List of TNA World Heavyweight Champions

List Of TNA World Heavyweight Champions

The TNA World Heavyweight Championship is a professional wrestling world heavyweight championship owned by the Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) promotion. From June 2002 to May 2007, TNA used the NWA World Heavyweight Championship as their primary championship due to an agreement with the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). On May 13, 2007, the NWA abruptly ended the arrangement and retrieved control of the NWA World Heavyweight Championship. On the same night, TNA was set to host its annual Sacrifice pay-per-view (PPV) event, in which the NWA World Heavyweight Championship was to be defended by then-champion Christian Cage against Kurt Angle and Sting in a Three Way match. Angle won the match and on the following episode of TNA's television program TNA Impact! on May 17, was declared the new "TNA World Heavyweight Champion." He was stripped of the championship later in the program, with Management Director Jim Cornette citing a problematic finish to the PPV match. The ownership of the championship was decided on June 17, 2007 at TNA's Slammiversary PPV event in a King of the Mountain match involving Angle, Cage, A.J. Styles, Samoa Joe, and Chris Harris, which Angle won.

Being a professional wrestling championship, the title is won via a scripted ending to a match or awarded to a wrestler because of a storyline. All title changes have occurred at TNA-promoted events; reigns that occurred on Impact! usually air on tape delay and as such are listed with the day the tapings occurred, rather than the air date. Angle holds the record for most reigns, with five. At 256 days, Bobby Roode's only reign is the longest in the title's history. Angle's first reign holds the record for shortest reign in the title's history at one day. Jeff Hardy is the current champion in his third reign. He defeated Austin Aries on October 14, 2012 at Bound for Glory to win the title. Overall, there have been twenty-one reigns shared among eleven wrestlers, with two vacancies. Also incidentally Hardy currently is the only wrestler in the company that has held every different design of the TNA World Heavyweight championship.