WWE Championship
world heavyweight championship created and promoted by the American professional wrestling promotion WWE
The WWE Championship, also referred to as the Undisputed WWE Championship since April 2024, is a men's professional wrestling world heavyweight championship created and promoted by the American promotion WWE, defended on the SmackDown brand division. It is one of two men's world titles on WWE's main roster, along with the World Heavyweight Championship on Raw. The current champion is Sami Zayn, who is in his second reign. He won the title by defeating CM Punk on the September 11, 2026, episode of SmackDown.
The original world championship of the promotion, it was established by the then-World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) on April 25, 1963, as the WWWF World Heavyweight Championship, after the promotion seceded from the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) following a dispute over the NWA World Heavyweight Championship. The inaugural champion was Buddy Rogers. In 1971, it lost its world title recognition as the company rejoined the NWA, but regained the status when they conclusively left the NWA in 1983. Since its inception, the title has underwent many name changes due to company name changes and title unifications. It is the oldest active championship in WWE, and is presented as being the promotion's most prestigious title, with many matches for the title having headlined pay-per-view and livestreaming events—including the company's flagship event WrestleMania. In professional wrestling in general, it is considered to be one of the most prestigious championships of all time.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “WWE Championship” as world heavyweight championship created and promoted by the American professional wrestling promotion WWE. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q332814. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2024, 2026, 1963 and 1971.
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This entry incorporates text from “WWE Championship” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.