5 Times A WWE Championship Got A New Design

WWE is constantly changing, and so are its championships.

Just during the most recent edition of SmackDown on FOX, Sami Zayn presented Shinsuke Nakamura with a new Intercontinental Championship design.

More than often a new title design is polarising among the fans. In this list we take a look at five of the most most discussed redesigns in WWE history.

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5. Universal Championship

Fittingly dubbed the ‘Blueniversal Championship’ by WrestleTalk’s own Pete Quinnell, the reception to the new design fell flat.

Since its debut in 2016, the design of the Universal Championship has been a hot topic among wrestling fans.

A championship should look like something you’d want to win. The Universal Championship looks like a jewelled-up toy.

A change in colour to fit the brand it is now on is certainly not the solution we all hoped for.

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4. WWE Tag Team Championships

The Tag Team Championships have been caught in multiple redesigns over the years.

It has been a long way from the old World Tag Team Championships to the current ‘Penny Championship’.

With the most recent colour change coming with the 2016 Draft, when the already-bad design was made even worse with a change of colour.

The Tag Team Championships are more in need of a new design than any other championship in wrestling.

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3. The WWE Women’s Championship (1990s)

When Alundra Blayze/Madusa threw the WWF Women’s Championship into a trash can on WCW Nitro in 1995, it was a spit in the face of Vince McMahon.

Blayze was stripped of the title and McMahon called for a completely new championship design, resulting in the Attitude version of the belt.

However, this championship was never received well and soon became synonymous with the bad state of women’s wrestling in the ’90s and ’00s.

In 2010, the championship was unified with arguably the worst championship design in history: The WWE Divas Championship.

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2. NXT Championship

The original NXT Championship served well for first years of NXT.

But in 2017 WWE decided it is time to give all championships on the brand a new design, and it worked.

Not only were the men’s and women’s titles lifted to an equal position by getting a similar design, the title belts perfectly fitted the zeitgeist.

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1. Intercontinental Championship (2011)

Between 1997 and 2011, when the Attitude Era version of the Intercontinental Championship was active, WWE was often criticised for forgetting about the prestige of the title.

When Cody Rhodes won the championship for the first time in 2011, he proudly presented a throwback to the classic Intercontinental belt as the new current design.

The goal was to indeed put more prestige back to the the ‘workhorse title’, as it was known. For a short while this came true, but then WWE fell back into its old ways.

However the design that remained for 8 years, before it was changed this past Friday, was the best redesign WWE has ever done.

 

• wwe intercontinental championship
• Shinsuke Nakamura
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