The 8-Ball 02.16.12: Top 8 Most Prestigious Titles

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the 8-Ball. It is week three of my time as headmaster of this column, and I again have to thank everybody for their feedback in the comment section, which has been overwhelmingly positive, even though I expected to be eaten alive after my topic last week. Before we get to the meat of today’s column, I wanted to remind the readers that I hope that this can be one of the more interactive “countdown” style columns on the website, so, if you’ve got an idea that you would like to see me write about here, shoot me an e-mail or drop it down in the comments and I will try to eventually cover it. That said, let’s take a look at this week’s topic, which was selected by yours truly . . .

Top 8 Most Prestigious Titles

Despite what certain sitcom writers working within the industry might try to tell you, professional wrestling is supposed to be a simulated sport. And, what is the purpose of an organized, professional sport? It’s to entertain crowds by pitting competitors against each other to determine who the best in a particular league or division is. That’s why championships are such an integral part of professional wrestling. Without the championships, you lose the simulated sports feel, and without the air of wrestling as a sport, you might as well be watching a Police Academy movie. That’s why, this week, I decided to pay tribute to the grandest accomplishments in all of wrestling by counting down the eight most prestigious championships in the history of the game.

First of all, let me stress that I mean for this column to focus on as much of wrestling’s history and geography as possible. This is not a countdown of current championships in the United States. And, with that in mind, what makes a championship prestigious, anyway? There are several different ways that you could answer that question, but here are the things that I chose to focus on: Length of existence is key, as otherwise the title cannot build a legacy. Quality of competition for the belt, in terms of the title matches wrestled, is another major factor. Finally, you have to look at the size of the geographic area and number of fans to whom the championship was exposed because, just like a falling tree doesn’t make a sound if nobody is there, an indy title change may as well not happen if it’s in front of fifty people.

So, without further ado, here are the Top 8 most prestigious championships in history . . .

8. WWE Intercontinental Title

The WWE Intercontinental Title is the only so-called “secondary” championship that made the cut. Why? Because it’s hard to make a big mark on professional wrestling history when there is at least one championship in your promotion that the promotion itself is pushing as being a bigger deal. However, the WWE IC strap stands out for several different reasons. The first is that, more than any other secondary championship in history, holding it is a predictor of a main event success. Yes, WCW always pushed its United States Champion as being the de facto number one contender to the World Title and CHIKARA predicts big things to come for the winner of its Young Lions Cup, but no championship other than the IC belt can say that guys like Randy Savage, the Ultimate Warrior, the Rock, and Stone Cold Steve Austin held it before they went on to become the absolute top guy in the pro wrestling world. The second reason that the Intercontinental Title succeeds where so many other championships fail is that it has a history of being contested in great matches. Just think of the quality in-ring action that we’ve been given by the following feuds over the belt: Valentine vs. Santana. Savage vs. Steamboat. Hart vs. Michaels. Hell, I’ll even throw modern fans a rare bone and say Kingston vs. Ziggler. Also, due to a combination of the two aforementioned factors, there are some wrestlers who see being Intercontinental Champion as a bigger accomplishment than holding a world title. Chris Jericho has said as much, and he’s certainly not alone in that sentiment. When the performers themselves, who are very aware that the accomplishment is a “fake” one, put over how much it means to them, you know you’ve got an important title.

7. WWWA World Singles Title

Though it wasn’t continuously active throughout its history, the World Women’s Wrestling Association World Singles Title (that’s a mouthful of a name) is one of the longest-lasting championships on this list. It traces its roots back to 1937, when the legendary Mildred Burke defeated Clara Mortenson for a version of the Women’s World Title that itself had connections to a championship first recognized in the 1890s. Burke founded the WWWA promotion in ’37, and, when she did, she started referring to the version of the Women’s World Title that she had previously won as the primary championship of the company. However, that wasn’t where the title would gain most of its notoriety. In mid-1968, All Japan Women’s Wrestling formed in the Land of the Rising Sun, and, in their early years, they were looking for something that would give them a little bit of added credibility. Ultimately, they decided to acquire the WWWA Singles Title formerly held by Burke, who was an icon even in Japan. The transition of the belt from the US to Japan occurred in 1970 in Tokyo, with Japanese wrestler Aiko Kyo ending a reign by American Marie Vagnone, which lasted less than two months. The belt was the property of AJW from that point forward, and it was in AJW that it went from being just another title to being the stuff of legend. In addition to All Japan Women being a top-drawing promotion in the world during the 1970s and the 1980s, the company continued to draw strongly in the 1990s and also became renowned for having some of the absolute best in-ring performers in the world, regardless of sex. Manami Toyota lead the charge, combined with all-time greats like Bull Nakano, Aja Kong, Akira Hokuto, and Kyoko Inoue. If you can get over the language barrier, there may be no championship which was more consistently fought for in **** and ***** matches than the WWWA World Singles Title.

