WWE Intercontinental Championship
The WWE Intercontinental Championship is a men's professional wrestling championship created and promoted by the American promotion WWE, defended on the Raw brand division. It is one of two secondary championships for WWE's main roster, along with the WWE United States Championship on SmackDown. The current champion is Dominik Mysterio, who is in his second reign. He won the title by defeating previous champion John Cena at Survivor Series: WarGames on November 29, 2025.
The championship was established by the then-World Wrestling Federation on September 1, 1979, as a result of the WWF North American Heavyweight Championship being unified with an apocryphal South American Heavyweight Championship, with Pat Patterson as the inaugural champion. It is the third-oldest championship currently active in WWE, behind the WWE Championship and United States Championship, but the second-longest tenured championship, as WWE has only owned the U.S. championship since 2001. Although generally contested in the midcard at WWE shows, it has been defended in the main event of pay-per-views including WrestleMania VI, SummerSlam in 1992, the third and eighth In Your House shows, Backlash in 2001, and at Extreme Rules in 2018. It has been called a "stepping stone" to a WWE world championship.
In November 2001, the then-WCW United States Championship was unified into the Intercontinental Championship. In 2002, after the introduction of the first brand split, it became exclusive to Raw and the WWF was renamed WWE. Later that year, the European and Hardcore championships were unified into the Intercontinental Championship, which itself was unified into the World Heavyweight Championship. The next year, it was reactivated for Raw, followed by the United States Championship's reactivation as a counterpart championship on SmackDown. The Intercontinental Championship has switched between brands over the years, usually as a result of the WWE Draft; the 2023 draft moved the title back to Raw.
Etymology
The term "intercontinental" in the title originally referred to North and South America. In 1985, the championship belt design changed, the centerplate now centered on the Atlantic Ocean, in a map including western Africa and Europe. On April 7, 1989, the championship was first defended outside of North America, by Rick Rude against the Ultimate Warrior in Turin, Italy. On March 30, 1991, Mr. Perfect made the first Asian defense against The Texas Tornado at a WWF co-promotion with Super World of Sports in Tokyo, Japan. It first came to Africa on April 6, 1997, when champion Rocky Maivia pinned Savio Vega in Durban, South Africa. Shelton Benjamin made the first Australian defense on April 7, 2005, pinning Gene Snitsky in Brisbane.History
became the inaugural champion on September 1, 1979. It was said he had unified his title with the South American Heavyweight Championship, in a tournament in Rio de Janeiro, although both the tournament and South American Championship were entirely fictional.On April 1, 1990, at WrestleMania VI, Intercontinental Champion the Ultimate Warrior defeated WWF Champion Hulk Hogan to win the world title; so the Intercontinental Championship was vacated for the first time soon after. Mr. Perfect then won a tournament to crown a new Intercontinental Champion.
On October 17, 1999, Chyna became the only woman to hold the Intercontinental Championship by defeating Jeff Jarrett at No Mercy. Following the World Wrestling Federation's purchase of World Championship Wrestling in March 2001, the title was unified with the WCW United States Championship at Survivor Series, causing the United States Championship to become inactive. Then-United States Champion Edge defeated then-Intercontinental Champion Test.
In 2002, after the first brand split had begun and the WWF was renamed WWE, Raw general manager Eric Bischoff began unifying his brand's singles championships. On July 22, 2002, the Intercontinental Championship was unified with the European Championship in a ladder match, in which then-Intercontinental Champion Rob Van Dam defeated then-European Champion Jeff Hardy. On August 19, 2002, Bischoff made a six-minute gauntlet match for the Hardcore Championship, with the winner facing Van Dam in a second unification match the next week on Raw. Tommy Dreamer successfully retained his title in that match, and lost to Van Dam in a hardcore match the next week. As a result of the victories over Hardy and Dreamer, Van Dam is regarded as the last European and Hardcore champion in WWE history; these were his first and fourth reigns with those respective titles. On September 30, 2002, Bischoff scheduled a match to unify the Intercontinental Championship with the recently created Raw-exclusive World Heavyweight Championship. The unification match took place at No Mercy the following month and saw then-World Heavyweight Champion Triple H defeat then-Intercontinental Champion Kane, making him the Raw brand's sole male singles champion.
