WWE Intercontinental Championship

The **WWE Intercontinental Championship** is a professional wrestling championship created and promoted by the American promotionWWE, currently defended on the SmackDown brand division. It is one of two secondary championships for WWE's main roster, along with the WWE United States Championship on Raw. The current champion is Ricochet, who is in his first reign.

 Promotion
 Current champion(s)
 * WWF Intercontinental (Heavyweight) Championship (1979–2002)

 Longest reign
 Shortest reign
 Oldest champion
 Youngest champion
 Heaviest champion
 Lightest champion

The championship was established by the then-World Wrestling Federation(WWF) on September 1, 1979, as a result of the WWF North American Heavyweight Championship being unified with an apocryphal South American Heavyweight Championship, with Pat Patterson as the inaugural champion. It is the third-oldest championship currently active in WWE, behind the WWE Championship(1963) and United States Championship (1975), but the second-longest tenured championship, as WWE has only owned the U.S. championship since 2001. Although generally contested in the midcard at WWE shows, it has been defended in the main event of pay-per-views including WrestleMania VI, SummerSlam in 1992, the third and eighth In Your House shows, Backlash in 2001, and at Extreme Rules in 2018. It has been called a "stepping stone" to a WWE world championship.

In November 2001, the then-WCWUnited States Championship was unified into the Intercontinental Championship. In 2002, after the introduction of the first brand split, it became exclusive to Raw and the WWF was renamed WWE. Later that year, the European and Hardcore championships were unified into the Intercontinental Championship, which itself was unified into the World Heavyweight Championship. The next year, it was reactivated for Raw, followed by the United States Championship's reactivation as a counterpart championship on SmackDown. The Intercontinental Championship has switched between brands over the years, usually as a result of the WWE Draft; the 2019 Superstar Shake-upmoved the title to SmackDown.

## ReignsEdit

Main article: List of WWE Intercontinental Champions

The inaugural champion was Pat Patterson who, as the WWF North American Heavyweight Champion in September 1979 was also declared "South American Heavyweight Champion" after allegedly winning a tournament in Rio de Janeiro. Patterson unified the two championships into the Intercontinental Championship. Since then, there have been 86 different champions. Chris Jericho has the most reigns with nine. Pedro Morales held the championship for a record total of 619 days and The Honky Tonk Man had the longest uninterrupted reign at 454 days, from June 2, 1987, until August 29, 1988. Dean Douglas had the shortest reign at just 13 minutes 52 seconds. Chyna is the only woman in WWE history to win the title. The youngest champion was Jeff Hardy, who won the championship at 23 years old, while the oldest champion was Ric Flair, who won the championship at Unforgiven in 2005 at the age of 56. There have been 10 vacancies throughout the title's history.

Ricochet is the current champion in his first reign. He defeated previous champion Shinsuke Nakamura, Sami Zayn and Cesaro (wrestler) on the January 29, 2022 at the Royal Rumble (2022) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.