Easily one of the most crucial decades in pro wrestling history, the 1980s were defined by a major boom period for the sport thanks to WWE’s rapid and aggressive expansion from a regional promotion in the northeastern United States to a national affair. When it comes to championships, fans remember Hulk Hogan’s four-year reign with the WWE Championship and Ric Flair’s legendary NWA World Heavyweight Title feuds with Dusty Rhodes and Ricky Steamboat, among others.
With that said, there are also loads of championships from the decade that fans likely forgot about — if they knew about them at all. Let’s take a look at 10 of these forgotten titles from WWE and beyond.
10 WWF Women’s Tag Team Championship
Decades before it established the modern version in 2019, WWE had a Women’s Tag Team Championship back in the 1980s, and it’s mostly gone forgotten by fans. Introduced in 1983, the belts were held by only a handful of champions, the most notable being the Japanese standouts The Jumping Bomb Angels. Unfortunately, the title went defunct in 1989 after a backstage political snafu orchestrated by The Fabulous Moolah to screw over The Glamour Girls — Judy Martin and Leilani Kai.
9 CWA Super Heavyweight Championship
Given how pro wrestling titles are often divided by weight class, it’s always surprising that the maximum weight class is usually Heavyweight, considering how the average Heavyweight Champion would be dwarfed by, say, The Big Show. In 1986, Memphis-based Continental Wrestling Association actually had a Super Heavyweight Championship, with a wrestler named Goliath being the first champion after a fictitious bout against Abdullah the Butcher. The title only lasted a couple of years, with other champions being Giant Hillbilly (a.k.a. WWE’s Uncle Elmer) and Jerry Blackwell.
8 WWF World Martial Arts Heavyweight Championship
In the late 1970s through the 1980s, WWE had a working relationship with New Japan Pro-Wrestling that saw talent from both promotions appear on one another’s events. This includes NJPW founder Antonio Inoki who, upon his arrival in WWE in 1978 was awarded his own title — the WWF World Martial Arts Heavyweight Championship — by Vincent J. McMahon himself.
Initially Inoki defended the belt twice in the 1980s, including a bout against Larry Sharpe at the WWE supercard Showdown at Shea. In 1989, Inoki defended the belt for the first time in nearly a decade, trading it with Georgian Olympic judoka Shota Chochisvili.
7 WCW United States Tag Team Championship
In old-school wrestling, back when tag teams were considered more of a draw, it wasn’t uncommon for a promotion to have multiple tag titles, establishing a secondary championship to go along with the major one. In 1986, Jim Crockett Promotions — later known as WCW — established the NWA United States Championship, with the Russian heel team of Ivan Koloff and Krusher Kruschev winning a tournament to become the inaugural title holders. From there, a number of notable teams held the belt including The Fantastics and The Midnight Express, and the title evolved into the WCW United States Tag Team Championship before being retired in mid-1992.
6 WWF Canadian Championship
The aforementioned 1980s wrestling boom saw WWE taking over pretty much every territory in not just the United States, but Canada as well. After buying two Canadian promotions, WWE began working with Montreal-based Lutte Internationale, putting on co-promoted shows in the territory. As part of this deal, one of Lutte’s top stars, future WWE star Dino Bravo, was billed as the WWF Canadian Champion. After a few months, however, Bravo quit over a backstage dispute and the title quietly disappeared.
5 AWA Brass Knuckles Championship
In the territory days, Brass Knuckles Championships were a common trope in pro wrestling. These evocatively named titles were not only meant to convey a wrestler’s toughness, but were also usually defended in No Disqualification bouts with taped fists. Despite its initials, the AWA Brass Knuckles wasn’t initially introduced in the Minnesota-based American Wrestling Association, but rather in Memphis’ Continental Wrestling Association, which worked with AWA at the time. Introduced in 1979 as a way to make Don Fargo look tough in Memphis, eventually Crusher Lisowski defended it in the AWA proper, but the belt was retired in 1981.
4 WWF North American Heavyweight Championship
Awarded to Ted DiBiase during his forgotten 1979 run with WWE, the WWF North American Heavyweight Championship was eventually won by Pat Patterson and unified to create the Intercontinental Championship in 1979. However, fans may not know that the belt had a life that extended into the 1980s.
In late 1979, Pat Patterson dropped the North American Title to New Japan Pro-Wrestling’s Siji Sakaguchi, who continued to defend it in Japan until it was deactivated in 1981. Challengers to Sakaguchi’s belt included Western talent like Bad News Allen (a.k.a. Bad News Brown) and Don Muraco.
3 The Original IWGP Heavyweight Championship
The year 1987 saw the establishment of the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, a title lineage that still exists in New Japan today as the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship. What’s forgotten in that title history, however, was that there was an original IWGP Heavyweight Title established in 1983, but it wasn’t a traditional wrestling championship. Instead, the title was awarded to Hulk Hogan, the winner of the inaugural IWGP League (later known as the G1 Climax), with Antonio Inoki winning the 1984 tournament and subsequently defeating the Hulkster for the belt.
2 AWA World Women’s Championship
While WWE’s original Women’s Championship was notable for the 1985 “Original Screwjob” — once again, with Fabulous Moolah’s involvement — it wasn’t the only championship in women’s wrestling. In fact, the 1960s saw the aforementioned American Wrestling Association establish its own World Women’s Championship, although it disappeared in 1975 only to be revived in 1984. Over the course of the rest of the ‘80s, the belt was held by a few notable wrestlers including former WWF Women’s Champion Wendi Richter, Sherri Martel, and Madusa Miceli, better known to WWE fans as Alundra Blayze.
1 WWF International Heavyweight Championship
In the 1980s, as WWE had a working relationship with New Japan Pro-Wrestling, it wasn’t uncommon for the promotion to create belts that were pretty much only defended overseas. A title initially created in 1959 and lasting until 1963, the WWF International Heavyweight Champion was re-introduced in 1982 and held by a couple of Western wrestlers before NJPW’s Tatsumi Fujinami captured the belt in Madison Square Garden. From there, the best was only defended in Japan, with Fujinami eventually losing the belt to Riki Choshu before winning it back.