WWE Intercontinental Championship
Cody Rhodes with the current belt
- WWF Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship
- WWF Intercontinental Championship
The WWE Intercontinental Championship ( WWE Intercontinental Championship to German ) is a wrestling title WWE. The title was introduced in September 1979 as the second most important title in WWE and is now equivalent to the United States Championship. As in Wrestling common practice the allocated according to a predetermined storyline.
History
The title was won in 1979 as a World Wrestling Federation (WWF) Intercontinental Championship from the North American Championship of the then WWF forth; the first title holder was Pat Patterson after a win in a tournament final against Ted DiBiase, which was completed a union with the not really existent South American Championship in the storyline.
Many future World Champions held first that title, which allowed them to gain experience as a champion. Wrestlers like Randy Savage, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Chris Jericho, The Rock and Triple H were only Intercontinental Champion before being WWE Champion. Originally, the Intercontinental Champion has always been regarded as a top contender to the World Title, with matches between the two title holders have always been the exception. In 1999, won with Chyna, for the first time a woman the title. Except for two subsequent reigns of Chyna was previously an exception. Chyna was also part of another Unikums in the history of the Intercontinental Championship: After a controversial decision in a title match they had the title briefly share with Chris Jericho.
For many years was the Intercontinental Championship as the second most important title of the league and lost only after the takeover of WCW and the division of the two roster in 2002 important. There were suddenly too many titles in the WWE at that time, was the Intercontinental Championship part of several titles associations. The former title holder Rob Van Dam defeated first European Champion Jeff Hardy and Hardcore Champion Tommy Dreamer, so that these two titles went up in the IC Championship. In October 2002, Kane lost the Intercontinental title to Triple H, who then united it with his World Heavyweight Championship.
Since the traditional title was very popular among the fans, the abolition was a very negative impact. In May 2003, due to a legal dispute with the World Wildlife Fund renamed WWE title as the WWE Intercontinental Championship re-introduced and started the first Champion in a Battle Royal unsubscribe from 20 former titleholders. Christian won the match, he eliminated by Booker T, and thus took his second reign. Until the WWE Draft on April 13, 2009, the title of the second highest on RAW was before the then champions Rey Mysterio moved to SmackDown and will be held there ever since. Today, the Intercontinental Championship is next to the United States Championship, which was in 2009 part of RAW in return, one of the two midcard titles with no weight limit in the WWE. Since September 2011, the title is defended in two shows by loosening the roster split.
In October 2011, the then Champion Cody Rhodes led at the big event Hell In A Cell "classic " Intercontinental Championgütel with white ribbon and ornaments updated (including the WWF logo was replaced by the current WWE logo ) again. Since then, this belt which has already been awarded before 1986 to 1998 in the WWF, used as the actual title belt.
Current title holder
The current Intercontinental Champion is Big E. Langston in his first reign. He defeated the previous title holder Curtis Axel on November 18, 2013 in Nashville (Tennessee ) on the weekly television show RAW.