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WWE posted a pretty neat video to its YouTube channel today covering the past 60 years of designs for the WWE championship, which you can watch embedded at the top of this post.
WWE Archivist Ben Brown starts with the original world championship held by Buddy Rogers in 1963, explaining why it has a nameplate shaped like the United States of America.
He moves on to Bruno Sammartino’s championship design for his historically long reign on top, talks about Superstar Billy Graham destroying Bob Backlund’s belt in the early 80’s, and makes his way to Big Green, which is best remembered as the bulky championship that Hulk Hogan won from Iron Sheik in 1984.
Of course the video would not be complete without proper focus on the extremely popular Winged Eagle design from the late 80’s into the later 90’s. Brown also offers a few interesting tidbits about each title, such as the appearance of the McMahon family crest on multiple designs from the Attitude Era into the early 2000’s.
Things quickly went to hell once John Cena introduced the spinner title in 2005, a belt design which unfortunately lasted for almost a decade.
The video ends with the current belt held by Roman Reigns, which has also been in place for quite a long time. WWE had a chance to come up with a new design when Reigns unified the WWE Championship and Universal Championship more than one year ago at WrestleMania 38, but they opted to not go down that path.
WWE is instead introducing a new World Heavyweight Championship (which is different from the WWE Championship) at Night of Champions in Saudi Arabia in late May.
Looking back on 60 years of WWE championship designs, which ones are your most loved and hated? Let us know in the comments below, Cagesiders.
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