot on a pay-per-view card. Think about it this way: Would you rather be the champion of a company, or champion of the world?

See, when you hold the World Heavyweight Championship there is an illusion there that the title is not just a company title, but instead a title that spans the entire world which includes hundreds of wrestling companies and promotions. Simply put, they don't call the title the “WWE World Heavyweight Championship”. You can go ahead and watch video tape from pretty much every title defense and you will see that it's simply noted as the “World Heavyweight Championship”, and aside from a small WWE logo toward the top of the belt you would never know that the championship came with any brand recognition. That creates an illusion that you are not just the champion of the WWE, but instead you represent the entire world as the champion of the sport of pro wrestling. That includes every major company, every promotion, every wrestler, and superiority above every championship across the entire world. That's a huge responsibility to bear if you're the holder of the belt, that put's you at the very top of the food chain. Sure, it's rare that a World Heavyweight Championship match headlines a WWE pay-per-view (maybe 2 or 3 times a year), but for my money the matches put on for the title outshine the WWE Championship matches for the most part (not always) and the competitors who have held the title over the past several years (Undertaker, Kane, Big Show) are what I like to call “legacy” competitors who are throwbacks to an older age of the sport. On top of all that, since the title does not come with a true company branding it could be noted that a World Heavyweight Championship match could take place outside of the WWE seeing as how there is no verbal branding, though I'm sure this would probably never happen again (though it has in the past). And going even more forward, if you try hard, and I mean really hard, you can almost piece together a lineage between today's World Heavyweight Championship and the World Heavyweight Championship contested back in 1905 by Gotch and Hackenschmidt, though that is a daunting task even more me (but it can be done).
 
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#48 · (Edited)
Though WWE has said precisely that on certain occasions, they've also said precisely the opposite on other occasions. In their DVD on the history of the WHC (so, just for consumers who apparently love the WHC enough to buy a DVD about it), they say it begins in 1905, then became the NWA (alliance) title, then became the WCW title, then was "brought to WWE in 2002," which is what WWE.com's championship history pg says for the WHC. (Though when it says this on the championship history pg, its inherently ambiguous, cuz it could mean brought from somewhere else or brought from Eric Bischoff's asshole, who knows).

Also, in a WWE magazine issue from the last yr, in an article on the title's history, they heavily emphasize that it goes back to 1905, I remember Triple H and Daniel Bryan specifically describing it as a belt formerly held by (insert old, old names).

So, WWE is purposely ambiguous about it. Maybe once the WWE version of the WHC has been around for 20, 30+ yrs they'll say it began in 2002, but for now feel the need to refer to ancient times in order to give it significance.

Btw, I don't consider it to be so wrong for WWE to claim he NWA title's history. They can't claim that the WHC is the NWA championship, as the NWA championship continues to be defended to this day, but they can retroactively declare former NWA champions to be former WWE World Heavyweight Champions. WWE decides for itself who to consider "former WWE World Heavyweight Champions." Lol the NWA itself ambiguously claims the history of previous championships, and not just the National Wrestling Association (old NWA) title that was merged with their own. So, the NWA plays the same game.

The AP poll can declare a college football champion, pro football champion, pro wrestling champion, w/e they want w/o any permission from those sports' (or fake sport's) sanctioning bodies, and thus WWE has the same right to say "Lou Thesz was a WWE World Heavyweight Champion, because we at the WWE consider him the World Heavyweight Champion in 1947. Congrats to Lou." I know this is another issue, kind of, but it certainly plays into the VALUE of the WHC. Saying that all these fantastic wrestlers going back to 1905 held the WWE WHC goes a long way in making the case that the WHC is of equal or greater value than the WWE title, in precisely the way the OP claims: its above the WWE, but a part of it currently.
 
#49 · (Edited)
If you find the DVD "WWE: The History of the World Heavyweight Championship" on Amazon, and look at the contents, it goes back all the way to Frank Gotch. So, as far as WWE's fictional world, their title history includes the wrestlers who held the NWA title. NWA can complain all they want (and they do), but they play the same game with championships that came before their's, and, again, both WWE and NWA used to promote wrestling as real when it wasn't, and used to refer to matches that never even occurred to pad wrestlers' records (or justify a belt around their waist), so made up title lineage is insignificant in the grand scheme of things, just like any reference to CM Punk as the WWE Champion; its not true either, but if you suspend disbelief, then CM Punk is worth your money. Its part of the fictional universe. So, if the viewer wants to believe that Lou Thesz was a WWE World Heavyweight Champion because WWE claims its part of the WHC's history, then the viewer can believe it, and thus believe the WHC is pretty g-d damn important.
 
#51 ·
regardless of lineage, names or definitions, the facts are simple. The World title is currently, and has been for years now, the B-show title. It effectively should be named the smackdown title.

It is now on the same level that the intercontinental title was during the attitude era, used as a proving ground for up and comers or to give old timers one final piece of glory and recognition. Frankly, thanks to the John Cena effect, none of the title in WWE actually feel like they mean anything whatsoever anymore, but if we are directly comparing, the WWE title is the be all and end all. Fact.
 
