IWGP Heavyweight Championship
The storied heavyweight championship of New Japan Pro-Wrestling, retired in 2021.
The IWGP Heavyweight Championship is a men's professional wrestling world heavyweight championship owned by New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), serving as its top singles title until its retirement in 2021.
Quick Facts
- Affiliation
- New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW)
- Role
- Premier Singles Championship
- Original holder
- Antonio Inoki
- Belt design theme
- Golden dragon and globe motif
Lore & Background
The title was first introduced on June 12, 1987, created separately from the IWGP League tournament, which was held to crown the first champion. Antonio Inoki won that tournament to become the inaugural champion. Although bearing the same name, it was established as the successor to the original IWGP Heavyweight Championship that existed from 1983 to 1987. The title was unified with the IWGP Intercontinental Championship on March 4, 2021, immediately forming the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship as the unified successor, with both the Heavyweight and Intercontinental championships retired simultaneously. The championship has been primarily represented by four different belt designs from 1987 to 2021. The fourth design, or the V4, was introduced in March 2008 and retired in 2021. The IWGP Heavyweight Championship was regularly defended as the primary heavyweight championship in NJPW until its retirement.
Reader's Guide
An early version of this championship was introduced as the prize of the 1983 IWGP League (which later evolved into the G1 Climax), which was won by Hulk Hogan. In 1984 and 1985, the winner of the IWGP League instead earned the right to challenge for the championship at the conclusion of the tournament, and in 1986, then-champion and company founder Antonio Inoki vacated the championship in order to compete in that year's tournament. In 1987, this version of the championship was deactivated and the winner of that year's tournament, Inoki, was recognized as the inaugural IWGP Heavyweight Champion. His student, Tatsumi Fujinami, won the championship after Inoki had an injury in 1988, after defeating Big Van Vader in May 1988. After Fujinami and Riki Choshu fought to a no contest that same month, the title was vacated pending an immediate rematch for the title, which Fujinami won in June. Choshu, Fujinami, and Vader traded the championship from 1989 until 1992 (with the exception of Salman Hashimikov, who won the title from Vader in 1989, and lost it to Choshu later). Keiji Muto, as his Great Muta persona, was the first of the Toukon Sanjushi to win the championship, when he defeated Riki Choshu in Fukuoka in 1992. In the same match, he gained Choshu's Greatest 18 Club Championship, which retired afterward. In his championship reign, he assumed the longest up to that point at 400 days; he lost the belt to Shinya Hashimoto in September 1993. Muto won the championship again in 1995, during the invasion by UWF International. After UWFi founder Nobuhiko Takada won the belt off Muto at Wrestling World 1996, Hashimoto gained the title from Takada, and put an end to the rivalry. In the early 2000s, Inoki saw the rise of several mixed-martial-arts or hybrid-MMA/pro-wrestling stars to become IWGP Heavyweight Champions. The first was Kazuyuki Fujita in 2001, which was followed afterward (after Fujita suffered an injury) by Tadao Yasuda. Yoshihiro Takayama, Yuji Nagata and Shinsuke Nakamura also won the title during this period; Nakamura became the youngest IWGP Heavyweight Champion at the age of 23. After Bob Sapp won the title and Fujita had his second and third reigns, this style of booking was dropped.
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