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Big Gold Belt (Wrestling)

 Big Gold Belt (Wrestling)
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 The "Big Gold Belt" — also known as "Big Gold", "Big Goldie" and "the (Ric) Flair belt" — is the Fan Nickname given to what is perhaps the most famous championship belt design in professional wrestling history. It has represented the world heavyweight championship titles of NWA, WCW and WWE from 1986 to 2014.The original Big Gold Belt was made in late 1985. It was ordered by wrestler Nelson Royal on behalf of NWA subsidiary Jim Crockett Promotions, who wanted a new world heavyweight championship belt to replace the "domed globe" (aka. The "Ten Pounds of Gold") NWA World Heavyweight Championship belt that had been used since 1973. Nelson Royal owned a Western apparel store in Mooresville, North Carolina and contacted two of his suppliers in order to produce the belt. The plates were made by Crumrine Jewelers, a company in Reno, Nevada that specialized in Western-style belt buckles. They made three sterling silver plates — one large center plate and two smaller identical side plates — with the letters, swirls, rope borders and relief pieces electroplated with 24 karat gold, giving them a two-tone silver and gold look. Cubic zirconia diamonds and rubies were placed inside of various stoneholders across the plates. After receiving the plates from Crumrine, Royal contacted Harris Leather (now known as Harris Leather and Silverworks) in State Road, North Carolina to make a leather strap. The strap was made of Cordovan brown leather and stitched with light gray flax thread, complete with a set of sixteen stainless steel snaps on each end to fasten the belt to its wearer.After the Crocketts received the completed belt in February of 1986, it was given to then NWA World Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair in February of 1986, who debuted it on TV that same month. Flair was also given a custom nameplate that was screwed onto on the bottom portion of the belt.note This wasn't the first wrestling championship belt to feature such nameplates, but after the Big Gold was introduced, it became the standard practice for most wrestling companies. The initial nameplate misspelled Ric with a "k" at the end, with Crumrine sending a corrected nameplate a few months later. Other than the two Flair nameplates and one for Sting (which read "Stinger"), no other Crumrine nameplates appeared on the belt. On the rare occasions that someone other than Flair held the title, the belt was worn with no nameplatenote Notes from Crumrine indicate that nameplates for Dusty Rhodes and Ronnie Garvin were ordered, but it isn't known why they weren't used. It was likely because their title reigns were short-lived (the nameplates weren't completed until after both had dropped the title back to Flair). The nameplate for Dusty Rhodes was eventually found◊ by Cody Rhodes after his father's death.. It wasn't until the Big Gold returned to WCW after Flair's WWF run (see below) that every wrestler who held it would have their own nameplate, albeit simple trophy-style nameplates.The Big Gold would continue to be used when Jim Crockett Promotions was purchased by Ted Turner and turned into WCW, with the belt now representing both the NWA World Heavyweight Championship and the WCW World Heavyweight Championship simultaneously. This created problems when Tatsumi Fujinami defeated Flair in a title match at a WCW / New Japan Pro-Wrestling Crossover Supershow on March 21, 1991. Fujinami was recognized as the NWA World Heavyweight Champion, but not the WCW World Heavyweight Champion (the excuse used to justify this was that Fujinami had thrown Flair over the top rope onto the floor, a tactic that was illegal in WCW until 1998.), with Flair barging into the following press conference and taking the belt back so that it could still be used at WCW events, leaving NWA World Champion Fujinami without a belt. A rematch would take place at SuperBrawl on May 19th, with Flair winning and being recognized as both NWA and WCW World Heavyweight Champions.After Flair left WCW in July of 1991, Flair refused to return the belt as then-Vice President Jim Herd had yet to pay back Flair's $25,000 security deposit on itnote a deposit that NWA wrestlers were required to pay in order to hold the championship at the time which Flair claims was actually $38,000 after interest. Since neither NWA nor WCW owned the rights to the Big Gold note Despite the initial concept art featuring the NWA letters at the top of the center plate, the original Big Gold Belt had no company logos on it, simply reading "WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT WRESTLING CHAMPION". The reason why was supposedly because Jim Crockett foresaw their company splitting from the NWA and wanted to ensure that the NWA couldn't lay claim to the belt when that happened., Flair kept the belt and took it with him to WWF when he debuted for them in September of 1991, declaring himself the "real world champion" as a shot at both WWF World Heavyweight Champion Hulk Hogan (in storyline) and Jim Herd. As a result, NWA and WCW were forced to strip Flair of his title reign and WCW introduced a new world heavyweight championship belt◊ designed by Reggie Parks (who also designed WWF's classic Intercontinental Championship as well as the famed "Winged Eagle◊" design for the WWF Championship, the latter of which this new belt bore a great resemblance to), that featured the WCW logo on every plate, in order to avoid any more mishaps like this.WCW filed a lawsuit against Flair, and in order to avoid fanning