The was the top

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 o ...

title owned by the

Wrestle-1 was a Japanese ''puroresu'' or professional wrestling Professional wrestling promotion, promotion, founded in July 2013 by Keiji Mutoh following his resignation from All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW). The core of the promotion's roster was formed by ...

(W-1)

promotion Promotion may refer to: Marketing * Promotion (marketing), one of the four marketing mix elements, comprising any type of marketing communication used to inform or persuade target audiences of the relative merits of a product, service, brand or i ...

. In

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

the title's name includes the

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...

term for "championship", , derived from the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

instead of the more common

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

term . The title also does not feature the word "Heavyweight" or any other weight class, indicating an open-weight status ''de facto''. Like most professional wrestling championships, the title is won as a result of a scripted match. There have been seventeen reigns shared among eleven wrestlers.

History

Championship tournament

On July 21, 2014, a full year after the start of the promotion,

announced the creation of its first own title, the Wrestle-1 Championship. Previous Wrestle-1 events had featured matches for championships owned by other promotions like

All Star Wrestling All Star Wrestling (ASW) is a British professional wrestling promotion operated by Brian Dixon and based in Birkenhead, England. Founded as Wrestling Enterprises of Birkenhead in October 1970, it has also been known over the years as All Star P ...

(ASW), European Wrestling Promotion (EWP),

Pro Wrestling Zero1 (stylized as Pro Wrestling ZERO1), formerly known as Pro Wrestling Zero-One and Pro Wrestling Zero1-Max (stylised in all capital letters) and often referred to simply as Zero1, is a Japanese professional wrestling promotion founded in 2001. I ...

and

Total Nonstop Action Wrestling Impact Wrestling (stylized as ''IMPACT! Wrestling''), is an American professional wrestling promotion based in Nashville, Tennessee. It is a subsidiary of Anthem Sports & Entertainment. Founded by Jeff and Jerry Jarrett in 2002, the promot ...

(TNA). It was announced that the inaugural champion would be determined in a sixteen-man

single-elimination tournament A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final matc ...

taking place between September 21 and October 8. Wrestle-1's founder

Keiji Mutoh is a Japanese professional wrestler and professional wrestling executive currently signed to Pro Wrestling Noah (Noah), where he is a former GHC Heavyweight Champion. He is best known for his work as in World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Ne ...

quickly announced that he would not be taking part in the tournament. The tournament brackets were revealed on August 8, with the exception of two participants, who would be determined in qualifying matches on August 31. In the qualifying matches,

Jiro Kuroshio is a Japanese professional wrestler, better known by the ring name . He is perhaps best known for his work in the Wrestle-1 promotion, where he was a former two-time UWA World Trios Championship holder before leaving the promotion in January ...

defeated

Andy Wu is a Japanese professional wrestler better known by his ring name who worked for Wrestle-1 until its closure in 2020. He is currently a freelancer. Professional wrestling career All Japan Pro Wrestling (2012–2013) Andy Wu debuted for All Ja ...

and Daiki Inaba defeated Koji Doi. The tournament featured only wrestlers officially signed to Wrestle-1 and none of the

freelancer ''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance w ...

s or outside wrestlers working regularly for the promotion. Pro Wrestling Zero1's reigning

World Heavyweight Champion At boxing's beginning, the heavyweight division had no weight limit, and historically the weight class has gone with vague or no definition. During the 19th century many heavyweights were 170 pounds (12 st 2 lb, 77 kg) or less, tho ...

Masakatsu Funaki is a Japanese actor, mixed martial artist and professional wrestler known professionally as , who has previously wrestled in All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi (PWFG), Newborn UWF (UWF), ...

announced he was looking to defend his title throughout the tournament and unifying it with the Wrestle-1 Championship. However, just before the start of the tournament on September 19, Funaki lost the World Heavyweight Championship. The Wrestle-1 Championship belt was unveiled at a press conference on September 17. The first two rounds of the tournament were held over three shows between September 21 and 23 and saw Kai, Masakatsu Funaki,

Masayuki Kono is a Japanese professional wrestler and former mixed martial artist. He is currently working as a freelancer. He is best known for his time in Wrestle-1, where he is a former two-time Wrestle-1 Champion. Career All Japan Pro Wrestling (2003� ...

and

Shuji Kondo is a Japanese professional wrestler. Prior to becoming a pro wrestler, he played rugby. After starting his career in Toryumon, Kondo eventually joined All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), where he became one of the promotion's top junior heavyweigh ...

advance to set up the two semifinal matches for October 8. In the semifinals, Kai and Kono were victorious over Kondo and Funaki, respectively, setting up a final match later that same day, where Kono defeated Kai to win the tournament and become the inaugural Wrestle-1 Champion.

Title history

Combined reigns

Belt design

The standard Championship belt has three plates on a black leather strap.

References

External links

Official title history at W-1.co.jp

{{Wrestle-1 Wrestle-1 championships Openweight wrestling championships