Originally Posted by MMAJunkie

WAMMA heavyweight belt completed


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Designers have completed the heavyweight championship belt commissioned by the World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts for its first-ever title fight.

The belt -- which features copper, gold, diamonds, leather and fur -- will be wrapped around the waist of either Fedor Emelianenko or Tim Sylvia. The heavyweights meet at July 19's "Affliction: Banned" event in a five-round WAMMA title fight.

The project was completed by Johnny Najjar of the New Jersey-based Masis Boxing Belts.

According to a story posted by Najjar on WAMMA's official website, the belt has "a new-school look but an old school-production."

Rather than the usual metals, Najjar went with the more-expensive copper, which underwent 72 hours of waxing and polishing to give it the desired gold look. The plates were then dipped with 18k gold. Right before hand painting the belt's five medallions, more than 500 diamonds were hand set. All the pieces were put into a black leather belt and backed with fur.

Total production time: 150 hours.

WAMMA formed in November of last year as MMA's first self-proclaimed sanctioning body with goals that include creating greater visibility for the sport and recognizing world champions in each weight class.

Many fight promotions have joined forces -- except the most important one. The UFC (and it sister promotion, the WEC) have shown virtually no interest in working with WAMMA.

Still, as WAMMA struggled to gain any real traction within the indusry, CEO Mr. Michael Lynch contacted Affliction Vice President Tom Atencio and pitched the idea of creating the first-ever "undisputed champion" in MMA.

While the notion of an undisputed champion would ordinarily pit the top two ranked fighters against one another, No. 1 versus No. 5 is as close as WAMMA can get. According to WAMMA's own rankings, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira is ranked No. 2 and Randy Couture is No. 3, and both are under contract to the UFC. However, Josh Barnett (No. 4) is also fighting for Affliction and could meet the Emelianenko vs. Sylvia winner later this year.