WWE Rumors - Company changed name of Championship title due to rival promotion
As reported first by PWInsider, the NXT Women's Championship will now be referred to just as the NXT Championship. The change was later seemingly confirmed in a tweet from the WWE on Fox handle.
Sportskeeda's very own Tom Colohue opened up about the reasoning behind the change in his latest YouTube video.
Colohue revealed that the company altered the name of the title after Tessa Blanchard was crowned the first female Impact Wrestling World Champion at the Hard to Kill PPV where she beat Sami Callihan.
WWE wants the fans to view the NXT Women's title as a World Championship that is on par with the men's NXT title and the name change has been done to facilitate the shift in mindset. The company intends to eliminate the gender-specific designation of the title.
Tom said the following in his video:
Let's start with the NXT Women's Championship which will be henceforth known as the NXT Championship. There is, of course, already an NXT Championship, now there is going to be two and you will have context clues for which one's the men's and which one's the women's.
From what I'm hearing, with Impact Wrestling crowning it's first female World Champion, we're going to have a female World Champion in NXT as well, but she will just be a Champion and a World Champion and you'd have two World Champions. Of course, when you look through for example Wikipedia or keeping the history of these different wrestlers, you do see lists of Women's Championships, RAW Women's Championship, SmackDown Women's Championship, they want to make it clear that it's a world Championship.
The change comes a day after Becky Lynch called for equal opportunities to be given to both women and men based on skill and not gender. The Man issued another statement and clarified that she wasn't advocating for change in title names.
WWE's decision to rename the NXT Women's title is an interesting one as it increases the prestige of the already illustrious title.
Don't forget to check out the most recent edition of Sportskeeda's Dropkick DiSKussions podcast in which Tom Colohue and Korey Gunz provide a comprehensive analysis of the upcoming Royal Rumble PPV.