History
On April 3, 2024, the American professional wrestling promotion WWE launched Speed, a weekly video series that streamed exclusively on the social media platform X. The program featured matches between wrestlers from WWE's Raw, SmackDown, and NXT brands and the matches had a three-minute time limit for regular episodes. Speed originally only featured matches with male wrestlers, with special episodes for the WWE Speed Championship having a five-minute time limit.[1][2]
On May 1, 2024, WWE Chief Content Officer Paul "Triple H" Levesque confirmed that the program would also eventually feature women's matches.[3] This led to an official announcement on August 9, 2024, where it was revealed that a tournament for the inaugural WWE Women's Speed Championship would begin on September 4, 2024.[4] In the tournament final that occurred during the Speed tapings on October 4, 2024, SmackDown's Candice LeRae defeated Raw's Iyo Sky to become the inaugural champion. Her reign is recognized as having begun on October 9, 2024, when the match aired on tape delay.[5][6]
Following the July 9, 2025, episode, the future of Speed came into question as the series stopped uploading new episodes without explanation. Various news outlets began reporting that the program had been quietly cancelled, but neither WWE or X made any statements on the show's status.[7] Wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer further clarified that WWE had not taped any episodes after July 9 and his WWE contacts had no knowledge on the program's future.[8] Around the same time, reigning Women's Speed Champion Sol Ruca began appearing on NXT with the title. In an interview on August 19, Ruca said that the Speed Championships previously only appeared on Speed as it was "a separate universe being on X." She was then given permission by WWE to carry the title on NXT programming.[9] A few days later at Heatwave, NXT general manager Ava announced that the men's and women's Speed Championships would be defended on the NXT brand going forward, with qualifying tournaments open to wrestlers from the Raw, SmackDown and Evolve brands, partner promotion Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA), and Mexican subsidiary Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide (AAA), starting from the September 2 episode of NXT and concludes during
At Night 2 of Gold Rush aired on November 25, the championship match went over the five-minute mark for the first time. Ava then ordered the match to continue into a one-fall sudden death to crown the new champion.
Inaugural tournament
The participants for the inaugural WWE Women's Speed Championship Tournament were revealed on August 23, 2024.[11]
