All-England Championship

The All-England Championship (formerly the FWA All England Championship) is a mid-card title originally contested for in the professional wrestling promotion, Frontier Wrestling Alliance, and now contested in .

FWA

The genesis of the All-England title had its roots in the weekly FWA TV show on Portsmouth's MyTV channel in the summer of 2001. With the main FWA title held by Doug Williams, and Williams in a storyline dispute with the promotion's commissioner, Victoria De Montfort, a decision was made to focus on a secondary belt as a TV championship. At the time, the FWA had been using the FWA European Union Championship as a secondary title, and with the company's ownership keen on promoting a particularly English flavour to the show, the title was renamed the All-England championship, a nod to the organisation running the Wimbledon tennis championships.

Scottie Rock, the last-recognised EU Champion, had been coming to the ring wearing the belt, which at that point was not recognised on the TV show. This was explained away as being a "gypsy fighting championship" belt by the commentary team. Nevertheless, Rock and Johnny Storm were chosen to compete for the initial championship, won by Storm in Portsmouth in July 2001.

The championship was initially invisaged as being a Brits-only competition. However, Ahmed Chaer, a Turkish-German wrestler from the German Stampede Wrestling promotion, was given the title to cement a short-lived alliance between the two promotions, though he lost it on his first defence a week later, to Paul Travell. Although the belt would then revert to its homegrown roots, the American Chris Hamrick would also later hold the title.

IPW:UK

Former champion Leroy Kincade, who defeated Hade Vansen on October 16, 2005, was stripped of the title on November 19, 2006 after siding with in an inter-promotional feud with FWA. Kincade first put his title reign in jeopardy on October 7 of that year by competing in an unsanctioned All-England Title defence at an IPW:UK show. Even though FWA had a working relationship with the promotion, and Kincade in fact retained the title, FWA refused to recognised the result of the match as the FWA management team did not agree for IPW:UK to use the All-England Title name and belt on their show. This continued with Kincade repeatedly siding with IPW:UK and scheduling his own title defences before finally being stripped of the FWA All-England Championship.

Kincade continued to defend the belt even though not officially being champion. However the next official champion would be FWA loyalist Iceman who defeat Kincade at an IPW show. Prior to the match, the FWA announced it would sanction the Title match only if Iceman won.

During the "Final Frontiers" show, IPW:UK wrestler Sam Slam won the title from Iceman. However, this show also saw IPW:UK win the inter-promotional feud and push FWA out of business, leaving the titles status unclear. FWA would also revive itself as XWA but would severe all ties with the All-England Championship.

Sam Slam continued to defend the belt, which is now recognised by IPW:UK as a national championship rather than a promotion-specific belt.

Title history

Notes

Trivia

*The belt initially used for the title was actually the belt that had been used as the FWA Heavyweight title. When a new, gold belt was ordered for the main title, the original silver belt was used as the All-England title.
*Hade Vansen's reign as champion lasted nearly two years, missing the two year mark by only two days.

References

* [http://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&promotion=Frontier%20Wrestling%20Alliance&nr=00000030 Cagematch All England title history]