AEW has been making headlines by creating the TNT championship to give “Dynamite” airings more of a push. It’s a good idea as secondary titles have long been critical in wrestling. WCW had the U.S. and TV belts while WWE has long made the IC title a mainstay for the mid-card. That’s not counting scores of other belts like TNA’s X Division title and the numerous ones in Japan to get attention. While one might complain about the necessity of titles like the 24/7 belt, it’s always fun to see lower card members given something to fight for.
Over the years, it’s been easy to see many titles that were never taken too seriously like the European championship or the “world” title of some minor promotion. Yet it’s intriguing how there are scores of belts in wrestling history fans have forgotten. Even the biggest companies have had titles few even knew existed in the first place while others are notable for odd offbeat there were. Here are ten such forgotten titles as a reminder of how desperate for a championship some wrestlers could be.
10 WCW Six-Man Tag Team Championship
Even WCW could forget this title existed. For a long while, it was created just to give a push first to the Russians, then Dusty Rhodes and the Road Warriors. It wasn’t even a title belt, just a trophy the few times folks knew about it at all.
WCW did try to make it a regular deal in 1991 with title belts, but its list of champions was very lacking: Junkyard Dog, Ricky Morton and Tommy Rich lost them to the Freebirds, and the York Foundation had a turn as well. When the belt was deactivated in just nine months, few even cared.
9 ECW FTW Championship
ECW always played by its own rules, so it’s no shock they crafted a unique title. The reason was simply that Paul Heyman was annoyed that injuries were harming storylines, so crafted a title to make up for it. Taz declared that since injured champion Shane Douglas wouldn’t face him for the belt, Taz just made up his own.
It’s pretty obvious just what the FTW stood for and Taz making it a bigger deal than the real ECW title. He briefly lost it to Sabu and regained it before it was deactivated and pushed Tazz up more in ECW.
8 USWA “Unified” World Championship
Strap in, this one’s a doozy. In 1988, Jerry Lawler was AWA World champion and feuded with World Class champion Kerry Von Erich. At SuperClash III, they had a match that combined the AWA, WCCW, and CWA titles into a “unified” world championship.
Lawler had a falling out with Verne Gagne and was stripped of the AWA belt but kept up the Unified title. Over the next seven years, Lawler held the title 28 times and bragged about it as a huge deal despite its not being seen as a serious World title.
7 WCW Women’s Cruiserweight Championship
In 1995, Medusa Miceli made headlines when she showed up on WCW Nitro to dump the WWE Women’s title in the trash. That should have given her a push, but somehow, WCW never got around to a serious women’s division. They tried in 1996 with the oddly named “Women’s Cruiserweight” title, but for some reason, Medusa lost the tournament final to Akira Hokuto.
When she left the company, Devil Masami won it, but it was deactivated later. WCW just never cared enough for a real Women’s title.
6 WWF Canadian Championship
One significant advantage WWE had over the other wrestling companies was a good base in Canada, a major wrestling hotbed. They were chipping away at various promotions, including Lutte International. WWE swayed Lutte star Dino Bravo over by creating a Canadian championship for him.
The belt was only defended in Canada and barely even mentioned on U.S. television. In 1986, with no warning, WWE just dropped the title. Even after all their success in Canada, they never revived it, which seems a missed opportunity.
5 TNA Legends/Global/King Of the Mountain/TV Championship
Leave it to TNA to create a ridiculously complicated legacy for a simple title. It all began as the Legends title with the idea of pushing some “legend” against a younger star. It didn’t start well as Booker T just named himself the first champion. When Eric Young won it, he renamed it the “Global” championship to make it sound like a bigger deal.
Then it became the TV title and bounced around for a while before being deactivated. TNA revived it as the King of the Mountain title only for it to go back to the TV belt before it finally ended. Just imagine how it felt keeping track of all that.
4 Western States Heritage Championship
In 1987, Bill Watts was trying to make his Universal Wrestling Federation the new major promotion. To build on that, he created a secondary title with the odd name of the Western States Heritage Championship. Barry Windham won a tournament to become the inaugural champion.
But just after its creation, a huge financial downturn forced Watts to sell the UWF to Jim Crockett. Windham lost the WSHC to Larry Zybsko, who ran it into the ground and reduced it to just a glorified piece of tin in less than a year.
3 FCW Jack Brisco 15 Championship
Before Florida Championship Wrestling became NXT they had some odd stuff. The Jack Brisco 15 title was named after the legendary World champion and used in unique bouts. Instead of a title belt, it was a gold medal that was competed for in 15-20 minute Iron Man matches.
Seth Rollins was the inaugural and longest-reigning champion, and Damien Sandow also held it. It was discontinued in 2012 when FCW turned into NXT but might be a concept worth reviving.
2 WWE World Martial Arts Heavyweight Championship
Long before MMA was a thing, WWE was trying to work with a partnership with New Japan. When Antonio Inoki came to the U.S. in 1971, Vince McMahon Sr. granted him the World Martial Arts Heavyweight Championship. This was a precursor to UFC as the title was defended in what were billed “shoot fights,” although their legitimacy is highly suspect.
The relationship between WWE and NJPW soon soured, and Inoki took the belt with him where he would hold it all the way until 1989. He would regain it a month later, but the belt was abandoned in 1990. It was nothing more than a novelty belt to put Inoki over more.
1 WCW Cruiserweight Tag Team Title
In early 2001, WCW did what it should have been doing for a while earlier and pushed a bunch of younger guys. The Cruiserweights were rising up again, and WCW created a unique championship just for them. At the Greed PPV in March, Elix Skipper and Kid Romeo won a tournament for the inaugural Cruiserweight tag team titles.
They lost the belts to the Filthy Animals a week later on the final WCW “Nitro” episode. When WWE bought WCW, the titles were totally dropped as just a last gasp of WCW.