WHEI European Championship

the current design of the WHEI European Championship

The **WHEI Euopean Championship** is a professional wrestling championship created and promoted by War Hawks Entertainment Inc. for the SmackDown brand. It is one of three tertiary championships for WHEI's roster alongside the WHEI Hardcore Championship on the Raw brand and the LWL Global Internet Championship on the LWL brand. The current champion is Apollo Crews who is in his first reign.

The title was originally retired on 2002 in real life during the early days of the original brand split. When the brand split was brought back in 2016 the title was originally kept on the shelf. This was until it was announced in season 3 that apart from 205 Live the cruiserweights and their champions could appear on any show. Thus leaving Raw without a second midcard title. The title was brought back to even things out.

Unlike the United Kingdom Championship wrestlers from any country can compete for this championship. While some see this as making the name redundant some of the most gifted competitors have held the title. Wrestlers who have held either of the companies original world championships, the Intercontinental championship one of the companies original tag team championships, and either this or the Hardcore Championship, are considered Grand Slam Champions under the original peramiters.

On August 10, 2019 at Rain Of Blood (2019), the championship was unified with the LWL Global Internet Championship. Retiring the latter in the process.

## History

When it was announced in season 3 that all cruiserweights and their champions could appear on all three major brands this left Raw at 4 championships while SmackDown and LWL had 5. Ironman decided to fix this following SummerSlam by reinstating the European Championship. It was announced on the August 27, 2018 edition of Raw that an 8 man tournament would be held in the coming weeks with the finals being at Unforgiven.

It was also announced that unlike the UK championships any wrestler from any country could compete for the title. This was done as there were so few european wrestlers on the Raw roster.

### Eurocontinental Champions

The term "Eurocontinental Champion" is a portmanteau of European and Intercontinental. It is used to describe wrestlers who have held both championships simultaneously. Three wrestlers have accomplished this feat in real life: The first was DLo Brown, who defeated Mideon to win the European Championship at Fully Loaded 1999 and Jeff Jarrett two nights later to win the Intercontinental Title.

A month later Jarrett defeated Brown to win both titles but awarded the European title to Mark Henry the following day. On the February 10, 2000 Edition of SmackDown Kurt Angle defeated Val Venis to win the European Championship. One week later he defeated Chris Jericho for the Intercontinental Championship to become the third Eurocontinental Champion. He lost both titles two months later in a two fall triple threat match also involving Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit without being pinned or submitted.

With his entry into the tournament to crown the first WHEI champion, Intercontinental Champion and Raw co-General Manager Juggernaut has the opportunity to become the fourth Eurocontinental Champion in history and the first in over 18 years. Which he did after winning the tournament.

### Innaugural Tournament

 The Miz vs. Edge
 Neville vs. Undertaker ('00)

## Championship belt design

The championship features five plates along a black leather strap. The center plate is an irregular pentagonal shape with the WWE logo at the top in a small red patch. The words "World Wrestling Entertainment" appear on a banner under the logo. A large globe appears under that with two figures on either side and various European flags on the other side of the figures. The words "European Champion" appear on a big bright red banner under this.

The side plates are rectangular in shape with 2 of them featuring a similar patch to the center plate. Nothing is particularly significant about the side plates, only featuring the WWE logo in the middle on the inner plates.