Outside of a few rare instances, winning championships in the world of wrestling is largely considered a symbolic method of showing the audience who is the best on the roster, or at least in contention for the best. It can be the method to propel a wrestler from mediocrity and onto the front pages of posters, websites, and promotional materials and serves as the proverbial face of the company. However, not all championships are built equally.

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With an industry that is topsy-turvy at almost every level to varying degrees, it is no surprise that some of these half-baked or unremarkable titles led to some less-than-desired results. Some of these championships had promised and even conjured up a lot of intrigue from the fans, but could not live up to the hype and fizzled out. Some others seem to be cursed to the point where an almost unbelievable amount of bad luck has come from some of them and transferred from titleholder to titleholder. We have seen this happen across promotions like WWE, Impact, and others around the world.

10 WWE Women's Tag Team Championship (2019)

On paper, the Women’s Tag Team Championship was a fantastic idea as it gives the stacked roster of female talent a title to go after. It bolsters its presence on the shows, but it has constantly been switching hands for unfortunate reasons since its inception.

Three of the four women who first held the belt are no longer with the company only four years out, multiple teams have been forced to vacate them because of legitimate injuries, and it was infamously relinquished by Sasha Banks and Naomi. Here is hoping that the future of the championship can stabilize soon. It is the perfect example of a cursed championship.

9 GFW Global Championship

Global Force Wrestling was a blunder for a lot of parties involved, as a lot of factors that were seemingly out of the hands of those running the company hampered it.

The GFW Global Championship served as the highest singles title in Jeff Jarrett's company, and in its brief time, Alberto El Patron initially held it before getting promptly suspended, and Eli Drake held it until they rebranded it back for Impact. It was doomed from its first reign.

8 WWE Universal Championship

Almost everything about the introduction and implementation of the Universal Championship felt like a series of bad omens. The design was immediately disliked by the fans so much that it was booed whenever shown on screen; the name felt like an inferior replacement for the World Heavyweight Championship, and the inaugural winner Finn Balor vacated it because of an injury sustained in the match.

Since then, it was largely used to advance the careers of only a handful of wrestlers with Lesnar and Reigns battling for an eternity for it.

7 Impact Grand Championship

Initially brought in by Billy Corgan during his time on Impact Wrestling as an on-screen authority figure, this title was meant to bring class and esteem to the match quality and bring better matches to the fans. It achieved none of that, and its admittedly unique set of rules of rounds was thrown out way too soon amid its run.

It seems like if it was truly "grand", then it wouldn’t have fizzled out in less than two years with only a mere handful of runs by a lot of wrestlers who ended up leaving the company, anyway.

6 NXT North American Championship

Another title on the NXT roster in 2017 was the right move for the impressive collection of talent from all different reaches. It seemed like it was going to be a big-time belt, but it devalued over time because of the lack of participants still present in WWE.

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Whether it was greener pastures elsewhere or personal issues, so many of the former titleholders are no longer with the company, and it really makes it feel like a temporary reward to a performer who could benefit from holding a championship in promos. Now held by Dominik Mysterio, WWE seems to use it as more of a visual prop instead of the great mid-card title it could be. Even a couple of years ago, it felt useless.

5 NXT Tag Team Championship

Tag teams in WWE do not seem to get the spotlight as single competitors do, but this championship was highly regarded as a title that constantly had impressive battles for it. Teams like The Revival, The Authors of Pain, American Alpha, and The Undisputed Era all held it and most of them who did are out of the company mere years later.

It seems to have the reasonable caveat that it was Triple H’s booking decisions that led to them winning, with a lot of NXT exports then struggling under Vince McMahon's direction before The Game took over.

4 European Championship

A fan-favorite through the heights and lows of the Attitude Era, the European Championship has an unfortunately tainted legacy as it remained a consolation prize for many wrestlers.

The likes of D’Lo Brown, William Regal, and X-Pac were all immediately and almost entirely written off as low-mid card performers after and during their reign with it. Legends like Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho, and Triple H might have also held it, but they only proved to be the exceptions to the rule.

3 WWE ECW Championship

A title that was doomed from the very start, WWE’s much-maligned reboot of the ECW brand as a third show was almost immediately going downhill from its inception. If one were to not count the original ECW lineage, it had 15 holders within less than 4 years including Mr. McMahon, Tommy Dreamer, and Ezekiel Jackson among Christian, CM Punk, and initial holder Rob Van Dam.

It was not extreme, nor was it consistently defended or ever had a true champion, and worse yet, it had the worst design of any ECW championship towards the end.

2 IGF IWGP 3rd Belt Heavyweight Championship

Initially meant to be the interim championship for the new promotion IGF by Antonio Inoki as a sort of spin-off of the IWGP World Heavyweight title in NJPW, this title seemed like a sure shot when introduced. It only had three holders: Brock Lesnar, Kurt Angle, and Shinsuke Nakamura, over the course of 3 years.

However, it was in that short span that it just never seemed to take off as both Angle and Lesnar had largely gone without defending the title consistently, so it was lost into obscurity when it was unified with the true IWGP Heavyweight Championship by Nakamura.

1 WWE 24/7 Championship

This title was an exciting prospect when it was first brought into the WWE landscape in 2019, as it was finally bringing another title for the bloated roster to find fresh rivalries within it and give the wrestlers an opportunity to shine. However, it quickly became one of the most tired jokes in all the WWE before quietly being retired in late 2022.

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Sure, it had some admittedly wild moments that all seemed to generate some quick buzz, but it was all meaningless outside of giving the ever-talented R-Truth something to finally do.