WCW North American Championship (WCW Buys WWF)

The North American Championship is a professional wrestling title owned by WCW. It is one of the two top championships in WCW since 2001 complementing the WCW World Heavyweight Championship.

The North American Championship, was established under Thunder following the brand extension and was awarded Scott Steiner following his victory of a championship tournament at Starrcade. It is the top title on Thunder except for a brief stay on Nitro from 2002 to 2005.

The title was represented by the historic Winged Eagle belt first introduced in WWF in 1988, until the current design was introduced in 2016

History
WCW was facing many backstage issues between wrestlers and their egos and the creative team was having difficulty filling in the 5 hours of WCW programing between Nitro and Thunder, this would lead to Turner Broadcasting decided to split the roster and creative teams between the two shows in a attempt to fix these problems.

So June of 2001, WCW introduced the Brand Extension. They split the roster between Eric Bischoff's Nitro and Ric Flair's Thunder. Among the draft picks Hulk Hogan who was Undisputed Champion at that time, was sent to Nitro leaving Thunder without a major title.

Thunder would use the United States Championship as their main title, but following a drop in ratings Thunder creative decided that changes were needed.

WCW introduced its North American Championship on Thunder November 5, 2001 by General Manager Dusty Rhodes to be awarded to the winner of a 16 man tournament which final would be held at Starrcade.

With the purchase of WWF the year before, WCW acquired many of their assets including the use of their championships WCW deciced to use the Winged Eagle title which had a long history and was highly respected.

June 24, 2002 was the first ever "Draft Day" which allowed Nitro and Thunder management to draft their stars which lead to both shows champions (Nitro's Jeff Jarrett and Thunder's Sting) being traded taking their titles with them. The two titles would stay on these programing until June 27, 2005 when the Champions AJ Styles and Samoa Joe would be drafted taking their titles back to their original shows.

The Winged Eagle would be used as the North American Title until the Thunder after Starrcade. (December 20, 2016) when new Champion Matt Hardy introduced the current title design.