History of the World Heavyweight Championship
Randy Orton and John Cena will fight at WWE TLC, live on pay-per-view, to unify the WWE Championship and the World Heavyweight Championship, in a match that has never been done before. A lot of fans are confused, and downright frustrated by that last part, but I assure you it’s true; WWE isn’t just ignoring the first ever Undisputed Champion, as the Jerichoholics would have you believe.
Chris Jericho became the Undisputed Champion after defeating The Rock – as the WCW Champion, unbranded as simply the “World Champion – and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, who held the WWF Championship. He defended those titles until being defeated by Triple H at WrestleMania X8. Because of the WWF’s lawsuit with the World Wildlife Fund, a singular WWE Undisputed Championship belt was created, and was passed between Hollywood Hulk Hogan, the Undertaker and The Rock, before Brock Lesnar won the title and made it an exclusive of the Smackdown brand in August 2002. At that point, new Monday Night Raw general manager Eric Bischoff brought back the “big gold belt”, now held by John Cena, dubbing it the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.
While the WCW/NWA world title and the WWE’s version of the belt are aesthetically identical (save for the company logo), the history books hold them as two completely different entities. The issue is, that while the two titles represent different companies and different eras, the WWE has consistently failed to separate them over the years. There’s even a match collection called “WWE: The History of the World Heavyweight Championship” that was released in 2009, going back all the way to the origins of the NWA to legends like Frank Gotch, Buddy Rodgers and Gene Kiniski. Superstars of this generation have constantly made reference to men like Ric Flair, who made “their title” famous. And until recently, that was never a major problem. The history of the “big gold belt” brought legitimacy to a lot of modern stars, like Randy Orton for instance.
The current problem WWE has is that they can’t both utilize the history of the World Heavyweight Championship, and promote Sunday’s TLC match like it’s one-of-a-kind. In that sense, Chris Jericho really is being snubbed. It has to be an “either, or” situation. Either the title is a century old, and this isn’t even close to the first unification match – Lou Thesz made a career out of travelling the country unify the NWA titles – or the Heavyweight Championship is solely a product of the WWE, and Sunday’s TLC match is truly a first time affair. But they can’t have both. Not that it will matter, when all is said and done, as WWE writers clearly embrace revisionist history to supplement a lack of real storytelling.
