WHEI World Championship

"This article is about the current World Championship on the SmackDown Brand. For the Season 1 World Championship for the Raw brand, see WHEI World Heavyweight Championship"The WHEI World Championship is a professional wrestling world heavyweight championship created and promoted by War Hawks Entertainment Inc. for the SmackDown Brand. It is one of three world titles for WHEI's brands, alongside the WHEI Universal Championship on the Raw brand and the LWL World Heavyweight Championship on the LWL brand. The current champion is Adam Cole who is in his 1st reign.

The championship was originally the WWE World Heavyweight Championship as the brand split had been abandoned in real life for 4 years at that point and the WWE and World Heavyweight Championships were unified in 2013. However upon creation of their universe mode Ironman, and Juggernaut made the decision to un-unify all the championships and split them among Raw and SmackDown.

With the reintroduction of the brand split in the universe mode Ironman took the WWE Championship to be the world title for SmackDown brand while the reinstated World Heavyweight Championship would be the world title for Raw. The title has been the main championship for SmackDown during all 3 seasons so far.

During the latter half of season 3 the WWE name was all but removed from the title except for the images of the title since Ironman didn't like the way the title looked when he tried to redesign it with his own logos for WHEI, hence the title is now simply referred to as the WHEI Championship.

Origin
When it was decided that they would reinstate the brand split to give all wrestlers on the roster a chance to shine the three championships that were unified during/after the brand split were seperated again. This was done to give each brand its own unique feel and give fans a reason to tune in to one show or the other. Despite its long history with the brand and Ironman's own fondness for the belt Ironman took this championship rather than the World Heavyweight Championship. This was because he wanted to have the most prestigious title on his brand.

During the latter half of season 3 the WWE name was all but removed from the title except for the images of the title since Ironman didn't like the way the title looked when he tried to redesign it with his own logos for WHEI, hence the title is now simply referred to as the WHEI Championship.

With the new game coming out and a fresh start, the name of the championship was tweaked to the WHEI World Championship along with its women's and tag team championship counterparts in order to streamline names of the championships on Raw and SmackDown and avoid having to give people multiple reigns by switching titles around

Brand Designation
Since starting the universe mode the title has been main championship contested for on SmackDown in all three seasons. It only changed brands briefly once during the season 3 draft when champion Finn Balor was drafted to LWL. However due to a pre-draft stipulation he was stripped of the title, forcing its vacancy. This will be rectified at the upcoming SummerSlam Pay Per View.

Championship belt design
Like the real life WWE Championship the design of the title is a large cut out of the WWE logo (encrusted with diamonds) inside a large irregular heptagonal plate. With the words World Heavyweight Champion in capital letters under the logo in small font along the bottom edges,this design was retained even after the rename back to simply the WWE Championship.

Default side plates consist of the WWE logo inside of a red globe, although these can be switched out with the champions logos in lieu of a name plate.

Reigns

 * During Bryan's reign, the WWE portion of the championship's name was dropped