Professional wrestling tournament

This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (January 2011)

On various occasions in professional wrestling, a single-elimination tournament of varying match types are held, often to determine a champion for a vacant or newly-created championship, to determine the number-one contender for a championship, to determine the participants in a future championship match, or is held with no championship or future championship match qualification attached to winning, such as in most editions of the King of the Ring tournament. Sometimes promotion (especially in earlier eras of wrestling) may use a title tournament that are fictitious in nature (that is, the title may have been simply awarded under the pretext of winning a tournament elsewhere) - notable ones include the tournaments that established the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, the WWE Intercontinental Championship, and the WWE United States Championship (the latter when it was the NWA United States Championship).

In tournaments with a fixed bracket, a multiple-disqualification or a multiple-countout eliminates all parties involved, and those who are slated to face the winner of such a match simply partakes in a match with one less opponent (or simply does not wrestle, if no opponents remain). Tournaments, however, rarely have a final match where only one such finalist remain, with no others qualifying for the final round.

Tournaments may employ a single match type throughout, or may vary match by match or round by round.