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Wrestling belts, designs and reigns.


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I’ve always had an interest in wrestling championship belts for how they look and reigns. Best looking for me is the Big Gold Belt. A perfect design. My two other, the WWF Winged Eagle belt I grew up watching and the classic WWF Intercontinental Championship particularly with the white leather.

The worst belt is definitely the Jeff Hardy TNA World title. The new TNA X Division Title replacing the red X and then the blue X with the now green X is ugly. Looks like a green highlight pen was used. I liked the shape of the Spinner WWE Championship plates but not the spinner and champ on the main title, it should say champion.

Photos:

 

http://www.rickythedragonsteamboat.com/gallery/rickysr_belts/010.jpg

bret+hitman+hart.jpg

shawn18.jpg

New-TNA-World-Title-jeff-hardy-16899993-336-404.jpg

CHkxH7XWoAIgzf7.jpg

http://mirceaeliade.wikispaces.com/file/view/392px-John_Cena_as_WWE_Champion.jpg/33035279/392px-John_Cena_as_WWE_Champion.jpg

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My picks for most memorable championship reigns:

Samoa Joe’s ROH Championship reign turned into a world title, the length of the reign, 21 months unheard of in the era, the two hour long draws with CM Punk and elevating an independent belt to become one of the most important in the world.

Bryan Danielson’s ROH World Title reign, 15 months and the quality of the defenses. Still the greatest reign in the belt’s history.

John Cena holding the WWE Championship for a year in September 2006-October 2007, the first since Randy Savage in March 1988-April 1989. Defended against Umaga in a Last Man Standing match, Shawn Michaels, The Great Khali, Bobby Lashley and Randy Orton.

Kenta Kobashi GHC title run lasting two years with memorable defenses against Yoshihiro Takayama, Jun Akiyama and Akira Taue.

Bret Hart’s second WWF Championship win with matches against Owen Hart, Diesel, Bob Backlund and 123 Kid.

Now the worst:

David Arquette, an actor wins the WCW World Heavyweight Championship.

Kevin Nash beats Goldberg for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship and ends Goldberg’s Streak at Starrcade 1998. Drops this to Hulk Hogan bumping to a fingerpoke to the chest on Monday Nitro. Fuck them.

Triple H’s World Heavyweight Title reign lasting nine months in 2003 feeling even longer. An all time low against Scott Steiner at Royal Rumble 2003.

Jeff Jarrett’s NWA World Heavyweight Title runs in TNA, All dragged and bored.

Vince fucking Russo as WCW World Heavyweight Champion.

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I'm with you, the winged eagle, big gold belt and intercontinental are the best. Also, the original Chikara tag belts held by FIST were superb. The open the dream gate is a cool belt.  Minoru Suzuki's triple crown 3 belts combo when he was champ were nice too.

I really. really love New Day and Miz's long reigns as champs. I want New Day to hold the belts as long as possible. I'm talking in years here. I love when a champ holds a belt for many months and defeats challenger after challenger. That's the only way the belt makes the man. Usually the man makes the belt.

Also, Jay Lethal had a really strong run as ROH champ. He was great in his role.

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52 minutes ago, Matt788 said:

I'm with you, the winged eagle, big gold belt and intercontinental are the best. Also, the original Chikara tag belts held by FIST were superb. The open the dream gate is a cool belt.  Minoru Suzuki's triple crown 3 belts combo when he was champ were nice too.

I really. really love New Day and Miz's long reigns as champs. I want New Day to hold the belts as long as possible. I'm talking in years here. I love when a champ holds a belt for many months and defeats challenger after challenger. That's the only way the belt makes the man. Usually the man makes the belt.

Also, Jay Lethal had a really strong run as ROH champ. He was great in his role.

In turn I'm with you. Cheers.

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Photo collecting the WWE World Championship, WWE Smackdown Live Women's Championship, WWE Smackdown Live Tag Team Championship. The WWE Universal Championship, WWE Women's Championship and the WWE Tag Team Championship:

 

14088869_3419492170030_1239233396_n_zpsf

 

At the start of the year, I didn’t see the reintroduction of the roster split and four new championships. I expected the WWE Championship and WWE Intercontinental Championship to be RAW. Both are the two oldest/prestigious main and secondary belts in WWE and RAW is the flagship show.

Here’s what I think about the four new titles. WWE Universal Championship (RAW), WWE Women’s Championship X2, one for RAW/Smackdown Live and WWE Tag Team Championship (Smackdown Live) are based on the same design with colour edits. I naively hoped we would get a different design for the WWE Universal Championship but instead we get the WWE World Championship with a red strap variant and Universal Champion replacing the writing on the WWE World Championship. I’d say it’s very slowly growing on me. I wonder what a black background in the centre plate in contrast to the rest of the red might look like.

The WWE Divas Championship was replaced by the WWE Women’s Championship at WrestleMania XXXII. The belt is a smaller version of the WWE World Championship on a white strap with red centre plate background. I like it particularly the white leather. The Smackdown Live Women’s Championship introduced on the post SummerSlam 2016 Smackdown Live only difference is blue replacing the red backing.

