Published: Jul 13, 2025 by Liam | Last Updated: Jul 13, 2025 by Liam
Liam has been reporting & analyzing wrestling news for over eight years, and is currently the Managing Editor at WrestleTalk.com. Immersed in wrestling for 18 years, he has over 11,000 published articles in addition to leading and overseeing WrestleTalk.com's coverage.
AEW
The first ever winner of the AEW Unified Championship has been crowned at All In Texas today at Globe Life Field.
Billed as one of three matches that were part of the shows “triple main event”, Continental Champion Kazuchika Okada faced International Champion Kenny Omega in a match to crown the first ever Unified Champion.
Thanks in large part to interference from Don Callis and the Don Callis Family, it was Okada who scored the win and is now the AEW Unified Champion.
Regarding what exactly the Unified Championship entails and the futures of both the Continental Championship and the International Championship, AEW CEO Tony Khan commented in the pre-All In media call, explaining:
“I have never said I’m retiring the championships. The Unified AEW Championship is something that is new to us. Never before have two AEW singles championships been held by the same wrestler at the same time. It’s something very new.
“We’re very proud of what we’ve built with the International Championship, we’re very proud of what we’ve built with the Continental Championship, which is most closely identified with the incredible Continental Classic tournament, which has been one of the real strong points of AEW in the past few years.
“And now with AEW having such an awesome 2025, I feel so great about what we’ve done through the first six months of this year, and the Continental Classic is always something our fans now have looked forward to. So to think that we’re having such a great start to the year, we’re gonna have a great All In this weekend, and then we’ll have an awesome Continental Classic to look forward to later in the year, there’s a lot of excitement around this year.
“And the Continental Classic will absolutely be back, and I am gonna talk more about that as we get later into the year and what it’s gonna entail this year, but there will be a Continental Classic, and I think the lineage of this Unified Championship would be intact with the International Championship and the Continental Championship.
“I created one Unified Championship belt to represent not only the significance of this match, the winner take all nature that there will be somebody who’s gonna hold the International Title and the Continental Title, that there would be one person carrying that lineage of these two championships after this match.
“The belt itself represents the two champions that have gotten us to this point. Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada both have been fantastic, so representing with Kenny Omega the International Title, Kazuchika Okada with the Continental Title, and the history that both men have with each other as well, seeing the One Winged Angel and the Rainmaker on the sideplates of this championship belt that represents the unification of the International Title and the Continental Title and this winner take all match.
“Absolutely, those two championships, they remain, their lineages remain, and the champion may even choose to carry all three championship belts. I wanted to create something special around this match, and something special around this event, and the prestige of a match to unify two championships.
“We’ve been here in AEW for six years, we’ve had multiple championships in men’s and women’s for many years, we’ve had multiple men’s championships dating back for over five years now, and nobody has ever unified two singles championships in AEW before. So it’s a very different situation. A winner take all match. We’ve never had that before. Who knows if we’ll see it again. But it’s a very exciting thing, and I’m really looking forward to it for many reasons.
“The unification of the championship is a very, very exciting aspect of this match, but certainly the rivalry between Kazuchika Okada and Kenny Omega is something that pre-dates AEW, it’s something that in my opinion represents one of the best one-on-one rivalries ever in wrestling, I think it’s one of the best one-on-one rivalries in all of sports.
“And there’s so many reasons to be excited about the Continental Champion Kazuchika Okada vs the International Champion Kenny Omega, and the unificiation of the belts, and thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about it.”
If you use this transcription or any portion of it please credit WrestleTalk.com and link to this page
To make sure you stay up to date with all the biggest wrestling and WrestleTalk news, follow us on Threads by clicking this link!
mailing list