Early wrestling championships
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Early Wrestling Championships started in Ancient Greece. It then spread out to the Celtic culture, North America, and Europe.


Early history

The History of wrestling dates back to the
Ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of Classical Antiquity, classical antiquity ( AD 600), th ...
. There were two wrestling championships since the 776 BC Olympic games: a toppling event for the best two of three falls; and the pankration (Latin: pancratium), which combined wrestling and boxing and ended in the submission of one contestant. Upright wrestling was also a part of the pentathlon event in the Olympic Games, a bout being fought to a clear-cut fall of one of the wrestlers. The most famous ancient Greek wrestler was Milon of Croton, who won the wrestling championship of the Olympic Games six times. He won extreme fame in that time.


Wrestling champions in Celtic culture

Early accounts of grappling in single combat can be found in various manuscripts in Old Irish during the 15th century. In the meeting between Cu Chulain and his son Conla they first wrestled before resorting to deadly combat. The style of wrestling they used required the grapplers to grip each other's belts in the opening stance. Various forms of belt wrestling still exist today in
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...
. Art MacConn, the father of
Cormac Cormac is a masculine given name in the Irish and English languages. The name is ancient in the Irish language and is also seen in the rendered Old Norse as ''Kormákr''. Mac is Irish for "son", and can be used as either a prefix or a suffix. ...
, was said to have wrestled a giant, as well as Diarmuid of Fenian fame. Diarmuid is also credited to have wrestled the champion Dubh-Chosach. These two combatant, though fully armed, chose to thrown down their weapons and meet empty handed. Ossian and a foreign champion also chose to discard their weapons in an individual combat and take to grappling.


North America

Wrestling has existed in the North America since the colonial period of the 15th century. During the 18th Century
President George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of ...
was formerly a wrestler. At the age of 18 he won a ”collar and elbow” wrestling championship that was quite popular across
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
. He was famed for his brute strength and wrestling abilities. At the age of 47, ten years before he became the first President of the United States, George Washington defeat seven consecutive challengers from the Massachusetts Volunteers. Not recorded to have lost the title, Washington's championship regime is indicated to have lasted at least 29 years. It is not known whether a physical form of the title existed as with modern-day championship belt, but it has been historically noted as a championship, one of the earliest in North American history.
Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...
was a champion of Catch-as-catch-can wrestling during the 19th Century. Lincoln won an Illinois County wrestling championship in 1830.


World Greco-Roman Heavyweight Championship

The World/American Greco-Roman Heavyweight Championship and the World/European Greco-Roman Heavyweight Championship was a Greco-Roman
professional wrestling championship A championship or title in professional wrestling is a recognition promoted by professional wrestling organizations. Championship reigns are determined by professional wrestling matches, in which competitors are involved in predetermined rivalr ...
contested for throughout the continent of Australia,
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...
and North America.The title existed from 1875 through approximately 1937.


Other championships in Europe

Professional wrestling matches were organized everywhere in Europe with variable programs and competition rules according to the taste of wrestlers, of managers and of the audience. In 1898, the Frenchman Paul Pons, “the Colossus”, also named “the Colossus”, was the first Professional World Champion just before the Polish Ladislaus Pytlasinski. Some other great champions succeeded him, like the Turkish Kara Ahmed (the eastern Monster), the Bulgarian Nikola Petrov (the lion of the Balkans) or the Russian Ivan Poddoubni (the Champion of Champions).


American Heavyweight Championship

Edwin Bibby won the first
American Heavyweight Championship The American Heavyweight Wrestling Championship was the first heavyweight professional wrestling championship in the United States. The title existed from 1881 through approximately 1922. Title history See also *Professional wrestling in the ...
in New York defeating Duncan C. Ross on January 19, 1881. It was the first widely recognized Heavyweight Championship in North America.


World Heavyweight Wrestling Championship

The World Heavyweight Wrestling Championship was the first recognized professional wrestling world heavyweight championship in the United States created in 1905 to identify the best catch as catch can wrestler in the world. It was also the first wrestling championship known to have a physical representation of the belt. Russian born World Greco-Roman Heavyweight Champion
George Hackenschmidt Georg Karl Julius Hackenschmidt ( – 19 February 1968) was an early 20th-century Estonian strongman, professional wrestler, author, and sports philosopher who is recognized as professional wrestling's first world heavyweight champion. Hack ...
defeated American born American Heavyweight Champion Tom Jenkins in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
in a Champion vs Champion match to win the inaugural World Heavyweight Championship, the first widely recognized world title. Its lineage was claimed both by the
WWF 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 the
WCW World Heavyweight Championship The WCW World Heavyweight Championship was a professional wrestling world heavyweight championship originally used in World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and later, the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE). It was the original world title of ...
, with the two titles being unified by professional wrestler
Chris Jericho Christopher Keith Irvine (born November 9, 1970), better known by the ring name Chris Jericho, is an American-Canadian professional wrestler and singer. He is currently signed to All Elite Wrestling (AEW), where he is the leader of the Jerich ...
at WWF Vengeance 2001 becoming the undisputed WWF World Heavyweight Champion which today is simply called 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 ...
.


References

{{reflist History of professional wrestling Professional wrestling championships