AEW already has enough championship belts to keep a trophy cabinet working overtime, but one title that never made it to television could have been the most corporate of them all. At one point, AEW actually considered creating a MAX Championship tied to Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming service.
Sean Ross Sapp revealed the wild abandoned idea during a Fightful Select Q&A while answering a question about championships that were pitched but never became reality. The conversation eventually landed on AEW’s Continental Championship and an idea that was floating around before that belt arrived.
“I once upon a time heard a story that the Continental Championship was considered to be like, the MAX Championship.”
Before anyone starts rewriting AEW history, Sapp made an important distinction. He actually asked Tony Khan about the story, and Khan pushed back on the idea that the Continental Championship was simply supposed to be called the MAX Championship.
“Now, when I asked Tony Khan about this, he was like, no, not really.”
Khan apparently acknowledged that the Max idea may have existed, but he told Sapp that the Continental Championship itself was basically the championship he always wanted to create.
“He’s like, maybe it was considered, but it was. But he definitely was like, oh, continental title is kind of what I always wanted it to be.”
The timing of the pitch makes the entire thing make a lot more sense. Sapp said Warner Bros. Discovery approached AEW in 2023 about potentially putting the company’s pay-per-view events on Max, and both sides apparently believed they were making serious progress toward an agreement.
“WWBD had approached AW in mid-2023 about the possibility of streaming Pay per View events on max.”
Those negotiations didn’t immediately result in a finished deal. Sapp said the eventual agreement came much later, but talks had already reached a point where AEW and WBD were kicking around some pretty big ideas.
“And that deal didn’t end up getting done until, like, fall of 2024, but both sides thought they were pretty far along.”
Apparently, “pretty far along” included the possibility of putting the Max name on an actual championship.
“And even. Even to the point to where it was a consideration of adding a MAX Championship.”
Sapp said sources from both AEW and Warner Bros. Discovery told him that the MAX Championship concept eventually faded away once the Continental Championship became a reality. That doesn’t mean one belt simply got renamed into the other, but it does mean the Max idea was apparently real enough to be discussed.
“And people I talked to in AEW and WBD said that that was eventually just kind of replaced with the idea of the Continental Championship.”
Sapp then went out of his way to make sure nobody twisted that into something bigger than what he was saying. The Continental Championship was not simply the MAX Championship with a different logo slapped on the front.
“So it’s not like a. Oh, well, it. The Continental Championship was supposed to be the MAX Championship.”
Instead, the streaming-branded championship was simply one possibility being kicked around before AEW went in another direction. Once the Continental Championship arrived, the MAX Championship idea apparently died right there.
“It was just, okay, this was under consideration at one point. And once the Continental Championship came along, it really Just kind of stopped being under consideration.”
AEW’s relationship with Warner Bros. Discovery eventually became much bigger than putting Max branding on a championship belt. Ringside News later covered Warner Bros. Discovery officially announcing AEW programming would stream on Max beginning in 2025, while the Continental Championship remained its own piece of AEW television.
The MAX Championship never escaped the idea stage, and considering how fans react whenever another AEW belt pops up, that may have saved Tony Khan from one hell of a debate. Instead, Max eventually got AEW programming and pay-per-view integration while the Continental Championship got to exist without looking like a walking streaming-service advertisement.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
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