Every Major Wrestling World Title - Ranked From Least To Most Prestigious
From 9 to 24 karat.
The criteria was difficult to establish here.
There are a handful of modern pro wrestling championships that perhaps eclipse those on this list, but lack the historical significance on which too many coast. The PROGRESS World Championship in latter years has become known as a golden ticket to wrestling stardom. Similarly, the ICW World Championship acts as an inroad to prominence in the current wrestling world, with an overseas defence compelling the promotion to rename it from the ICW National Heavyweight Championship in 2015. This formalisation was unnecessary. When, for example, WWE announced the creation of the Universal Championship in 2016, it met no such criteria. It was received as a World Championship before it was even defended in the U.S.. It is received as a World Championship when it's barely defended now. That's WWE for you, hence the inclusion here of a certain blue makeweight.
It's also wrestling, plain and simple; whether or not a title is worthy of the World designation is a pure work.
CMLL, AAA and even the Americanised Lucha Underground are not included here, partly because your writer admits almost total in-depth ignorance of the lucha libre scene, but also because, in the case of the former league - by some distance the most enduring, popular and prestigious of the three - the 'World' designation is distributed across several weight divisions.
Ultimately, it's a subjective feeling; which championships project themselves as championships as a result of history, scale, reach and longevity of promotion, protection, perception on the international stage...?
14. NWA World Heavyweight Championship
Considered actual trash in the early 1990s, when Shane Douglas threw it to the floor to put over the renegade philosophy of his breakaway ECW promotion, what was once known as the "Real World's Championship" was accurately nicknamed.
Held only by the best of the best - those able to draw the biggest crowds across most of the United States by putting on the best matches - it was once the very pinnacle of wrestling achievement, a true notion rendered antiquated, filtered as history is through WWE's lens. Since Douglas crossed the line, the title suffered an even more drastic downturn in fortunes, its once impossible lustre only serving to magnify the minuscule credibility of those who tried, haplessly, to sell it as a prize in the pre- and post-TNA eras. Mike Rapada, Kahagas, Rob Conway: all and more were not even deemed worthy of the acclaimed reaches of an independent scene yet to explode. The title lineage became, in effect, a fiendishly difficult question in a pro wrestling quiz; a quaint footnote to a forever-changing industry.
Thought completely dead, it is in fact dormant.
In a quite unbelievable turn of events, it is coveted by Cody, who will challenge for it in front of 10,000 fans on 1 September. Cody was a great worker before his grand reinvention; he convinced many fans that the Intercontinental Title meant something again, purely because he said so and restored its original design.
He may yet do do the same with ten pounds of gold.