The ECW World Heavyweight Championship was a
professional wrestling
Professional wrestling is a form of theater that revolves around staged wrestling matches. The mock combat is performed in a ring similar to the kind used in boxing, and the dramatic aspects of pro wrestling may be performed both in the ring or ...
world heavyweight championship originally used in
Extreme Championship Wrestling
HHG Corporation, doing business as Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), was a professional wrestling promotion and media company that was based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The promotion was founded in 1992 by Tod Gordon as National Wrest ...
(ECW) and later,
World Wrestling Entertainment
World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., d/b/a as WWE, is an American professional wrestling promotion. A global integrated media and entertainment company, WWE has also branched out into other fields, including film, American football, and va ...
(WWE). It was the original world title of the ECW promotion, spun off from the
NWA World Heavyweight Championship
The NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship is a world heavyweight professional wrestling championship owned and promoted by the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), an American professional wrestling promotion. The current champion is Tyrus, who is i ...
. It was established under ECW in 1994 but was originally introduced in 1992 by the promotion's precursor,
Eastern Championship Wrestling
HHG Corporation, doing business as Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), was a professional wrestling promotion and media company that was based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The promotion was founded in 1992 by Tod Gordon as National Wres ...
. The inaugural champion was
Jimmy Snuka
James Reiher Snuka (born James Wiley Smith; May 18, 1943 – January 15, 2017) was a Fijian American professional wrestler. He is better known by the ring name Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka.
Snuka wrestled for several promotions from the 1970s to 2010 ...
, however, WWE considers the inaugural champion to be
Shane Douglas
Troy Allan Martin (born November 21, 1964) is an American professional wrestler and promoter, better known by his ring name Shane Douglas. He is best known for his tenures in Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), World Championship Wrestling (W ...
, with his reign beginning on August 27, 1994.
The title was deactivated in 2001 when ECW went out of business. ECW was then purchased by WWE two years later during the summer of 2003. In 2006, WWE reactivated the championship as the world title of their newly established
ECW ECW may refer to:
Professional wrestling
* Extreme Championship Wrestling (originally Eastern Championship Wrestling), a professional wrestling promotion that operated from 1992 to 2001
* The Alliance (professional wrestling) (originally the WCW/E ...
brand
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create ...
. It was the third concurrently active world championship in the promotion, complementing the
WWE Championship
The WWE Championship is a world heavyweight championship created and promoted by the American professional wrestling promotion WWE, representing the Raw brand division. It is one of two world titles on WWE's main roster, alongside SmackDow ...
and
World Heavyweight Championship of the other two brands,
Raw
Raw is an adjective usually describing:
* Raw materials, basic materials from which products are manufactured or made
* Raw food, uncooked food
Raw or RAW may also refer to:
Computing and electronics
* .RAW, a proprietary mass spectrometry dat ...
and
SmackDown
''WWE SmackDown'', also known as ''Friday Night SmackDown'' or simply ''SmackDown'', is an American professional wrestling television program produced by WWE that as of currently airs live every Friday at 8 p.m. ET on Fox. Fox Deportes sim ...
. The ECW Championship briefly appeared as the sole world title of the Raw brand in 2008 as a result of
that year's draft. When WWE disbanded the ECW brand in 2010, the championship was subsequently retired with
Ezekiel Jackson
Rycklon Stephens (born April 22, 1978) is a Guyanese-American retired professional wrestler and bodybuilder. He is best known for his time with WWE under the ring name Ezekiel Jackson, where he was the final ECW Champion under the WWE brand of ...
as the final titleholder.
History
Origin
The ECW World Heavyweight Championship was introduced originally in 1992 as the NWA-ECW Heavyweight Championship with
Jimmy Snuka
James Reiher Snuka (born James Wiley Smith; May 18, 1943 – January 15, 2017) was a Fijian American professional wrestler. He is better known by the ring name Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka.
Snuka wrestled for several promotions from the 1970s to 2010 ...
becoming the inaugural champion on April 25. However, its origin is attributed to events that began in the
National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), an organization with many members
promotions.
In the early 1990s,
Eastern Championship Wrestling
HHG Corporation, doing business as Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), was a professional wrestling promotion and media company that was based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The promotion was founded in 1992 by Tod Gordon as National Wres ...
(ECW) was a member of the NWA and by 1994, the
NWA World Heavyweight Championship
The NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship is a world heavyweight professional wrestling championship owned and promoted by the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), an American professional wrestling promotion. The current champion is Tyrus, who is i ...
