WWE vs. The BELT Makers: The Legal BATTLE Over Every Championship

In 2011, one phone call pulled a championship belt off WWE television. The reason goes back to Reggie Parks, Dave Millican and Joe Marshall (J-Mar), the belt makers behind WWE's title belts. Who owns a championship belt: the craftsman who builds it, or the company that puts it on television? For twenty years, Dave Millican and Joe Marshall of J-Mar Championship Belts answered that question in opposite ways. One kept the rights to his art. The other signed every design over to the company. We start in Omaha in 1962, where Reggie Parks, a strongman from Edmonton, built his first title belt for about seventy-five dollars. We follow the acid-etched zinc plates and hand-carved leather he later taught to a fan from Tennessee, and the rights dispute that sent Vince McMahon's WWF to a California craftsman. Marshall's belts defined the Attitude Era: the Big Eagle, Stone Cold Steve Austin's Smoking Skull, the Undisputed Championship and, according to collectors, John Cena's Spinner Belt. Millican's bench produced the Hart Dynasty tag belts, the 2013 WWE Championship, IWGP Heavyweight titles for New Japan and the first AEW World Championship, unveiled by Bret Hart at Double or Nothing in 2019. Then comes October 2, 2011, Hell in a Cell in New Orleans. Cody Rhodes stuffed the oval Intercontinental belt into a paper bag and raised the classic design over his head. A call to WWE's legal department pulled that belt off television, and the company went back to Millican. You will also hear what happened to Chris Jericho's AEW belt after All Out 2019, and what followed after Reggie Parks died on October 7, 2021, at age 87. Some details come from interviews with the belt makers and from reports by the collector community. If you grew up on 1980s territory gold and the Attitude Era, this one is for you. Subscribe to The WrestleVerse and turn on notifications for more investigations into the deals, lawsuits and backstage fights that never made it to television. Tell us in the co