I have so much love for Eddie Kingston as a performer, and I know he loves Japanese wrestling, and I know the whole “American Triple Crown” thing probably means a lot to him. But it hasn’t even been three months and the Continental Crown is officially the stupidest thing in AEW — a wrestling promotion so dumb that still inexplicably employs Chris Jericho.

Unifying the ROH World Championship with one of NJPW’s less prestigious belts and another AEW title that Tony Khan just made up out of thin air always seemed like a dubious idea, especially considering, you know, the fact that Khan owns ROH and is currently running an ROH TV show. There were questions from the start, including “are the titles actually unified” and “if not, what are they?” Khan has deftly avoided these questions through the clever means of putting his fingers in his ears and yelling that he’s not listening, so we’ve basically been left to figure out what the rules of the title are by guesswork — sifting through AEW’s chaotic booking to try and figure out what everything means. 

It certainly felt initially like the three titles were now one. As far back as the media scrum following AEW Full Gear 2023 in November, Khan indicated that it would be a single championship that would be defended in AEW, NJPW, and ROH, as well as in 2024’s Continental Classic tournament.

“Whoever wins this tournament is gonna come away with a very, very prestigious title,” Khan said. “And it’s actually not just creating more championships in wrestling — it’s actually consolidation, but more importantly, it’s cooperation. What this triple crown means is that the winner of this tournament is going to be creating a championship that’s very prestigious, and a champion that represents three different companies.”

And indeed, while official details have remained hard to come by, since Kingston won the Continental Classic at Worlds End the Continental Crown has been defended on two episodes of AEW TV, one AEW PPV, and one NJPW PPV (It has not been defended on ROH programming) with all three belts on the line each time. But suddenly, this past week, that changed. On “Dynamite,” after beating Kingston in trios action, Kazuchika Okada held up just one of Kingston’s three title belts, for literally no reason. Now Okada is wrestling Kingston for solely the AEW Continental Championship on next week’s “Dynamite,” while it was announced on Thursday that Kingston would defend the ROH World Championship, on its own, against Mark Briscoe at Supercard of Honor.

This is just flatly ridiculous. If the titles can be defended separately, they are not unified. If they’re not unified, what was the point in any of this? Why not just have the winner of the Continental Classic win the Continental title, and have that coincidentally be Kingston, who already held the other two? Why make a big fuss about the Triple Crown? And why did the title’s booking suddenly change? Did NJPW get cold feet? (next time maybe don’t unify titles you own with a title you don’t.) Did Tony suddenly realize that the ROH world title hadn’t been defended in ROH in four months and that he should probably book a title match for Supercard of Honor? (next time maybe don’t make the top men’s singles title on one of your wrestling shows part of a Triple Crown deal.) Or was simply none of this planned out in any coherent way, with no details ever provided for how this supposed championship was supposed to work? (next time maybe just don’t do any of this.)

The 24/7 Championship is possibly the dumbest title in WWE history, an ill-conceived attempt at bringing back the Hardcore Championship in the PG era. You know what it had, though? Rules that make sense. You might have been confused as to who the 24/7 Champion was at any given moment, but you were never confused about how the title changed hands — about the fundamental rules that governed the championship. If Okada beats Kingston on Wednesday (and do you really think Okada is losing his first official AEW singles match?) the Continental Crown will effectively cease to exist, since two different people will be holding pieces of it. What does that mean for the future of the American Triple Crown and the 2024 Continental Classic? Nobody knows, because nobody knows how any of this works. Nobody knows what the rules are — probably not even Khan. What we do know is that, while Triple Crowns historically do not last long, even the J-Crown lasted more than three months. If the Continental Crown was established on New Year’s Eve and gets blown up before Easter, this was all a profound waste of time.

Written by Miles Schneiderman