, the
world title
A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, ...
of the NWA, was vacant. Consequently,
a tournament was organized to crown a new NWA World Heavyweight Champion and on August 27, NWA-ECW Heavyweight Champion
Shane Douglas
Troy Allan Martin (born November 21, 1964) is an American professional wrestler and promoter, better known by his ring name Shane Douglas. He is best known for his tenures in Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), World Championship Wrestling (W ...
defeated
2 Cold Scorpio
Charles Bernard Scaggs (born October 25, 1965) is an American professional wrestler, better known by the ring name 2 Cold Scorpio (sometimes spelled Too Cold Scorpio). He is best known for his appearances with World Championship Wrestling, Extrem ...
in the finals to win the title. However, Douglas immediately relinquished the NWA World Heavyweight Championship and instead proclaimed himself the new ECW World Heavyweight Champion. ECW subsequently seceded from the NWA and became
Extreme Championship Wrestling
HHG Corporation, doing business as Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), was a professional wrestling promotion and media company that was based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The promotion was founded in 1992 by Tod Gordon as National Wrest ...
(ECW). The ECW World Heavyweight Championship was thus established,
spun off from the NWA title. It remained active until April 11, 2001, when ECW closed and
World Wrestling Entertainment
World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., d/b/a as WWE, is an American professional wrestling promotion. A global integrated media and entertainment company, WWE has also branched out into other fields, including film, American football, and va ...
subsequently purchased its assets. The final champion
Rhyno
Terrance Guido Gerin (born October 7, 1975) is an American professional wrestler better known by the ring name Rhyno or Rhino. He is currently signed to Impact Wrestling, where he is one-half of the Impact World Tag Team Champions in his secon ...
went on to win the NWA World Heavyweight Championship in 2005.
Recommission
By 2005, WWE began reintroducing ECW through content from the ECW
video library and a series of books, which included the release of ''
The Rise and Fall of ECW
''The Rise and Fall of ECW'' is a 2004 direct-to-video documentary produced by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). It chronicles the history of Philadelphia-based professional wrestling promotion Extreme Championship Wrestling. The documentary ...
'' documentary.
With heightened and rejuvenated interest in the ECW franchise, WWE organized
ECW One Night Stand on June 12, a reunion event that featured
ECW alumni
This is a list of professional wrestlers and other people who appeared in the original incarnation of Extreme Championship Wrestling
Wrestlers who used more than one ringname while in ECW will be listed under the ring name for which they used the ...
.
Due to the financial and critical success of the production, WWE produced the second
ECW One Night Stand on June 11, 2006, which served as the
premiere event in the relaunch of the
ECW franchise as a third WWE brand, complementary to
Raw
Raw is an adjective usually describing:
* Raw materials, basic materials from which products are manufactured or made
* Raw food, uncooked food
Raw or RAW may also refer to:
Computing and electronics
* .RAW, a proprietary mass spectrometry dat ...
and
SmackDown
''WWE SmackDown'', also known as ''Friday Night SmackDown'' or simply ''SmackDown'', is an American professional wrestling television program produced by WWE that as of currently airs live every Friday at 8 p.m. ET on Fox. Fox Deportes sim ...
.
On June 13,
Paul Heyman
Paul Heyman (born September 11, 1965) is an American professional wrestling manager, former promoter, photographer, and executive. He is currently signed to WWE, appearing on the SmackDown brand as manager for Undisputed WWE Universal Heavyweig ...
, former ECW owner and newly appointed figurehead for the
ECW brand, recommissioned the ECW World Heavyweight Championship to be the brand's world title and awarded it to
Rob Van Dam
Robert Alexander Szatkowski (born December 18, 1970) is an American professional wrestler and actor better known by his ring name Rob Van Dam (frequently abbreviated to RVD). He is best known for his tenures in Extreme Championship Wrestling ...
as a result of winning the
WWE Championship
The WWE Championship is a world heavyweight championship created and promoted by the American professional wrestling promotion WWE, representing the Raw brand division. It is one of two world titles on WWE's main roster, alongside SmackDow ...
at One Night Stand 2006. Heyman had originally stated that either the WWE Championship or the
World Heavyweight Championship would "become" the ECW World Heavyweight Championship if a competitor designated to the ECW brand became WWE Champion or World Heavyweight Champion at the event. However, Rob Van Dam later declared that he would hold both titles simultaneously instead. The title became known as the ECW World Championship in June 2006, and later simply as the ECW Championship in August 2007.
