NXT Championship

The **NXT Championship** is a men's professional wrestling championship created and promoted by the American promotion, WWE, defended on the promotion's developmental brand, NXT, where it serves as their top men's championship. The current champion is Tommaso Ciampa, who is in his first canonical reign.

## NXT Championship

#### History

##### In real-life

The championship was established in July 2012 to serve as the top men's championship of the newly-rebranded developmental brand, NXT, which replaced former developmental territory, **Florida Championship Wrestling** (FCW). Prior to 2012, NXT had been a weekly television show which had combined professional wrestling alongside reality television, in the vein of Tough Enough, a show that WWE had produced off and on since 2001; where-in "rookies" from FCW would participate in "challenges". Rookies would be eliminated via polls, and the winner of the season would be signed to a contract. This approach was ditched in 2012, as NXT moved to what would become its full time home, **Full Sail University** in Orlando, Florida and replace FCW as WWE's main developmental brand. Not long after, the NXT Championship would be introduced as the top championship for the brand, with Seth Rollins becoming the first champion on July 26, 2012.

Although previous NXT Championship reigns are not deemed "canonical" in Universe Mode, they are still recognized up until the date in which the first champion of the Universe Mode lineage won the championship in real life.

##### In Universe Mode

The NXT Championship, like almost all other championships, did not get proper introductions in Universe Mode like the WWE Championship did. The championship made its first appearance in "Open Playing Field", the very first episode of NXT. On that episode, Tommaso Ciampa opened the show as the NXT Champion, making him the inaugural champion of the Universe Mode lineage. Ciampa was chosen to be the NXT Champion as he was the most recent NXT Champion in real-life to have been included in **WWE 2K22**.

#### Championship design

The design of the championship features gold plates on a black strap; the center plate being shaped similar to an octagon, and predominately featuring the letters 'N'. 'X', 'T'. Firstly, the 'X' lays in the center of the plate, being the most predominant of the three. The edges of the 'X' stick out of the main plate and the 'X' itself features gold ornamentation within it. Secondly, the 'N' and 'T', which lay to the side of the 'X', are much smaller in comparison, and do not feature ornamentation and simply colored gold. Above and below the 'X' are the WWE logo, and a banner that reads "CHAMPION" respectively. The rest of the front plate is filled with gold ornamentation.

The side plates are shaped like pentagons and are, as previously mentioned, predominately gold. Similarly to most other WWE championships, the championships has interchangeable side plates. The default side plates, however, feature an entirely gold WWE logo contained in a black square.

#### Reigns

How he won, where he won and how long he held the championship in-game has not been made official. His championship reign in real-time, however, is counted as beginning on the release date of part 1 of "Open Playing Field".