Continental Classic tournament to crown AEW Triple Crown champion as titles are merged
The Continental Classic tournament will crown the new AEW Triple Crown champion as AEW President Tony Khan announced that the ROH World title and the NJPW Strong Openweight title will be merged.
Khan said that at the Worlds End pay-per-view, the winner becomes the AEW Continental champion as well, which is why they’re calling it the Triple Crown with all the titles merged together.
Khan also revealed the scoring system for the tournament, with three points for a win and one point for a draw, similar to those for soccer/football leagues especially in Europe. In addition, there will be no interference in any of the matches.
With the announcement also came the additions of Eddie Kingston, the current ROH World and NJPW Strong Openweight champion, and Mark Briscoe to the tournament. They join Bryan Danielson and Andrade El Idolo, with eight more set to be announced.
The round-robin tournament starts next Wednesday on Dynamite and continues on Rampage and Collision every week.
I mean i get why New Japan may want to get rid of the excess Strong title belts but why would you get rid of the ROH championship if you plan to keep ROH as a thing? Or has Tony just decided to close ROH?
“Three points for a win and one point for a draw, similar to those for soccer/football leagues.” And, you know, the NXT Global Heritage Invitational that just ran. But AEW is unique, man. They do their own thing. Tony will tell you all about it in his next Very Important Announcement.
On the other hand, I do have to give a little credit to Tony for doing something unique, at least for him. This tournament will actually result in…fewer belts.
@What?
Wanna bet that the Triple Crown champion (typing that feels so stupid…) will carry three belts around?
@Luke: That does seem like the more likely option. Also, that reminded me that it’s now been 18 months since the “unification” of the Raw and Smackdown tag team championships, but to this day they’re still hauling four belts everywhere they go for no apparent reason.
@What?–My guess for the reason there are still 2 sets of tag belts is so they can eventually separate them and have a tag team championship for each brand in the future.
@art123guy
Come on, that doesn’t make any sense. They should merge them even more and create a world tag team singles title…
@Luke–Sorry, yer right. I was thinking real world logic, not WWE logic.
WWE bulletin, 2028: It’s been almost a year since Roman Reigns defeated Bron Breakker to become the WWE World International Universal Tag Team Singles Heavyweight Champion in his first title defense/unification in 14 months. Triple H has announced the creation of yet another set of tag team championships to replace the ones Reigns assimilated into the Bloodline Collective, also remarking that Reigns’ next title defense is “penciled in” for Wrestlemania in 2030.
Rumors of a “dream match” with AEWROHNJPWAAA World Continental Openweight Strongbad Champion MJF persist, but the Council of Khans have thus far been unable to agree on terms, with Nick insisting that all the titles be unified and Tony pushing for the creation of a belt for each title to eventually be distributed equally amongst the rosters. Dave Meltzer speculates that the match will happen “within the next year, unless it doesn’t.”
In related news, TNA announced that Impact will make its 12th network move of the last decade, this time to a local access station in Little Rock, AR. The press release proclaimed that “momentum is really on our side this time. It may be Little Rock, but TNA is on a roll.”