What is the WWE United Kingdom Championship?

WWE announced a new United Kingdom Championship on Thursday, but what exactly will be its purpose?

In the age of the internet, there are not a lot of times where WWE truly shocks us. However, they did so on Thursday with the announcement of the new United Kingdom Championship.

Thursday morning, Triple H held a press conference over in England along with former Universal Champion Finn Balor where he announced the addition of the title to the company. In January, there will be a two-day tournament held with 16 British wrestlers taking part. At the conclusion of the tournament, obviously, we will have the first-ever WWE United Kingdom Champion.

This was an announcement that no one really saw coming, so with that, there are a lot of questions. Really, people are asking exactly how this title works? Will it only be defended in the UK? Will it be on RAW? Will it be on Smackdown Live?

Well, following the announcement, there was this little bit of clarification about the new title from Triple H.

"We’re seeing what this will become. It’s not a science yet. The hope is it becomes its own weekly show, based out of the U.K., with U.K. talent. Those talents will still be able to perform within the [independent companies] RevPros, ICWs and Progress’s. As those talents are working [in the U.K.] and moving up [in the industry], we’re helping RevPro, ICW and Progress to grow and help cultivate their talent pool as well. Before it was a pipedream that you’d make it beyond the U.K. or the indie scene to the WWE. Now there’s a clear path to do it."

Just from that answer right there from the King of Kings, you can tell that this was something more or less thrown together on the fly. This hasn’t been a project that’s been in the works for months like a lot of other things they do. They’re gonna roll with this and then see where they wanna go from there.

Whatever the case, as with anything else in professional wrestling, we’ll just have to see how this plays out after the tournament in January. Once we crown that first champion, we’ll have a better indication of where exactly this project is going.