ECW World Championship Tournament (2007)
The ECW World Championship Tournament was a tournament created to determine a new
ECW World Champion
The ECW World Heavyweight Championship was a professional wrestling world heavyweight championship originally used in Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) and later, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). It was the original world title of the ECW ...
after
Bobby Lashley
Franklin Roberto Lashley (born July 16, 1976) is an American professional wrestler, mixed martial artist and bodybuilder. He is currently signed to WWE, where he performs on the Raw brand. He is an eight-time world champion, having been a two-t ...
vacated his championship due to being
drafted to ''
Raw
Raw is an adjective usually describing:
* Raw materials, basic materials from which products are manufactured or made
* Raw food, uncooked food
Raw or RAW may also refer to:
Computing and electronics
* .RAW, a proprietary mass spectrometry dat ...
'' on June 11, 2007. The finals took place at
Vengeance: Night of Champions. This tournament is notable because one of the semi-final rounds was Chris Benoit's final match. The tournament final was supposed to be Benoit vs CM Punk but Benoit no-showed the event and was replaced by Johnny Nitro, who would go on to win the title. It was reported the day after the event that Benoit, his wife Nancy, and their son Daniel were found dead in their home in suburban Atlanta. The day after police ruled that Benoit himself had killed his wife and son before committing suicide. This event has gone on to be known as the
Chris Benoit double murder and suicide
Over a three-day period from June 22 to 24, 2007, Chris Benoit, a 40-year-old Canadian professional wrestler employed by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and living in Fayetteville, Georgia, murdered his wife Nancy and their 7-year-old son, D ...
.
(*) – Johnny Nitro was an event-day replacement added by WWE after Chris Benoit was a no-show, with the official statement a "family emergency". It was later discovered Benoit's double murder/suicide had taken place that weekend.
Brand designation
Following the events of the
WWE brand extension, an annual
WWE draft
The WWE Draft, alternatively called the WWE Superstar Shake-up from 2017 to 2019, is a process used by the United States, American professional wrestling promotion WWE to refresh its rosters between the Raw (WWE brand), Raw and SmackDown (WWE bran ...
was established, in which select members of the WWE roster are reassigned to a different brand.
ECW ECW may refer to:
Professional wrestling
* Extreme Championship Wrestling (originally Eastern Championship Wrestling), a professional wrestling promotion that operated from 1992 to 2001
* The Alliance (professional wrestling) (originally the WCW/E ...
was revived as a third brand in 2006 to rival
Raw
Raw is an adjective usually describing:
* Raw materials, basic materials from which products are manufactured or made
* Raw food, uncooked food
Raw or RAW may also refer to:
Computing and electronics
* .RAW, a proprietary mass spectrometry dat ...
and
SmackDown
''WWE SmackDown'', also known as ''Friday Night SmackDown'' or simply ''SmackDown'', is an American professional wrestling television program produced by WWE that as of currently airs live every Friday at 8 p.m. ET on Fox. Fox Deportes sim ...
and continued to operate until February 16, 2010, rendering the title inactive once again.
[
]
Championship belt designs
The original belt was a five-plate title belt made by Mike Vartanian. The belt was an exact copy of NWA-ECW's forerunner Tri-State Wrestling Alliance's Heavyweight title. The only difference was that the NWA-ECW's main plate featured the promotion’s name and had areas painted blue. During this belt's period of use, it was treated badly and was grinded, repainted, and had jewels placed on the main plate, which would explain why it appears different in almost every photo of it. By the time the belt was replaced, it was in a very bad state and two of the side plates were broken off or missing.
When Eastern Championship Wrestling withdrew from the NWA to become Extreme Championship Wrestling in 1994 it continued using this belt until 1996 when it had a new belt created in 1996 starting during Raven's second title reign and was used through 1998.
In 1998, ECW had a new belt created for its championship that would be used until the promotion ceased operations in 2001.
Soon after its recommissioning, the ECW World Heavyweight Championship belt design was updated to a design similar to the belt used before ECW's original closure in 2001, which featured a black leather
Leather is a strong, flexible and durable material obtained from the tanning, or chemical treatment, of animal skins and hides to prevent decay. The most common leathers come from cattle, sheep, goats, equine animals, buffalo, pigs and hog ...
strap with a snake
Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more j ...
skin pattern on the rear, snaps to wrap around the waist of the wrestler who wore it, and five pieces made of gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...
