Triple Crown (professional wrestling)

The Triple Crown is an accomplishment in professional wrestling. It is a distinction made to a professional wrestler who has won three of a single promotion's championships; specifically, a world championship, secondary singles championship and tag team championship.

National promotions that officially recognize Triple Crown winners include WWE, Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA), and Ring of Honor (ROH) as well as the defunct World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW). Notable independent promotions such as Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) also have established a version of the Triple Crown.

In WWE (formerly known as the World Wide Wrestling Federation/WWWF and World Wrestling Federation/WWF), the term Triple Crown Champion has traditionally been used to describe a wrestler who has won the WWE Championship, the Intercontinental Championship, and the (now defunct) World Tag Team Championship. For a span of nearly eighteen years, from 1979 up through 1997, these were the only three championships of the company, and a wrestler who won all three championships (not necessarily concurrently) was considered a "Triple Crown Champion". Until the 1990s, the accomplishment was extremely rare, with Pedro Morales remaining the sole Triple Crown winner for more than a decade.

Following the first brand extension between 2002 and 2011, the (now defunct) World Heavyweight Championship and the WWE Tag Team Championship became alternate titles that can compose part of the Triple Crown. During the unification of those two world championships and two tag team championships, the only three Triple Crown championships of WWE were the WWE, Intercontinental, and WWE Tag Team Championships (the United States Championship is not considered part of the Triple Crown, though by 2015 it is considered part of WWE's Grand Slam). In 2016, a second brand extension period began and two new titles were introduced: the Universal Championship and the SmackDown Tag Team Championship. On January 12th, 2017, WWE stated that the aforementioned championships were acceptable substitutes for their counterpart titles in the Grand Slam, but have not yet confirmed if they are part of the Triple Crown. No holders of these two titles has held the other required titles to become a Triple Crown or Grand Slam champion.

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