Smackdown Live’s Tag Team Championship unveiled on the same show has silver plates and blue straps with pattern unlike RAW’s bronze plates with black straps. Smackdown Live’s much better for these changes. Never a fan of the bronze look.

Edited by The Natural
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Those tag belts are ok, Raw and SD. The rest in that spoiler tag are fugly designs in an attempt to look modern when you really should stick to your roots. They are like when Scooby Doo added Scrappy Doo to the show. A cheap attempt to be to appear hip. It just insults the ardent fans.

Fans love the history and lineage of wrestling titles. New fans and young fans alike might want to get WWE network if they did more homages to classic things like titles and logos. There is such a rich and storied history in WWE's past. You can view some of it on the network, but they never play that up. When I was a young fan and started watching WWF, the first thing I did was seek out the older PPVs to learn the origins of Wrestlemania and it's various characters.

The Raw belt should be the winged eagle updated slightly. The SD belt should be the big gold belt. At least those color swap belts pictured above don't spin. Next year we can expect a neon orange universal championship with Kim Kardashians face on it and Kentucky Fred Chicken logos on the side plates.

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More best and worst championship reigns...

Best:

Steve Austin holding the WWF Championship in May 2001-September 2001 against the Undertaker, Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle.

CM Punk finally wins the ROH World Title. Punk wins the title on his last night before joining WWE but we didn’t know he had more ROH dates. Punk signed his WWE contract on the title belt and wants to take it to WCW as ROH wrestlers try to reclaim it.

Brock Lesnar’s fourth WWE World Heavyweight Championship beating John Cena in a squash for this at SummerSlam 2014, retaining against Lesnar a month later and two of the best triple threat matches I’ve ever seen against John Cena/Seth Rollins at the 2015 Royal Rumble and Roman Reigns/Seth Rollins at WrestleMania XXXI.

Worst:

Diesel’s WWF Title run nearly lasting a year. Exception of Bret Hart, bad matches with Sid, Mabel and the British Bulldog.

CM Punk’s first WWE Championship reign. Punk was brought back too soon after leaving WWE with the WWE Championship beating John Cena for this in a classic at Money in the Back 2011 PPV. Cena wins a copy created in Punk’s absence, Punk unifies them at SummerSlam 2011. Kevin Nash powerbombs Punk after the match, Alberto Del Rio uses his Money in the Bank contract and becomes new WWE Champion. Wasted potential.

Olkahoma. An insensitive JR gimmick wins the once valuable WCW Cruiserweight Championship.

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The belts all looking the same had to be the idea of a person with too much experience in marketing and not enough experience in wrestling.  I'm sure words like "brand," "verticals," "platforms," and "paradigms" were all bandied about in the meetings that led to that very bad decision.

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I like the idea of the belts looking relatively the same.  It's kind of like how UFC does the belts for the divisions, but they just make some color changes.  I don't mind the Universal title nearly as much as others, but something to break up all that red would have been nice.

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4 minutes ago, CreativeControl said:

inmate belt?

 

http://vincentcrow.weebly.com/5/post/2013/05/wwes-ace-of-belts-dave-millicans-10-favorite-championship-titles.html

Quote

Nicknamed the “Inmate Belt” by collectors because it was created in a state prison in Wisconsin, the AWA World Heavyweight Championship was one of the most desired titles in wrestling throughout the 1970s.

“Nick [Bockwinkel] always called it his ‘diamond studded license plate,’ ” Millican told WWEClassics.com. “You’d never know it [was made in a prison] from looking at it. The craftsmanship is remarkable.”
 

I posted just as @The Green Meanie posted.  So I've heard Denver, Wisconsin, and Minnesota as the source for the belt.

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Hall of Shame: two of the most uninspired and bland belt designs ever:

The WWF Title around Mania 3, which came between Hogan's funky eagle belt and the winged eagle:

wwe-belts-3.jpg

 

The IC title they went with after the awesome "classic" IC design:

wweicmid.jpg

 

For great belts, I'm partial to the classic 80s WWF IC and tag belts.  Also, I loved the old UWF title belt.  "Just put the initials on there as big as you can!" 

PA090015.jpg

ROH ripped off the idea years later but you might as well steal from the best.

ROHBELT2.jpg

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Jeff Hardy's personal title at least made sense storyline wise that he felt he was above the TNA designs and he was the best professional wrestler in the world so he would design his own ugly title as champion and carry it forever (or until the drugs caught up with him). The idea of the Jeff Hardy, Anti-Christ of Professional Wrestling was great, especially when you realized his own hypocrisy the entire angle. The execution of having a drugged out Jeff Hardy play that role was not.

My problem with the John Cena Spinner belt is that a babyface like Cena should be proud to carry whatever version of title the WWE had. At least with Austin it made sense because he was proud to be WWE champion but he wanted to stick it in Vince's face that everything Vince touched was trash so Austin needs his own version of the world title.

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3 hours ago, Technico Support said:

The belts all looking the same had to be the idea of a person with too much experience in marketing and not enough experience in wrestling.  I'm sure words like "brand," "verticals," "platforms," and "paradigms" were all bandied about in the meetings that led to that very bad decision.

Die-hards be damned, if replicas of these title belts sell/will sell better than the other ones, then the right decision is being made for the company.

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