The ECW World Heavyweight Championship was a professional wrestling world heavyweight championship originally used in Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) and later, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). It was the original world title of the ECW promotion, spun off from the NWA World Heavyweight Championship. It was established under ECW in 1994 but was originally introduced in 1992 by the promotion's precursor, Eastern Championship Wrestling, a territory of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). The inaugural champion was Jimmy Snuka in 1992; however, WWE considers the inaugural world heavyweight champion to be Shane Douglas, with his reign beginning on August 27, 1994, when Eastern Championship Wrestling split from the NWA to become Extreme Championship Wrestling.
The title was deactivated in 2001 when ECW ceased all of its operations. The assets of ECW were then purchased by WWE in 2003. In 2006, WWE reactivated the championship as the world title of their newly established ECW brand. It was the third concurrently active world championship in the promotion, complementing the WWE Championship and World Heavyweight Championship of the other two brands, Raw and SmackDown. The ECW Championship then briefly appeared as the sole world title of the Raw brand in 2008 as a result of that year's draft. When WWE disbanded the ECW brand in 2010, the championship was subsequently retired following the final episode of ECW with Ezekiel Jackson as the final titleholder, who consequently had the shortest reign at 2 minutes, 25 seconds as he won it during the episode.
