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At Final Battle 2017, Ring of Honor unveiled a pair of new championship belts. One was a redone ROH World Championship, the 4th design of their nearly 16-year history, and the other was the Women of Honor Championship, the first of its kind for the promotion, in a long overdue move for a company that should have started acknowledging the existence of women’s wrestling as an important piece of the wrestling product a long time ago.
On January 1, 2018, they announced a redesign of all of their title belts, so it seems that right now is a good time to look back at some of the greatest title belt designs in the history of professional wrestling.
#10 WWE ECW Championship
Even though the version of ECW that WWE created as a third brand after the popularity of their 2005 One Night Stand PPV and subsequent “Rise and Fall of ECW” DVD set was disappointing at best and downright bad at worst, they still had a really cool-looking title belt. After ditching the design of the original (ugly) ECW World Title, WWE commissioned their own black-and-platinum title belt.
It looked different from the other belts in the company at the time but fit in all the same. It was a pretty large belt and it looked good on the shoulders and around the waists of the few men that held the title. The first man to hold it was Mark Henry, as it was introduced by then-ECW General Manager Theodore R. Long a month into his reign as champion.
The final man to hold it was Ezekiel Jackson, who won it from Christian on the final episode of WWE ECW TV in 2010. It was retired immediately.
#9 ROH World Television Championship
The second design of the title was held last by brand new champion Silas Young, who will be awarded the brand new TV Title just announced by ROH to start 2018. It’s an abnormal looking belt, akin to some belts of the past. It’s almost like the late 90s to mid-2000s WWE Intercontinental Title turned vertical.
Its small size doesn’t make it look like a secondary title because of how unique it is in the current wrestling landscape.
The first man to hold this version of the title was Adam Cole, and the longest-reigning champ is the only 2-time champion, Jay Lethal, whose second reign lasted 567 days, many of which coincided with his reign as ROH World Champion.
#8 IWGP Heavyweight Championship
The current iteration of the IWGP Heavyweight Championship belt, held as of this writing by longest-reigning Champion Kazuchika Okada, is a classic belt with a rounded bottom topped with prongs that appear to look like a crown, defining the holder of the title as the king of pro wrestling, as it were.
There have been four versions of the belt since its inception in June of 1987. This version was introduced in March of 2008, shortly after Shinsuke Nakamura defeated Kurt Angle on the yearly January 4th event to unify the NJPW version of the title with NJPW founder and former owner Antonio Inoki’s IGF version of the belt.
#7 NXT Tag Team Championship
The original version of the NXT Tag Titles were cool because they actually complemented each other. The belts have the NXT logo vertical, splitting the belts into two sides. One of the belts has a black-and-gold design on the left side and a gold-and-black design on the right, while the other belt has that inverted, with the black-and-gold on the right and the gold-and-black on the left. It’s a great-looking design - simple and elegant.
The inaugural champions were Adrian Neville and Oliver Grey, and the longest reign belongs to Konor and Viktor of The Ascension, who held the belts for just one day short of a year.
The first team to win the titles outside of NXT’s home at Full Sail University in Winter Park were The Vaudevillains, who won the belts from Blake and Murphy at the first Takeover: Brooklyn event in 2015. The design was retired in April of 2017 on WrestleMania weekend during the reign of The Authors of Pain.
#6 NWA Television Championship
The NWA TV Title was such a cool-looking belt. It was fully symmetrical, which I personally love to see in a title design, and had the classic look with the eagle and a wrestling ring on the main plate. It had some usual things in there as well, with a lot of red on the main plate with silver lettering.
My favorite part of the design is the different TV station logos being represented on the side plates, including ABC and CBS. That’s a really unique and cool feature that you would never see on a belt today.
#5 WWE Intercontinental Championship
In the long history of the Intercontinental Championship, the belt has had about seven designs, some with only slight alterations. The current design is an iteration of the second version, created not too long after the original one held by inaugural champion Pat Patterson.
It was held by greats throughout the 1980s and 1990s until the WWF released the third, oval version of the title in 1998.
That version of the belt spanned a long period of time until Cody Rhodes brought the white-strapped “old school” version of the belt back, and it has stuck around since. It’s a classic design.
#4 Ring of Honor World Championship
The original championship belt used by Ring of Honor was beautiful in its simplicity. Based off of the short-lived UWF Championship, which lasted less than two years as part of a failed mid 1980s attempt at a national promotion, this title belt was used by ROH from its inception in 2002 (first held by Low Ki) until 2010, when a new version was introduced and given to then-champion Roderick Strong.
It was unique in that it didn’t represent the Ring of Honor logo, but rather just a stylized, yet simple ROH in big red letters. It was originally called the ROH Championship before being renamed the ROH World Championship after being defended out of the United States.
It was an example of a company not being haughty about the prestige of their championship.
#3 “Winged Eagle” WWF Championship
One of the most lauded World Championship designs in pro wrestling history is the “winged eagle” version of the WWF Title, first held by Hulk Hogan in 1988 and last held by Stone Cold Steve Austin in 1998. It holds the distinction of being the title belt design used the longest since the inception of the championship in 1963.
Many people call this the best WWF Title design and even the best belt design in general, possibly because of the era of the World Wrestling Federation wrestlers who held it.
Hulk Hogan, Andre The Giant, Randy Savage, The Ultimate Warrior, Sgt. Slaughter, The Undertaker, Ric Flair, Bret Hart, Bob Backlund, Diesel, Shawn Michaels and Sycho Sid all held the title before Stone Cold retired it.
#2 Undisputed WWE Championship
This championship belt was used for a criminally short period of time. Introduced on April 1, 2002 and given to then-champion Triple H, the belt lasted only until April 11, 2005. The holders of this specific belt were Triple H, Hulk Hogan, The Rock, Brock Lesnar, The Big Show, Kurt Angle, Eddie Guerrero, JBL and the final holder, John Cena, who held it for only 8 days before the “spinner” belt was introduced.
It was a great design, simple and bold, much different from the titles WWE had been using for a long time, opting to be mainly gold and black with a slight bit of red, as opposed to the blue, black and gold look used for the Winged Eagle and Big Eagle belts from 1988 to 2002.
It changed in size a few times depending on the wrestler who wore the belt and was an overall classy, non-gaudy design that was like a demure version of the Big Gold Belt.
#1 The Big Gold Belt
The Big Gold Belt was born mired in controversy. In mid-1991, it replaced the NWA World Championship belt as WCW’s main title, the WCW World Heavyweight Championship when the NWA and WCW had a brief split. Ric Flair took the belt with him when he left WCW for the WWF in 1991 but WCW eventually got the title belt back, but not before creating a new version of the title when WCW officially split from the NWA banner for good in 1992.
The Big Gold Belt represented the fictional WCW International promotion and was defended as the WCW International World Heavyweight Championship before being unified with the WCW World Heavyweight Championship in 1994. The Big Gold belt would become the officially recognized title, and continued as WCW’s title until it was bought out by Vince McMahon in 2001.
The design continued to be used until it was phased out in 2002 and the Undisputed Title was created, but later returned (in altered form) and was used all the way until its eventual retirement in 2014. Used for over 20 years, no major championship has stood the test of time like the Big Gold Belt.
