World Heavyweight Championship

The World Heavyweight Championship was a professional wrestling world heavyweight championship owned by WWE. It was one of two top championships in WWE, complementing the WWE Championship.
By 2002, the WWF roster had doubled in size due to the overabundance of contracted workers. As a result of the increase, the WWF divided the roster through its two main television programs, Raw and SmackDown, assigning championships and appointing figureheads to each brand. This expansion became known as the Brand Extension. In May 2002, the WWF was renamed to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). Following these changes, the WWE Undisputed Championship remained unaffiliated with either brand as competitors from both brands could challenge the Undisputed Champion. Following the appointment of Eric Bischoff and Stephanie McMahon as General Managers of the Raw and SmackDown brands respectively, Stephanie McMahon contracted then-champion Brock Lesnar to the SmackDown brand, leaving the Raw brand without a World Title. On September 2, after disputing the brand designation of the Undisputed title, Eric Bischoff announced the creation of the World Heavyweight Championship. Bischoff awarded the title to Triple H due to previously being Lesnar's scheduled opponent. Immediately afterwards, the Undisputed Championship returned to being the WWE Championship.
==History==
No.	Champion 	Reigns	Retains	Date 	Event 	Days
1 	Jack Swagger 	2 	4 	January 1, 2016 	- 	149
2 	Kane 	2 	3 	May 29, 2016 	Extreme Rules 	91
3 	Sheamus 	2 	1 	August 28, 2016 	Summerslam 	64
4 	Bad News Barret	1 	- 	October 30, 2016 	Hell in a Cell 	28
5 	Mitch Baker 	1 	- 	November 27, 2016	Survivor Series 	4
6 	Bad News Barret	2 	1 	December 1, 2016 	SmackDown 	24
7 	Luke Harper 	1 	- 	December 25, 2016	TLC 	35
8 	Bray Wyatt 	1 	- 	January 29, 2017 	Royal Rumble 	28
9 	Chris Jericho 	4 	- 	February 26, 2017	Elimination Chamber	28
10 	Dean Ambrose 	1 	- 	March 26, 2017 	WrestleMania 33 	9
11 	Randy Orton 	5 	- 	April 4, 2017 	SmackDown Live 	19
 	Unified 	 	 	April 23, 2017 	Extreme Rules 	
Category:WWE
Category:WWE Championship