Championship tournament On July 21, 2014, a full year after the start of the promotion,
Wrestle-1 announced the creation of its first own title, the Wrestle-1 Championship. Previous Wrestle-1 events had featured matches for championships owned by other promotions like
All Star Wrestling (ASW), European Wrestling Promotion (EWP),
Pro Wrestling Zero1 and
Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA). It was announced that the inaugural champion would be determined in a sixteen-man
single-elimination tournament taking place between September 21 and October 8. Wrestle-1's founder
Keiji Muto quickly announced that he would not be taking part in the tournament. The tournament brackets were revealed on August 8, with the exception of two participants, who would be determined in qualifying matches on August 31. In the qualifying matches,
Jiro Kuroshio defeated
Andy Wu and Daiki Inaba defeated Koji Doi. The tournament featured only wrestlers officially signed to Wrestle-1 and none of the
freelancers or outside wrestlers working regularly for the promotion. However, just before the start of the tournament on September 19, Funaki lost the World Heavyweight Championship. The Wrestle-1 Championship belt was unveiled at a press conference on September 17. The first two rounds of the tournament were held over three shows between September 21 and 23 and saw
Kai, Masakatsu Funaki,
Masayuki Kono and
Shuji Kondo advance to set up the two semifinal matches for October 8. In the semifinals, Kai and Kono were victorious over Kondo and Funaki, respectively, setting up a final match later that same day, where Kono defeated Kai to win the tournament and become the inaugural Wrestle-1 Champion. ==Title history==