Originally Posted by Noid
Yeah, it's a bit of a tricky one this. See, when the WWE first brought in the World Heavyweight Championship in 2002, they pretended that it had an entirely new history, despite being the old WCW Title belt. On the other hand, when they brought back the United States Championship as an entirely new belt...old history still applied.
For years I canonically considered the WCW Title and World Heavyweight Championship to be separate histories, but when the WWE sees fit they have brought up the WCW Title in conjunction with the World Heavyweight Title. It was mainly that DVD, but I think Matt Striker used to do it on commentary, too (not that he's a be-all, end-all authority or anything). But the WWE.com website still seems to imply that the World Heavyweight Title is only ten years old and was created when Eric Bischoff crowned Triple H the inaugural champion. The WWE also often lumps WWE Title victories and World Heavyweight Title victories into the same boat, though. For some reason, that really bugs me.
I guess the best way to look at it is sort of like the histories are somewhat "related" if not exactly continuous. The World Heavyweight Championship history is sort of the like the offspring to the WCW Championship, if you will. Big Show, Chris Benoit, Goldberg, Booker T, Kurt Angle and Chris Jericho are the men to have held the championship in its separate incarnations. Angle and Jericho only held the WCW Title after the fall of WCW, however.
Big Show is the first man to have held the WWE Championship, WCW Championship and ECW Championship as it were, though. If you consider the World Heavyweight Championship a separate title then he is the only man to have won all four, too. He's also only the second man (next to Edge) to have won every single active championship in the WWE. If the World Heavyweight Title is considered a separate title to the WCW Title, then Kane would be the first person to have won the WWE Title, World Heavyweight Title and ECW Title, with Big Show being the second.
Personally, I don't see why the WWE doesn't just include the WCW Title history in their World Heavyweight Title history. I guess it's just a pride thing. I think it would just clear a lot of things up, though.
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