#54 · (Edited)
Okay, its not a fact. I considered Batista, Undertaker, and Edge to be much better wrestlers then John Cena, Randy Orton, and Triple H. Wrestling is fake. Which means that its perfectly reasonable to believe that the holder of the WHC is equal to the holder of the WWE title. It may be fact that in real life the contenders for the WWE title are bigger stars than the WHC, but in kayfabe? And better wrestlers, not just bigger stars? No, kayfabe is w/e WWE says, maybe depending on how believable it is. When Sheamus wrestled Punk in Champion vs. Champion matches, Punk cheated and acted like a coward, once refusing to wrestle Sheamus altogether. Thus, in kayfabe, I see Sheamus as superior to Punk. I would say the same thing about Big Show when he held the WHC a short time ago, that he would easily beat Punk in a match, since he dominated whenever they faced each other in the past yr, but interference prevented a result from being reached. I wouldn't say the same about Del Rio, only because his win over Big Show wasn't entirely legit, and cuz Punk beat Del Rio twice during the end of 2011.

SmackDown has been less significant than Raw from the TV show's inception, and from the beginning of the brand extension. But, the brands were extremely close to equal in actual quality up until the exits of Batista and Undertaker. Batista/Taker/Edge were right up there with Cena/Orton/HHH, just like Angle/Benoit/Guerrero/Lesnar/Taker were right up there with HHH/HBK/Goldberg/Booker T/???, if not superior. B-show by just an inch isn't really a B-show. Only NOW is it really the "B-show," and even now viewers can reasonably believe in kayfabe that its equal.

Oh, and lastly, Royal Rumble winners pick the WHC sometimes, too; they choose to go after what they think is the biggest victory they can get.
 
#53 ·
I wouldn't mind this being main event of WM30 or something. And announce it the day after WM29. So for the next year, anyone who goes after either title, does so not just to win that title, but cause they're looking at bigger picture, and that is to be the one who is undisputed champ at wrestlemania.

The only reason I wouldn't want titles to be unified, is cause then that's 1 less division WWE has to worry about, meaning 1 more feud on PPV cards that has no meaning. And I like the WHC design, but WWE will likely get rid of it.
 
#60 ·
Official Retraction

Recently I posted a blog where I stated that the WWE Championship was inferior to the World Heavyweight Championship and today I would like to actually retract that statement. The reason being is that a championship is only as strong as how it's owning company treats it and since the WWE treats the World Heavyweight Championship with less reverance than the WWE Championship than I have to give the WWE Championship the top billing. The WWE Championship is often defended in the main event of pay-per-views and if competed for against the top tier competitors that wrestle in the WWE, but with that said the World Heavyweight Championship is still a very prestigious title to hold, but it is not above the WWE Championship. Sure, being the World Champion should denote that you're the best there is at what you do when you're a professional wrestler, but in this case the WWE title is a “World Championship” and encompasses the fact that the WWE is the largest professional wrestling company in existance and it's champion is the highest ranking wrestler in the world. The World Heavyweight Championship is often defended earlier in the card on pay-per-view matches and is often held by a wide array of competitors ranging from top tier talent to mid-card talent and is not treated on the same level as the WWE Title.

So there you have it, my official retraction for my now infamous blog post that has reached a massive 8,998 views since it was put up mid last month. And if you've skipped the paragraph before this one I'll be happy to repeat myself once again. The WWE Championship is the main attraction in the WWE and is the top title contested by the competitors who wrestle both in the WWE and who compete around the world. And while I follow the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, and ROH World Championship just as closely, the WWE Champion is regarded by wrestling fans and promoters as the sports top championship.
 
#62 ·
Re: Official Retraction

Recently I posted a blog where I stated that the WWE Championship was inferior to the World Heavyweight Championship and today I would like to actually retract that statement. The reason being is that a championship is only as strong as how it's owning company treats it and since the WWE treats the World Heavyweight Championship with less reverance than the WWE Championship than I have to give the WWE Championship the top billing. The WWE Championship is often defended in the main event of pay-per-views and if competed for against the top tier competitors that wrestle in the WWE, but with that said the World Heavyweight Championship is still a very prestigious title to hold, but it is not above the WWE Championship. Sure, being the World Champion should denote that you're the best there is at what you do when you're a professional wrestler, but in this case the WWE title is a “World Championship” and encompasses the fact that the WWE is the largest professional wrestling company in existance and it's champion is the highest ranking wrestler in the world. The World Heavyweight Championship is often defended earlier in the card on pay-per-view matches and is often held by a wide array of competitors ranging from top tier talent to mid-card talent and is not treated on the same level as the WWE Title.

So there you have it, my official retraction for my now infamous blog post that has reached a massive 8,998 views since it was put up mid last month. And if you've skipped the paragraph before this one I'll be happy to repeat myself once again. The WWE Championship is the main attraction in the WWE and is the top title contested by the competitors who wrestle both in the WWE and who compete around the world. And while I follow the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, and ROH World Championship just as closely, the WWE Champion is regarded by wrestling fans and promoters as the sports top championship.
Lol, now we have to argue about WWE vs IWGP. I say this half-seriously. New Japan is the best in the world at their style of wrestling (though I personally think they're getting more 'American' by the day, with cheating and CHAOS members acting like a bunch of flashy thugs).
 
#61 ·
Sorry but the WWE Championship is the same title as the WWWF Title.

The WWE could have called the WWE Championship the WWF Champion per the legal agreement they signed in the mid 1990's with the World Wildlife Federation. The problem was the World Wildlife Fund owned the the internet trademark/rights. There was no re-org of the company it was a name change.

Are the LA Lakers the same team as the Minneapolis Lakers?

Are the LA Dodgers the same team as the Brooklyn Dodgers?

Did the Los Angeles Angeles of Anaheim become a new baseball team each time they changed their name.

Is KFC the same company as Kentucky Fried Chicken?

Is Apple Inc. the same as Apple Computers?
 
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