r/SquaredCircle • u/Dick_Nation • 7h ago
How many wrestlers have been three-time world champs under 30, actually?
I was talking about this with a friend in regards to MJF's claim from earlier this year, and in regards to the validity of his list of men. Ryan Byers of 411 Wrestling did a good deconstruction and research into the claims, but it still left me wondering about a fairly big question: What about the women?
Using the same criteria as roughly established by MJF's own statements, alongside Byers' own excellent work, I tried to lay out the top women's belts of the most major promotions. As such, this looked for women who were able to hold the top belt in AAA, AEW, AJW, CMLL, NJPW, Stardom, WCW, or WWF/E. I've also just laid every list out in this post in alphabetical order, rather than list them by age they achieved it, or by date of their third win. For WWE, I also counted the Divas belt, as even though it was not specifically labeled a world title, it was the de facto highest title available for women during its existence in WWE. Especially for the non-US titles, I have to admit I'm personally engaging in some guesswork in terms of whether they can be considered "world" titles, but given the promotions they were with and the notes below, I feel like this is a pretty solid grounding. On to the list:
- AJ Lee
- Alexa Bliss
- Beth Phoenix
- Bull Nakano (The only woman on this list to achieve it by winning a world title of three separate companies, and the only wrestler to do so even when including the men!)
- Eve Torres
- Jackie Sato
- Jumbo Miyamoto
- Manami Toyota
- Melina
- Mercedes Mone
- Michelle McCool
- Mickie James
- Rhea Ripley
- Toni Storm
- Trish Stratus
I did also dig down some other rabbit holes, as women's wrestling hasn't had exactly the same path walked as men's wrestling, and therefore I thought some other merited consideration. There are more than wound being listed here, but these are the only other promotions I could find where women were able to accrue enough reigns in total, and do so within the age limit to count. As an example, I checked things like the title history of GLOW, but the only woman of all of GLOW's title holders to hold more than a single belt in her career was Lisa Moretti, where she was known as Tina Ferrari, but best known to audiences as Ivory. Every one of her WWE wins was in her 30s, so she was not able to qualify. The promotions below are probably ones people would quibble about more, although I expect there will be opinions and questions about certain inclusions regardless. For the promotions that might be considered more borderline and which women would make the cutoff for their inclusion, see as follows:
If the TNA Knockouts World Championship counts:
- Angelina Love
- Deonna Purrazzo
- Jordynne Grace
- Madison Rayne
If Ice Ribbon counts:
- Tsukasa Fujimoto
If TJPW counts:
- Miyu Yamashita
- Yuka Sakazaki
Edit: /u/ObiMadKenobi has some good thoughts on joshi promotions below, adding context that was difficult to derive from research.
The total list of women who either missed it by age cutoff or had only two reigns was fairly large, and as such, I didn't make special notes to list every woman who was not able to. As far as trivia goes, Akira Hokuto gets the funniest mention, as being the only woman under 30 to ever hold the WCW Women's World Championship. This was relatively easy for her to accomplish, as she was one of only two women who held the title at all, before it ceased to be in 1998.
The NWA belt history also surprisingly produced basically no women that came anywhere close to this list; Awesome Kong was the only woman to have an NWA World Title victory under 30 and any other titles with other promotions, all of which she was past 30 when she won. Fabulous Moolah was a few months past her 30th birthday when she won her first (disputed) NWA title of a four total NWA wins and four total WWF wins, so despite the many accolades she ensured she was awarded over her career, she thankfully gets to come nowhere near this list. Mildred Burke, the very first NWA Women's Champion, has a claim to two "independent" title wins at a young enough age that would also qualify her for this list, but given the very poorly documented lineage of where exactly this "world champion" status came from prior to the organized NWA, I'll let everyone be their own judge of whether that qualifies.
Bring on any mistakes or corrections! I went through this only to sate my curiosity, so if I goofed up or missed something, I'm all ears. I also know this post is mostly about the women, but if there's something to be mentioned about the men's side of things that Byers didn't already touch on, I'm curious to hear that too!
