Big Gold Belt

The original championship belt design was known for being unbranded as it only read "World Heavyweight Wrestling Champion" and bore no initials or trademark of its owning promotion.

In January 1991, WCW officially recognized Ric Flair as their world champion in conjunction with the NWA's recognition.

The Big Gold Belt left with Flair due to a dispute with WCW Vice President Jim Herd in which Herd refused to return Flair's $25,000 deposit, a deposit per regulations that was required of reigning NWA World Heavyweight Champions and was to be returned after the conclusion of their reigns.

With its return to WCW, the Big Gold Belt represented the NWA World Heavyweight Championship once again, being awarded to Masa Chono after his August 1992 tournament final victory over Rick Rude for the vacant title in New Japan Pro-Wrestling.

[8] In March 2001, after the long and bitter rivalry of the Monday Night War, World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc. bought out WCW.

The Big Gold Belt became property of the WWF and continued to represent the abbreviated WCW Championship within the promotion during the period of the WCW/ECW "Invasion".

[9] Chris Jericho became the final recognized titleholder and was subsequently promoted as undisputed champion in the WWF and professional wrestling.

[12] By 2002, the WWF had been divided in what became known as the brand extension and the promotion along with its parent company were renamed to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).

After SummerSlam in August 2002, WWE Undisputed Champion Brock Lesnar announced that he had signed an exclusive contract with SmackDown, ignoring the claim to the title's number-one contendership by Raw's Triple H. Raw General Manager Eric Bischoff said that the WWE Undisputed Championship was thus disputed, and he awarded the World Heavyweight Championship, in the form of the Big Gold Belt, to Triple H. A new version of the belt, incorporating a WWE logo for copyright purposes, was introduced in March 2003 until 2013.