10 Strangest Ways To Win A Wrestling Championship

Pinfall, submission, count out, disqualification...and rock, paper, scissors?

Britt Baker DMD
DDT

What is the purpose of winning a championship as a professional wrestler?

Is it to act as a decisive separation of the best from the rest? Perhaps, but then, what is the best? Jake Roberts, long glorified as one of his generation's most influential talkers and a dab hand between the ropes, never got a sniff at WWE's top prize. Ricky Steamboat, whose pure babyface aura and unrivalled in-ring technique, was a mid-card act for his whole career with the market leaer. Dusty Rhodes, a masterful NWA headliner who became polka dot-adorned comedy fodder in WWE, famously never held the richest prize in sports entertainment.

But Vince McMahon did.

Jinder Mahal did.

Alberto Del Rio did.

Being bestowed with a championship in wrestling is a token of a company's appreciation for how many t-shirts you can sell or how many punters you can draw to a live event. Being gifted with the art of professional wrestling is a secondary asset.

That is why so many title archives became littered with controversy: too many promotions opted for convolution over conciseness. Crowning the hot new act as champion via the traditional method of a pinfall or submission isn't as fun as...

10. Divorce (TNA Digital Media Championship)

Britt Baker DMD
WWE

The TNA Digital Media Championship, somehow, lives.

A sledgehammer-wielding PCO had sliced it apart during Game Changer Wrestling's 19 January The People vs. GCW card in what was immediately reported by PWInsider's Mike Johnson to have been a shoot, with the gargantuan French Canadian making subsequent scathing remarks directed at TNA executives a mere four days before he was purportedly scheduled to drop the title and exit TNA.

PCO has since left TNA and lost the Digital Media Title...

...in a bitter divorce.

TNA's first live iMPACT! in eight years came with the revelation that Steph de Lander, PCO's in-storyline wife, had divorced him, winning the Digital Media Championship in the settlement. This wasn't the checkmate TNA expected it to be. A self-inflicted failure, it may not be, but PCO's destruction of the belt ripened TNA's opportunity to shelve it. The championship has lacked any creative direction since its fall 2021 inauguration, and its on-again, off-again attachment to upper-echelon talents, such as Jordynne Grace, Matt Cardona, and Joe Hendry didn't do the belt, nor the champions, any favours.

Still, changing a titleholder via divorce is one of those things that the Anthem-helmed promotion will become remembered for. Cue the 'Remember when TNA did that wacky thing???' tweet this time next year.

Contributor
Contributor

Can be found raving about the latest IMPACT Wrestling signing, the Saints Row franchise, and King Shark in The Suicide Squad.