Over Bischoff's objections, Raw co-general manager Stone Cold Steve Austin reactivated the Intercontinental Championship on the May 5, 2003 episode of Raw and declared any former champion on the Raw roster eligible to enter a battle royal at Judgment Day for the title. Christian won the battle royal to win the championship and restore a secondary singles title for Raw wrestlers to compete for. Eventually, WWE did the same thing for SmackDown and created a separate set of titles for that brand; for its secondary title, SmackDown reactivated the United States Championship that had been unified with the Intercontinental Championship in 2001, placing the WWE name on it while claiming the lineage of the old WCW title of the same name.
On May 31, 2015, the championship was contested in an Elimination Chamber match for the first time.
In July 2016, WWE reintroduced the brand split. During the 2016 draft, then-Intercontinental Champion The Miz was drafted to SmackDown. Just days later, he successfully defended the title against Raw draftee Darren Young at Battleground, making the title exclusive to SmackDown. During the following year's Superstar Shake-up, Intercontinental Champion Dean Ambrose was moved to the Raw brand, making the title exclusive to Raw. Two years later during the 2019 WWE Superstar Shake-up, Intercontinental Champion Finn Bálor moved to SmackDown, making the title exclusive back to SmackDown. Later that year, the NXT brand, WWE's developmental territory, became WWE's third major brand when it was moved to the USA Network in September, thus making the NXT North American Championship a third secondary title in WWE. However, this recognition was reversed when NXT reverted to being WWE's developmental brand in September 2021. In late 2024, the WWE introduced the women's counterpart to the Intercontinental Championship.
Belt design
The 1985 version of the Intercontinental Championship belt, designed by Reggie Parks, consisted of a gold center plate featuring a blue globe, with the red WWF block logo on top which was later changed to gold. On the top ribbon of the belt it read "INTERCONTINENTAL" with the three stars on each side, while the bottom inscription read "HEAVYWEIGHT WRESTLING CHAMPION". The championship belt also had four identical side plates. Like the main WWF Championship, the strap could be changed to a custom color such as yellow worn by The Ultimate Warrior and blue worn by Shawn Michaels.In 1997, after Stone Cold Steve Austin won the title, the Intercontinental Championship was redesigned after he threw the previous belt into a river. The belt originally had a purple strap and the WWF block logo, but was later redesigned again with a black strap and the WWF scratch logo. The center plate was oval shaped and featured an oval shaped world map with the company's logo in the center. On the top it had six faux diamonds and the inscription initially read "World Wrestling Federation" while the bottom had two texts reading "INTERCONTINENTAL" on the ribbon and "CHAMPION" on the bottom. Each of the four side plates represented the continents: the first plate contained the WWF logo and the text Antarctica, the second plate read Europe and Africa, while the third plate represented the Americas and the fourth plate read Asia and Australia. The belt's design was modified after the company's name change in 2002 from WWF to WWE, replacing the text with "World Wrestling Entertainment" accordingly.
On October 2, 2011, at Hell in a Cell, Cody Rhodes reintroduced a modified version of Parks' 1985–1997 championship belt design with the white strap, with the modern WWE "scratch logo" and other embellishments. On August 18, 2014, the Intercontinental Championship belt, along with all other existing championship belts in WWE at the time, received a minor update, replacing the longstanding scratch logo with WWE's current logo that was originally used for the WWE Network that launched earlier that year in February.
On the November 22, 2019, episode of SmackDown, Sami Zayn presented a new belt design to champion Shinsuke Nakamura. The redesigned Intercontinental Championship returned to being on a black leather strap with an entirely new center plate with an irregular shape. The center portion of the center plate features an oval-shape. The top half of the oval says "Intercontinental" and the bottom half says "Champion"; the word "Heavyweight" sits in a banner on the inner side of the oval above the word "Champion". At the center of the oval is a diamond shape, representing a wrestling ring viewed from above, with the WWE logo over a globe. On the sides of the center, plate is two halves of the globe. The left side features the continents of North and South America as well as Africa and Europe, while the globe on the left shows Asia and Australia; both globes show a portion of Antarctica. The rest of the center plate is filled with ornamentation. Like all of WWE's other championships, the belt features two side plates with a removable center section that can be customized with the champion's logos; the default side plates consist of the WWE logo over a globe. On the September 30, 2024, episode of Raw, upon Jey Uso winning the championship from Bron Breakker the week prior, the championship received a minor update by adding blue on the globes on the centerplate.