10 Weirdest Ways To Create A Wrestling Championship

5. Triple H Is A Made Man

In 2002, the WWE created the brand extension. Since absorbing so many of the old ECW and WCW rosters, the new roster had become bloated. It was decided that RAW and Smackdown would have their own teams, become mini-promotions (for the purpose of storylines and booking) within the umbrella of WWE itself. That meant that each of the new brands needed championships assigned to each show. Initially, the Undisputed WWE Champion would remain unaffiliated, and bounce between each show - but when, in August 2002, the Smackdown brand under Stephanie McMahon, €˜contracted€™ the champion Brock Lesnar to Smackdown alone, that left Eric Bischoff€™s Monday Night RAW without a title to chase. On September 2nd 2002, after loudly disputing McMahon€™s move in nabbing Lesnar for her show - disputing the legitimacy of the Undisputed Championship - Eric Bischoff announced the creation of the World Heavyweight Championship, and awarded the title to Triple H, previously the number one contender to Lesnar€™s title. For the physical manifestation of the new title, Bischoff used the Big Gold Belt: a title belt that had resonance and weight going back decades. It was created in 1985 for Ric Flair, the greatest NWA champion of all-time, to replace his old NWA world heavyweight championship belt, and was directly affiliated with the glory days of the National Wrestling Alliance. Bischoff, in a moment of pure heelishness, simply handed it to the company's biggest heel, thereby setting it up as a paper belt only barely more credible than Ted Dibiase's Million Dollar Championship. In order to keep the heat but avoid neutering the title, WWE had Ric Flair actually come out to put Triple H over as worthy, and to immediately challenge him for the supposedly prestigious championship. The Nature Boy was defeated later on that night, and would be in Triple H€™s corner from that moment on. Less than seven weeks later, Triple H would defeat Kane at No Mercy to unify the new World title and the Intercontinental title, creating one single singles championship on RAW, which was controlled by him. Now that€™s a coronation.