10 Most Bizarre Wrestling Title Lineages

This was such a fabulous riff on pro wrestling history that only a stand-out of the tape-trading wrestler generation could have devised it.

The ICW-ICWA Tex-Arkana Television Championship, with its brutal pronunciation, parodied the strange history of fictional wrestling championship tournaments. This was beloved Independent patter pioneer Sweet N' Sour Larry Sweeney creating a tulpa belt, essentially, one with a delightfully meta lineage that, tracing back to Bobby Eaton and Buddy Rogers, blurred the lines between fiction and reality. This literal manifest delusion earned Sweeney raves by a taste-making set in thrall to a heel persona that threw back to the aesthetic but also the core of the timeless, vintage late 20th century heel: he was a legend only in his own mind, and his inability to see that asterisk was the infuriating, wildly entertaining source of heat.

It was also an affectionate knock at the inherent ego-driven farce that is accumulating multiple title wins, and tripled as a superb running gag.

Every time he lost it, he looked despondent and sold it beautifully; every time he won it back, he was back in the big time.