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This is a List of Number of World Heavyweight Title Reigns for professional wrestling. This list includes all title reigns for titles given "World Title Status" by Pro Wrestling Illustrated (PWI). Many promotions claim to have a World Title but PWI is considered a legitimate, unbiased, and independent authority on who really has a World Title and who does not.
Declaration of World Title Status
The promotions that PWI declared as having World Title Status are World Wrestling Entertainment (and all of its prior names), World Championship Wrestling, the National Wrestling Alliance (its world title is currently defended exclusively in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling), Extreme Championship Wrestling, All Japan Pro Wrestling, the American Wrestling Association, New Japan Pro Wrestling, World Wrestling Allstars, and Ring of Honor.
World Titles according to PWI
Number of World Title Reigns
Footnotes
a The ECW World Title does not include Eastern Championship Wrestling Heavyweight Title reigns, because at that time the belt did not hold world status, but only territorial status. This largely affects The Sandman, who won four titles in Eastern and one in Extreme. ECW did not garner World Title status until August 27, 1999.
bFlair, according to official National Wrestling Alliance records is a 10 time World Champion of their company. In WCW, 5 of the NWA reigns went unrecognized. The first three were unrecognized due to insufficient records showing his losses and regains in the early 80's, however the last 2 of his NWA reigns go unrecognized by WCW title histories because at the time WCW was trying to free itself of any NWA lineage, although WCW's World Champion was also the defending NWA World Champion. This affects his first WCW World title win because the match was actually for the NWA World Championship and he became WCW Champion because he was the NWA Champion. WWE is often criticized for using revisionist history to call Flair a 16-time Champion (5-time NWA Champion, 7-time WCW Champion, and 2-time WWE Champion) but it should be noted that prior to WCW's purchase by the WWE, Flair has always billed himself as a "14-time World Heavyweight Champion" (excluding his two WWE Championship reigns and the discrepant reigns). Official NWA title records show that he held the title 10 times. Official NWA World Heavyweight Championship History.
c On May 17, 2003, the Ring of Honor Heavyweight Championship was first defended outside the United States by Samoa Joe, giving it World Title status.
d The WWA World Heavyweight Title was the premiere title in the World Wrestling Allstars, a short lived company that thrived in World Title status due to the fact that it's world title was created in New Zealand and defended regularly outside of that country including Japan, Australia, the United States, Malaysia, Canada, Great Britain, and Brazil. The title ceased to exist after a unification match on May 25, 2003 during one of TNA's first Wednesday PPV's, in which WWA champion Sting lost to NWA Champion Jeff Jarrett.
e Rob Van Dam was awarded the newly-revived ECW Championship at the first taping of ECW on Sci Fi due to his status as the WWE Champion.
See also
"List of Number of World Heavyweight Title Reigns"