. In the middle of the strap was a large centerpiece, which featured a design of a blue globe in the center, and to the left and right of the globe were a pair of baseball bat
A baseball bat is a smooth wooden or metal club used in the sport of baseball to hit the ball after it is thrown by the pitcher. By regulation it may be no more than in diameter at the thickest part and no more than in length. Although histor ...
s wrapped in barbed wire. At the top of the piece, a purple ECW logo and the words "World Heavyweight Wrestling Champion" were engraved with the words "Heavyweight Wrestling" in red, which gave the text a blood
Blood is a body fluid in the circulatory system of humans and other vertebrates that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells, and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells. Blood in the cir ...
-like appearance. In addition, the entire piece was engraved with a pattern similar to that of a steel cage. Along the strap, on both ends, were four smaller pieces that featured a design similar to that of the centerpiece. The new belt as of June 20, 2006 was differentiated by a full black strap with barbed wire tooling, red ECW logos, and the innards of the steel cage pattern outlined in black.
On July 22, 2008, ECW General Manager Theodore Long
Theodore Robert Rufus Long (born September 15, 1947) is an American former professional referee and manager known for his work for WWE and WCW serving as an on-screen authority figure. Long began his career in the National Wrestling Alliance ...
introduced a new belt design for the ECW Championship belt. This design features a large black leather strap with five platinum pieces. The large centerpiece features a design of a phoenix
Phoenix most often refers to:
* Phoenix (mythology), a legendary bird from ancient Greek folklore
* Phoenix, Arizona, a city in the United States
Phoenix may also refer to:
Mythology
Greek mythological figures
* Phoenix (son of Amyntor), a ...
over a globe in the center with its wings expanded and rays of light emitting from it. At the top of the piece, the WWE logo and the words "World Wrestling Entertainment" are engraved with "ECW" in large letters engraved prominently over the phoenix. A nameplate, which has the name of the champion etched, is located below it and at the bottom of the piece, the word "Champion" is engraved. Additionally, the entire piece is bordered by a jagged saw
A saw is a tool consisting of a tough blade, wire, or chain with a hard toothed edge. It is used to cut through material, very often wood, though sometimes metal or stone. The cut is made by placing the toothed edge against the material and mov ...
-like pattern. Along the strap, on both ends, are four small biker cross
The Iron Cross (german: link=no, Eisernes Kreuz, , abbreviated EK) was a military decoration in the Kingdom of Prussia, and later in the German Empire (1871–1918) and Nazi Germany (1933–1945). King Frederick William III of Prussia es ...
-shape pieces that feature a design similar to that of the centerpiece.
Reigns
Overall, there have been 49 ECW World Heavyweight Championship reigns shared among 32 individuals. The inaugural champion was Jimmy Snuka, who won the title by defeating Salvatore Bellomo in April 1992. The Sandman holds the most reigns as champion, with five. Shane Douglas, in his fourth reign, had the longest reign in the title's history which lasted 406 days. Ezekiel Jackson
Rycklon Stephens (born April 22, 1978) is a Guyanese-American retired professional wrestler and bodybuilder. He is best known for his time with WWE under the ring name Ezekiel Jackson, where he was the final ECW Champion under the WWE brand of ...
's 3-minute reign following his defeat of Christian on the television finale of ''ECW ECW may refer to:
Professional wrestling
* Extreme Championship Wrestling (originally Eastern Championship Wrestling), a professional wrestling promotion that operated from 1992 to 2001
* The Alliance (professional wrestling) (originally the WCW/E ...
'' is the shortest, as the title was retired with the cancellation of the ECW brand. Christian's second reign was the longest under WWE at 205 days.
See also
*List of former championships in WWE
In professional wrestling, championships are competed for in scripted storylines by a company or promotion's roster of contracted wrestlers. WWE is a Stamford, Connecticut-based company primarily focused on professional wrestling. The promotion w ...
*World championships in WWE
WWE has maintained several professional wrestling world championships since Capitol Wrestling Corporation seceded from the National Wrestling Alliance in 1963 to become the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF), which was later subjected to vario ...
Notes
References
External links
The ECW Championship at WWE.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ecw Championship
Extreme Championship Wrestling championships
World heavyweight wrestling championships
Championships acquired by WWE
ECW (WWE brand)