the flames, the WWF would take measures to not show the belt on TV. They started out by pixelating it, before eventually replacing it with a blurred-out WWF Tag Team Title belt. Both parties eventually reached a settlement, Flair's security deposit (with interest) was paid back to him and the belt returned to WCW in August of 1992, where it was defended internationally as the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, being held by the likes of Masahiro Chono and The Great Muta before eventually returning to WCW television. In September of 1993, WCW seceded from the NWAnote As the Crocketts predicted and in the process, gained sole ownership of the Big Gold, which was now referred to as the WCW International World Heavyweight Championship, the world championship recognized by the fictitious WCW International Board of Directors. In June of 1994, both the WCW and WCW International World Championships were unified after Flair (who returned to WCW in 1993) beat Sting in a title unification match at Clash of the Champions. The Reggie Parks belt was retired and the Big Gold Belt once again represented the WCW World Heavyweight Championship.In 1999, AFX Studios — a company in Marietta, Georgia that made a lot of costumes and props for WCW — replaced the original brown leather strap with a new black strapnote Many mistakenly believe that the strap was always black or that it was replaced much earlier. In reality, the original brown strap became so dirty and discolored by the mid-90s that it began to look black. and made five cast copies of the beltnote It is often believed that these cast copies were props made for the 2000 film Ready to Rumble since the real Big Gold couldn't be taken off of WCW TV for filming. The prop belts used in that film were replicas made by championship belt maker Joe "J-Mar" Marshall, (who would later make the early WWE versions of the Big Gold).: two requested by WCW, a backup in case one of the otw two was lost or needed repairs, and two personal copies made for Diamond Dallas Page and Kevin Nashnote Nash sold his copy of the belt to championship belt maker Dave Millican. respectively. The plates on these cast copies were made of bronze and, unlike the original's two-tone silver and gold finish, were entirely gold-plated. One of the cast copies would appear on WCW televison during the infamous Bash at the Beach 2000 match between Hulk Hogan and Jeff Jarrett, Jarrett would walk out to the ring wearing a cast copy belt and lay down for Hogan in the ring. Hogan put his foot on Jarrett and "won" this copy belt — which he still possesses to this day and has falsely claimed is the original — before calling out Vince Russo in a Worked Shoot promo and Russo doing the same later on (which would result in Hogan later suing Russo for defamation of character), with Hogan being subsequently fired from WCW, both in Kayfabe and real life. Jarrett would lose the original belt to Booker T later that night. In January of 2001, then-champion Scott Steiner would begin using another cast copy belt on TV due to the original belt being very beaten up by that point.This cast copy of the WCW World Heavyweight Championship would appear on WWF television during the InVasion angle until it was unified with the "Big Eagle" WWF Championship to become the Undisputed WWF Championship. This lasted until March of 2002, when a new belt design◊ was introduced to represent the Undisputed WWF Championship. However in September of 2002, following the now WWE splitting its roster into two separate brands, a second world heavyweight championship was created for the Raw brand and the AFX cast copy of the Big Gold Belt returned. In March of 2003, a new 3-D engraved version of the belt was made, which featured a shorter, narrower strap with fewer snaps, a smaller, more rounded center plate, longer side plates, slightly different swirl patterns and larger rubies. A WWE logo was also placed at the top of the center plate for trademark purposes. In 2011, the black leather strap was given a red crocskin backing.Various versions of this redesigned Big Gold Belt would continue to represent the World Heavyweight Championship until August of 2014, about eight months after both of WWE's top titles had been unified. The belt appears to have been retired for good, but to many wrestling fans, it will always be the World Heavyweight Wrestling Championship belt.For many years, it was unknown what happened to the original Crumrine Big Gold Belt following WCW's downfall, with rumors circulating that either Scott Steiner kept it after swapping it with the AFX cast copy (which, according to Steiner himself, is true.) or that Ric Flair gifted it to Triple Hnote Ric Flair gave Triple H a WWF knockoff known as the "Vegas Big Gold◊" which was briefly used by WWF at live events during Flair's "Real World's Champion" run and the lawsuit that accompanied it.. It currently belongs to Conrad Thompson, a mortgage broker, wrestling podcaster and the son-in-law of Ric Flair. The Ric Flair nameplate was reattached to the main plate, the plates were placed back onto the original strap and the entire belt was restored as much as possible. The belt occasionally makes appearances at wrestling conventions and Flair himself even wore it to the ring for his last match in 2022.A Twitter account for the belt can be found here.For more information about the Big Gold Belt, check out the book Big Gold: A Close Look at Pro Wrestling's Most Celebrated Championship Belt by Dick Bourne.List of championship titles represented by the Big Gold Belt:
 Big Gold Belt (Wrestling)
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