A
world championship
is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, or ability.
The title is usually awarded through a combination of specific contests or, less commonly,
ranking
systems (e.g. the
ICC Test Championship
), or a combination of the two (e.g.
World Triathlon Championships
in
Triathlon
). This determines a 'world champion', who or which is commonly considered the best nation, team, individual (or other entity) in the world in a particular field, although the vagaries of sport ensure that the competitor recognised at the best in an event is not always the 'world champion' (see
Underdog
).
[
citation needed
]
This may also be known as a
world cup competition
; for example cycling (
UCI World Championships
and
UCI World Cups
). Often, the use of the term cup or championship in this sense is just a choice of words. Some sports have multiple champions because of multiple organizations, such as boxing, mixed martial arts and wrestling.
Certain competitive exercises do not have a world championship or a world cup as such, but may have one or several world champions. Professional
boxing
, for example, has several world champions at
different weights
, but each one of them is decided by a "title match", not a tournament. In a title match system, the championship can only be won by directly defeating the incumbent, who in turn must continue to compete to retain their title or risk
forfeiture
.
Still other competitions, most commonly in
professional sports
, may or may not have a true world championship but may designate the winners of a domestic competition to be "world champions." This is especially true of the "Big Four"
major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada
; world cups and championships exist in all four of the major sports, but the domestic U.S. and Canadian leagues are generally known as the world
professional
championships (as with the
Stanley Cup
, ostensibly an independent championship for
ice hockey
but under the
de facto
control of the
National Hockey League
through two trustees who since no later than 1947 have been NHL loyalists) or the equivalent of a world
club
championship. In
American football
, although an
IFAF World Championship
exists, the United States is so far above and beyond the other nations it faces that the winner of the U.S.-based
Super Bowl
, a competition limited to the 32 teams in the
National Football League
, is commonly nicknamed as the world champion by the players, the press and fans alike; the NFL itself explicitly marketed the contest as a world championship in its first iterations.
[1]
Winners of the
Major League Baseball
's
World Series
are also commonly called world champions. Outside of the Big Four leagues, winners of the
Women's National Basketball Association
, much like
its men's counterpart
, commonly call themselves world champions, as with the winners of the
National Lacrosse League
and
Drum Corps International
.
Finally, certain competitions do not have a world championship or world cup, but rather hold a series of events recognised as the elite level in their field (e.g.
tennis
and
golf
have a series of four
Grand Slam
events recognised as the pinnacle of the game, in addition to key team events, world tour finals and the Olympic Games, though each year
ITF
(International Tennis Federation) designates a
World Champion
based on performances throughout the year).
History
There are a few sports which already had a ‘world championship’ in the 18th or 19th century, although it could vary how ‘world-wide’ these competitions really were. The French player
Clergé
, is considered the first international champion in
real tennis
, since 1740. In
chess
, international matches have been held for centuries, often resulting in certain players considered the best of all, with the first multiplayer tournament held in 1851 (
London 1851
). However, Wilhelm Steinitz in 1886 was the first chess player generally recognized as the
world champion
.