As you’ve seen on WWE television of late, WWE has been making an effort to streamline their championships.
This past week, Asuka was given a new championship belt that looked like Roman Reigns’ new championship belt, but with a white strap. The name of the title belt was changed to WWE Women's Championship, with a WWE source confirming the obvious, that it was to clean up the Smackdown/Raw Championship situation that was muddied due to the draft. They also said that they wanted Asuka’s title to look like Reigns’ to help portray it on an even plane, as has been the case for the past several years. Rhea Ripley's was introduced the following Monday and renamed the Women's World Championship, with a title belt that looked like Seth Rollins' World Heavyweight Championship.
As reported previously, the idea to unify the WWE and Universal Titles were only combined when Roman Reigns was sidelined after Reigns got COVID ahead of WWE Day 1 2021. There were some internal plans last Summer and Fall to have the titles separated again by WrestleMania 39, but those ended up getting nixed. However, shortly after WrestleMania, firm plans were made to split the titles and have Raw with its own championship.
A WWE source has claimed to Fightful that technically the Universal and WWE Championship “histories” are still separate, but said that they believe the WWE Title’s history will be continued once Reigns loses the championship, whenever that may be.
The Women’s Tag Team Titles are being combined, and there were several in NXT at the time of the formation of the NXT Tag Team Titles that were confused why they were being created in the first place. However, Fightful was told there were plans in order to combine the NXT and WWE Women’s tag titles going back to April when the WWE Draft occurred. We’ve been told that the WWE Women’s Tag Titles will appear on NXT programming when needed as was the original plan for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Titles. WWE sources indicated to us that this unification would have moved forward quicker, if not for the unfortunate injuries within the division.
One point of frustration we heard from WWE sources was a simple misuse of the term “undisputed” in two cases. Roman Reigns’ title is being referred to as an undisputed title despite Seth Rollins being a world champion. Asuka’s new championship has “undisputed” on the front of it, despite Rhea Ripley also being a women’s champion. One higher up in WWE said “that’s admittedly confusing. I don’t know why there is an insistence on doing that, and a lot of people have brought that up and it’s been dismissed.”
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