10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About The World Heavyweight Championship

They just can't help themselves.

If you look at the main championship belts in WWE right now, they all have a massive logo on them. To be fair, they've always had the logo on their belts because it makes sense for brand awareness... even if they sometimes spelled out WWE in diamonds and made it spin, then kept it like that for over half a decade.

The Big Gold Belt went through a lot of changes in its 25 years of life. The strap started off brown, the plates were dipped in dull gold paint, and the red diamonds were adjusted countless times. Eventually, it was even swapped out for a replica (more on that in a later entry), but every time it was kept as close to the original design as possible.

It could be seen as the final act of triumph then, when WWE decided to add their own logo to the belt in 2003. This famously unbranded piece of history was finally graffitied with the symbol of the ultimate winner in the battle of the brands. Like raising their flag over a fallen empire, WWE had claimed the most famous belt and made it their own.

There was at least a small amount of precedence for WWE marking their territory, and the belt, with their logo. When Ric Flair jumped to WWE in 1991, calling himself the "The Real World's Champion", the belt could be shown because it didn't have the WCW name on it.