Belt Design
During the championship's five-year history, it has had five designs. The original belt, unveiled in May 2007, had on its center plate an imprint of an eagle with its wings extended. The word "World" was placed above the eagle's head on a ribbon. The ribbon was wrapped around the bird's wings and body. Five stars were engraved on the ribbon when it passed over each of the bird's wings and the word "Champion" as it passed over the bird's talons. The words "Heavyweight Wrestling" were printed across the bird's chest. At the top of the center plate, was TNA's logo. Four smaller side plates had an imprint of a globe centered with TNA's logo at the top and bottom of each. At each end of the belt was a small plate that covered the belt snaps with TNA's logo engraved on each.
At the November 8, 2010, tapings of the November 11 edition of Impact!, TNA introduced a new design for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship belt, which the champion Jeff Hardy dubbed the "Immortal championship". The new design was consisted of a purple strap with a silver center plate depicting a masked head (designed to resemble Hardy's face with face paint), the TNA logo on the forehead and blue lines along the mask. There are four irregular dodecagonal side plates on the belt, shaped like stars with rounded edges on two of the sides of these plates. This specific design as well as the fifth version of the belt was designed by Hardy himself; and became the second design of the belt.
The Immortal belt was replaced by the third design of the belt at the March 14, 2011, tapings of the March 17 edition of Impact!, introduced by the reigning champion at the time, Sting. The new design features seven gold plates over a black leather strap. The largest plate is the center plate with faux diamonds aligned along its multiple rounded edges. Over the center plate is a large TNA Wrestling logo and below it the words "Heavyweight Champion" are engraved. On each side of the center plate is a group of three smaller plates, one with a TNA logo engraved while the other two feature separate corresponding halves of a globe. A slightly edited version was introduced a few weeks later with an eighth small plate added to the end of the right strap with "TNA" engraved on it and the word "Heavyweight" on the center plate widened to become the fourth design of the belt.
On the October 18, 2012, episode of Impact Wrestling, then-new TNA World Heavyweight Champion Jeff Hardy introduced the fifth design of the title belt, a modified version of his custom "Immortal" belt, this time with a black strap and an omega symbol on it (a reference to his OMEGA promotion). Unlike the Immortal days, he continued carrying the standard TNA World Heavyweight Championship belt along with his custom belt. Both versions of the "Immortal" belt were designed by Hardy himself.
Read more about this topic: TNA World Heavyweight Championship
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