A great roster needs great competition. New championships will reinvigorate WWE’s entire card

When it comes to pro wrestling, there’s nothing I love more than a shiny championship belt. Heck, I even have two WWE Intercontinental Championships displayed in my bedroom (the toy versions of course, not the crazy expensive ones). Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen many new titles introduced, including the Universal, SmackDown Tag Team, SmackDown Women’s, Cruiserweight, and the beautiful United Kingdom championships.

With WWE’s roster continuing to grow and new signings popping up on a regular basis, it creates greater opportunity for new championship divisions to be formed. So, in no particular order I am going to list five possible championships that I think WWE could introduce this year.

WWE Network Championship

WWE has an incredibly underrated undercard when you think about it. Not only do they have a talented roster of new talent from the UK, they also have guys like Curtis Axel, Zack Ryder, and Apollo, just to name a few, who often don’t get the praise I feel they deserve. With all these talented wrestlers in your arsenal, why not create a championship that gives these guys something to do?

My concept for this would be the WWE Network Championship. The title could be exclusive to the WWE Network, where the guys I mentioned can display their talent on a weekly basis, like that of the WCW Television Championship during the 90s. The belt can be defended once a week exclusively on the WWE Network in a short-form programme, and guys from Raw, SmackDown Live, NXT (including UK guys), and 205 Live could all compete for the belt.

Guys that don’t always get a share of the spotlight on the major shows could make a name for themselves here, and we as fans would get to see some interesting encounters between wrestlers from different brands. In terms of kayfabe and booking, each wrestler would have an actual goal that fans can get invested in.

NXT mid-card championship

When it comes to talent depth, NXT arguably has one of the strongest rosters in WWE today. In my opinion, I’d say over 75 percent of NXT’s roster could happily be put in the main event of any TakeOver show and in contention for the NXT title.

So why not introduce a mid-card title? NXT’s roster is continuing to grow with the likes of EC3, Ricochet, and War Machine signing – and I’m sure more talent is being looked at, such as James Storm, Will Ospreay, and majority of the Bullet Club members (I think they’re all great). With the massive influx of talent, I think it’s only appropriate that a secondary men’s singles title should be introduced. However, I feel as if the belt should have some sort of gimmick surrounding it, whether that be the belt has a weight limit, a certain set of match rules, age limit etc.

Edit: Since time of writing, NXT have revealed their North American Championship – which I’m happy to take total credit for.

WWE Extreme Championship

This one is a little bit out there but hear me out. In my opinion, and most of the internet’s opinion, WWE failed with their version of ECW. So, what if WWE redeemed themselves by creating an extreme/hardcore division?

There’s plenty of guys on the main roster who could be placed into ECW-esque division such as Dean Ambrose, Luke Harper, Braun Strowman, Woken Matt Hardy – heck they could even centre the division around someone like Kevin Owens. The title would be a nice hardcore alternative on the fringe of the main product, because I think hardcore wrestling can be so damn cool when implemented properly.

 WWE 6-Man Tag Team Championship

Do you want to know something I love as nearly as much as a shiny championship belt? Factions.

Wrestling factions are just so cool. In the past we’ve seen horsemen, outsiders, degenerates, and now we are graced with the ever so entertaining group known as the ‘New Day’, along with the occasional Shield reunion, Sanity, and the Undisputed Era. With all these glorious groups, I feel the time is now for a 6-Man Tag Team Championship to be introduced.

Not only could we see the collision of teams such as the Undisputed Era vs the New Day, or The Shield vs. Sanity, but we could also see new alliances uniting together to attempt to capture the 6-man tag titles. We could see combinations such as Kassius Ohno, Kevin Owens, and Sami Zayn, or AJ Styles reuniting with the Club and Finn Balor. Tell me that wouldn’t be awesome to see?

Plus, for those of you about to scream “the Freebird rule!” at me, it enables big faction/stable based feuds to happen independently of the existing tag team scene – which is currently doing quite well on its own.

King of the Ring Championship

Many moons ago, the King of the Ring tournament was a stepping stone for wrestlers to enter the upper-card/main event. Most of the time the King of the Ring winner would go on to become a main event player in WWE, such as HHH, Stone Cold, Kurt Angle, Edge, and Brock Lesnar.

Though of course there were winners who didn’t quite reach that next level after winning King of the Ring, such as Billy Gunn in 1999, who instead went on to have a ‘Kiss My Arse’ match with The Rock at that year’s Summerslam. Poor Billy.

Still, at one point a King of the Ring championship belt was commissioned and produced – a picture of King Mable holding it can be found online. But the plans for the title were obviously scrapped. So, with the King of the Ring tournament currently shelved, 2018 could be the year that WWE bring back the tournament along with a new championship belt.

The concept I thought up was that the belt can be awarded to the winner of the tournament, and each year the King of the Ring champion could re-enter the tournament in an attempt to retain their crown. I feel as if this idea could create some interesting long-term rivalries/feuds and elevate lower card talent higher up the WWE hierarchy.

I want to hear from you!

I hope those of you reading enjoyed my suggestions, and if you have any suggestions of your own feel free to let us know on Twitter. We wrestling fans are always open to suggestions from fellow wrestling fans – as long as they don’t feature too much Roman Reigns, of course…