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

3. It Was Renamed The World Championship When Rey Mysterio Held It

Shawn Michaels World Heavyweight Title
WWE.com

Why was this belt called the World Heavyweight Championship in the first place?

WWE has never paid attention to weight classes when it comes to titles. You might be screaming "What about the Cruiserweight Championship?" right now, but they gave that belt to Hornswoggle and Jacqueline so all bets are off.

Really, the title got its name from the fact that it said World Heavyweight Wrestling Champion on it. The Big Gold Belt started life as the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, before it became the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. When WWE purchased WCW and forced us to watch The Invasion for most of 2001, they took the words World Heavyweight away and it became just the WCW Championship instead.

So, when Big Gold came back as the World Heavyweight Championship in 2002, it was usually big meaty men slapping meat in title matches... until 2006 anyway.

When Rey Mysterio, perhaps the most famous cruiserweight in WWE, took the belt from Kurt Angle at WrestleMania 22, something didn't feel right about calling it the WHC anymore. The solution was very simple: they just called it the World Championship instead.

This created more questions though. Why did they continue to specify a weight class after Mysterio lost it, instead of just keeping the World Championship name? It's probably down the belt's legacy, with WWE being able to claim a lineage almost 100 years long if they kept the old name, but half the time they ignore everything that came before Vince McMahon's empire...

How many times did you see the words World Heavyweight Championship in this entry? Way too many!

Contributor

When I'm not trying my hardest to visit all 50 U.S. states, I'm listening to music from the 80s, watching TV from the 90s, and reminiscing about growing up in the 00s. I'm currently living in Melbourne, Australia so WWE premium live events are on Sunday afternoons for me; the absolute dream.