WWE News: Major Update On Why WWE Is Bringing In The WWE United Kingdom Championship


WWE made the huge announcement today that they’re planning a tournament this January to crown the first ever WWE United Kingdom Champion, but there seems to be more to this than just a championship. The UK happens to be a huge audience for the WWE, but sadly, ratings have not been as good there as they would like. Many in the WWE may feel that catering to the fans more could help that improve.

Interestingly, a random two-day tournament being announced does cater to them. However, it won’t be a huge deal for the WWE to just crown a UK Champion. The reason behind this seems to be much deeper. World of Sport is coming back with wrestling in the UK, but the issue is that they happen to be on the major ITV channel while WWE is on Sky Sports. If they cater to UK fans, they could take them away from the WWE the way TNA tried to do.

World of Sport might have several advantages over WWE, including ITV’s ease of access and possible fees for some of the cable channels. ITV stands out as one of the top networks, and World of Sport going there could be big for them and bad for WWE; especially if they want to sign some of the wrestlers.

[Image by WWE]

The Wrestling Observer notes that ITV vs. WWE has already been discussed behind the scenes, which led to some interesting contract changes to the ITV wrestler contracts. The amendment to the deal stated that talent could still appear with other companies, even iPPVs. Yet they cannot appear on TV for other major networks or companies. This would include the WWE clearly. ITV even gets first call on bookings, which is a tactic TNA has employed.

This did not sit well with WWE, who thought the ITV thing was just for a short period with World of Sport. WOS has targeted a lot of the best talent in The UK, which is great, but that kills off WWE’s attempt to go for them. This is why they have reportedly offered contracts to several of the wrestlers there, and it looks likely they will get many of the workers they’re going after.

The contracts have been referred to as “competition-killing,” which is most likely due to WWE putting hardly any restrictions on the contracts except for the similar thing ITV put in their deal. Since WWE is the bigger company with more opportunities, where do you think people are going to sign? Many wondered what was being planned for some time, but with this new tournament, it seemed sort of obvious.

It was rumored that a show would eventually take place on a regular basis involving UK talent. Based on what Triple H said in the press conference today, it seems that WWE will lean in that direction once everything gets going for them regarding a regular building and the signing of talent. The restrictions will be the same once the show comes up, with the wrestlers still being allowed to work for various independent companies, including the local ICW, Progress, and others.

[Image by WWE]

WWE has reportedly been offering these interesting contracts to various types of UK wrestlers. Some are well known in and out of the UK, while others are more obscure. The platform WWE is offering will be huge for the UK talent. It looks like once they crown their official WWE United Kingdom Champion, a show will follow soon after, which is great to see for the UK fans of the WWE.

This will also help them in their rivalry with ITV. WWE will claim this had nothing to do with ITV and World of Sport, and there had been plans on the table for this sort of thing for some time. However, it is likely that this was planned when they got wind of WOS returning. WWE would not offer the contracts mentioned in this article if they were not worried about possible issues with WOS.

It will be interesting to see what WWE plans to do once the new United Kingdom Champion is crowned. Will they use some of the UK talent on WWE NXT, the Cruiserweight division on WWE RAW, or in other upcoming tournaments? There are many questions that still need to be answered, but with a tournament coming, we do know that WWE will do their best to continuously cater to the fans in the UK. This will surely help them ratings wise.

[Featured Image By WWE]

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