6. WWA World Heavyweight Title

Not to be confused with the WWWA Title that we just discussed, the WWA World Heavyweight Title was the primary singles championship of the old Los Angeles territory that was dominated in the 1960s by the likes of “Classy” Freddie Blassie, Perdo Morales, and Bobo Brazil. Heck, even the great Lou Thesz had a go with the championship. In some ways, the WWA is a bit of a forgotten promotion, because there is little to nothing out there in terms of surviving video footage of the company’s cards. However, due to a combination of being located in the television and motion picture capital of the world and having mega-stars like Blassie on the roster, the WWA was consistently one of the top two or three territories in the United States for a couple of decades, and the championship had a comparable level of prestige. However, what really puts the WWA Title over the top is that it is one of the few regional “world” championships of its era which legitimately received recognition on more than one continent. As a result of Blassie’s feud with the “father of puroresu” Rikidozan, which occurred during the classy one’s WWA Title reigns and garnered some of the highest ratings in the entire history of Japanse television, the WWA belt wasn’t just recognizable to Americans on the west coast but it was also recognizable to the entire nation of Japan. It is unfortunate that modern history has largely forgotten about the WWA World Heavyweight Title, as, for a substantial period of time, it was actually one of wrestling’s greatest treasures.

5. AJPW Triple Crown

You had to know that this one was coming. In 1988, Genichiro Tenryu unified the PWF World Heavyweight Title and the NWA United National Championship. Shortly thereafter, Stan “The Lariat” Hansen defeated Tenryu for those two belts. About ten months later, Hansen and his two titles met up with Jumbo Tsuruta, the NWA International Heavyweight Champion, and Tsuruta defeated Hansen to increase the two championships into a trifecta. Thus, the All Japan Pro Wrestling Triple Crown was born. Though, at less than twenty-five years of age, it is one of the youngest titles on this list, it still has a place in history as one of the most sought-after titles ever known. That largely has to do with the quality of competition for the championship during its heyday. This is the belt that was held by Mistuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada, Kenta Kobashi, and Akira Taue during the primes of their careers, as well as being contended for by the likes of Jun Akiyama. The legendary matches for this title flowed out of Japan like oil out of the Middle East for a period of many years, and they will never be forgotten by any wrestling fan who has laid eyes on them. Though the title no longer has as high of a profile as it once did, it is still active today, and there are still quality heavyweight wrestlers vying for it, such as the extremely underrated Suwama and the aforementioned Akiyama, who is now the champion after he repeatedly failed to make it over the hump fifteen years ago. Here’s to hoping that this modern group can, with time, revitalize the championship’s reputation.

4. Gotch/Hackenschmidt World Heavyweight Title

You want to go old school? This is about as old school as you can possibly get when you’re talking about pro wrestling world titles. And, in terms of having global origins, it is more of a legitimate “world” title than just about any championship to come since. The title was first recognized in 1904 around the waist of Georg Hackenschmidt, an Estonian strongman who simultaneously held the American Title, the European Greco-Roman Title, and a British-exclusive version of the World Heavyweight Title in addition to winning two worldwide Greco-Roman wrestling tournaments held in France and Austria. All of these accolades combined to get Hackenschmidt recognition as a true World Champion and, not much longer, he embarked on his epic, still remembered feud against Frank Gotch. Gotch and Hackenschmidt had three matches against each other which drew international attention, including one at Chicago’s Comiskey Park that set a worldwide record for wrestling live gates. (One source lists the total amount brought in for the show as being over $2 million dollars when adjusted for inflation.) The legendary feud cemented this World Title as wrestling’s premier world title, and it continued to hold that distinction until at least 1931, when disputes between certain promoters resulted in splinter championships breaking off of the main lineage. However, the championship still retained some degree of significance, as it is considered the championship which begat the NWA World Heavyweight Title. Nobody reading this column has ever seen a match for this particular title, but we all owe it a debt as the foundation upon which much of modern professional wrestling was built.

