WCW World Heavyweight Championship

Ric Flair was the first holder of the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, with Chris Jericho being the last.

WCW was forced to use a belt owned by Dusty Rhodes from the defunct Championship Wrestling from Florida with a gold-colored plate tacked on with the words "WCW World Heavyweight Champion", which was awarded to Lex Luger after he defeated Barry Windham in a cage match for the vacant championship.

In 1992, the Big Gold Belt was used for the revived NWA World Heavyweight Championship, a co-promotional gimmick between WCW and New Japan Pro-Wrestling.

Masahiro Chono won the G1 Climax in 1992 defeating Rick Rude in the finals while also having a broken neck in the process.

Then in 1993 On January 4, The Great Muta won the NWA World Heavyweight title defeating Masahiro Chono, but eventually dropped it to Barry Windham at SuperBrawl III.

At Starrcade in December 1993, Flair won the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, by defeating Vader.

WCW decided to unify the WCW World Heavyweight Championship (represented by the new belt) and International Championship (represented by the "Big Gold Belt"), by having Flair wrestle Sting in June 1994.

In March 2001, the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) purchased the assets of WCW.

The longest reigning champion was Hulk Hogan who held the title from July 17, 1994, to October 29, 1995, for a total of 469 days.

Jericho would lose the undisputed title to Triple H at WrestleMania X8 and the Big Gold Belt continued to appear until the April 1, 2002 episode of Raw.

The belt design used to represent the title from 1991 to 1994
A diagram showing the evolution of various world heavyweight championships.
Chris Jericho , seen in 2003, was the final WCW World Heavyweight Champion under the WWF umbrella when he unified with Stone Cold Steve Austin 's WWF Championship at Vengeance in 2001.