Contents are updated whenever new information is received.
I had always been into the wrestling title histories since I was a grade school kid in Japan. My interest started when I realized there were more than one world heavyweight champion in pro-wrestling. I knew boxing had WBA and WBC (IBF wasn't in existence yet), but wrestling seemed to have more titles.
When I was in the eighth grade, I found this book, Puroresu Super Title Sen (on the left) by Masaru Ōta, and my passion grew even bigger. It was a very small book, about 3 3/4" x 5", and had 250 pages. The book included the lineages of the world heavyweight titles from NWA (the ever inaccurate "official" one), AWA, WWF, UWA (Mexico), and WWA (Los Angeles) and world tag team titles from AWA and WWF, plus other major singles titles such as Intercontinental and Missouri. Of course, all the titles from the male wrestling promotions in Japan were included as well as the tables of the round-robin tournaments that took place there. This book is where it all started, and I still have it since 1984.
I moved to the United States in 1987. I was rather disappointed by the lack of the wrestling-related materials at the bookstores. Although there was a plenty of monthly magazines in a very cheap quality (compared to what we had in Japan at least) back then, biographies and historial references were nowhere to be found. Several years later, I realized those valuable information was mainly published by the fans but not available at the stores. I continued to rely on whatever I was able to get when I returned to Japan during my vacations.
Then, in the early 1990s, I had the first online encounter with Gary Will, a great wrestling historian, in the rec.sport.pro-wrestling USENET newsgroup. Gary and Royal Duncan had published the first edition of the world-famous Wrestling Title Histories by then. Around the same time, I used my college UNIX account to start what would later become "puroresu.com" which included the title history section. The book by Gary & Royal became the main source for the section, thanks to the permission from Gary himself to use the contents, and the section grew so big that I started another website: Wrestling-Titles.com. The book had a lot more championships than this website ever will. Unfortunately, the book, which I believe should be in any major library in the English-speaking countries, is no longer available in printed format.
The last edition of Wrestling Title Histories was published in 2000. A vast number of researches have been done since then, thanks mainly to the online newspaper archvies, and lots of new and corrected information have been added to this website.
I would like to thank Ōta-san, Gary, and Royal for these books that changed my life and these
people for helping me to update this website.
×
date
The format is either YYYY-MM-DD or YY-MM-DD.
[ ]
Following the name of the champion(s): Indicates the number of times the wrestler has held that title at that point.
[...]
Indicates a gap in the listing where title changes are not known.
*
If used next to the names of the wrestlers, they may, in fact, not have held the title in the period indicated. If used next to the dates or places, either they are possibly wrong or the title changes are fictitious.
<
Title was held or changed hands no later than this. In these cases, it is known that a wrestler held the title at a certain time but not when he/she won it.
+
Broadcast date; the actual recording date is unknown.
@
Order uncertain. Different titleholders may be known for the same year, for example, but it is not known who held the title before whom.
#
Unofficial or disputable claims. These are usually matches that certainly took place, but where there is doubt that the wrestler shown should be recognized as a true title holder. These listings are also italicized in HTML files
I had always been into the wrestling title histories since I was a grade school kid in Japan. My interest started when I realized there were more than one world heavyweight champion in pro-wrestling. I knew boxing had WBA and WBC (IBF wasn't in existence yet), but wrestling seemed to have more titles.
by then. Around the same time, I used my college UNIX account to start what would later become "