3. AWA World Heavyweight Title

Speaking of championships that have been forgotten by history . . . the AWA World Heavyweight Title hasn’t exactly been forgotten, but its importance has certainly been downplayed. With WWE writing a large portion of wrestling history, the American Wrestling Association is not often portrayed as the dominant professional organization that it once truly was. Instead, they mainly get played up as the out of touch company that was so foolish that it didn’t go all the way with Hulk Hogan when it had the chance. That is only a minor chapter in the promotion’s history, though. The reality of the situation is that, for the majority of the two promotions’ coexistence, the AWA covered a larger geographic territory than the WWF and was just as profitable as the WWF, if not moreso. And, when you’ve got a promotion that large, it’s virtually impossible to have a championship that is not significant. In this case, the AWA World Heavyweight Title broke off of the NWA World Heavyweight Title in 1960 when Verne Gagne had an issue with NWA Champ Pat O’Connor. The title lasted for the next thirty years, with iconic names such as Gagne, the Crusher, the Destroyer, and Nick Bockwinkel contending for it in front of sellout crowds in major markets like Minneapolis, Chicago, and Denver. The championship also gained international recognition that most promoters would die to see their titles achieve, thanks to working relationships between the AWA and All Japan Pro Wrestling as well as Otto Wanz’s Catch Wrestling Association in Germany and Austria. The title might have begun as a bit of a vanity project for Verne Gagne, but it went on to become a prestigious accomplishment separate and apart from the promoter’s ego.

2. WWE Title

The WWE Title is the most recognizable professional wrestling championship in the world today. Four and a half million people in the United States alone watch the wrestling show built around the title every week, and that says nothing of the extensive network of international television deals that the promotion has built up over the years. However, the WWE Title had humble beginnings. For the first twenty or so years of its existence, it wasn’t a “world” title at all. It was a regional belt that you weren’t going to see defended much outside of the northeastern United States. However, with the 1980s explosion of cable television and Hulkamania, as well as the death of territorial wrestling, this regional title first went national and then went worldwide, and it has never looked back. WWE currently promotes itself on every populated continent on the face of the earth, which may well be a first in professional wrestling, and, as a result, the guy who holds its top prize truly is a global champion, even if most WWE Champions will never wrestle a match in the majority of the countries in which their televised exploits are seen. If I were compiling a list of the most prestigious current championships, then there is no question in my mind that I would put the WWE Title on top. However, when looking at the entirety of wrestling history, I feel that there is still one belt that can edge it out . . .

1. NWA World Heavyweight Title

As noted earlier, the NWA World Heavyweight Title was, in a way, one of many spinoffs of the Gotch/Hackenschmidt version of the World Heavyweight Title. Specifically, in the 1940s, a variety of different regional offshoots of the World Heavyweight Title started to converge until, in 1949, Lou Thesz unified more titles than had been unified in quite some time, eventually gaining recognition as the undisputed National Wrestling Alliance World Heavyweight Champion. Thesz became a national and even an international star with the belt, and, when his dominance came to an end, a new breed consisting of names like Funk, Brisco, and Race cropped up and gave us a series of masterful battles on the mat, followed by a younger crop a decade later, with Flair, Steamboat, and Rhodes dominating the scene in the 1980s. Because of the unique structure of the NWA, which operated as a collective of independently owned wrestling promotions, the champion was allowed to be a national star even when there was no such thing as national television for wrestling, and, in fact, he became an international star due to NWA members being established in such far-flung places as Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and many more. Though the network of NWA members is probably not as extensive as the network of international television deals that WWE currently enjoys, in a way I find the NWA’s accomplishments in terms of exposing its championship to a worldwide audience more impressive, because it involved the coordination of numerous separate and potentially competing organizations to recognize one champion as opposed to one unified promotion picking up a bunch of television deals, most of them with no real competition. The NWA World Heavyweight Title does still technically exist today, though the watered down version presently on the independent scene in no way compares to the prestige that the championship originally had from the half-century between the 1940s and the 1990s. Those fifty years are more than enough to put the NWA’s top prize on the top of this list.

And that will do it for this week. We’ll be back in seven days . . . in the meantime, don’t forget to submit your ideas for 8-Ball topics!