National Wrestling Alliance

Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling

Georgia Championship Wrestling

World Championship Wrestling

What was the NWA and how did it get started?

The NWA was and is the National Wrestling Alliance.

In an effort to get around strict antitrust laws in the United States six mid-west promoters, Sam Muchnick, Al Haft, Harry Light, Pinky George, Tony Stecher, and Orville Brown agreed to work together and recognize a single 'World' champion in the heavyweight, Jr.-Heavyweight and Lt.-Heavyweight divisions. Representing the promotions in St. Louis, Des Moines, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Columbus, OH the NWA named Mid-Western Wrestling Association champion Orville Brown the first NWA World champion on July 14, 1948.

It should be noted that any attempts to trace the NWA World Heavyweight title back further than this are necessarily fictitious. The organization simply did not exist. The NWA's immediate predecessor as the most widely recognized world title was the National Wrestling Association championship which was held by Lou Thesz at the time of the formation of the NWA. A title unification match was scheduled for November 25, 1949 between Thesz and Brown and it is believed that Brown was scheduled to win that match. However, Brown suffered a career ending injury in a car accident prior to the match. On November 27, 1949, Thesz was awarded the NWA title.

What happened to NWA?

From its formation in 1948 until 1980 the NWA grew into the largest and most recognized wrestling promotion around. For over 35 years the NWA was the true power in pro-wrestling. It had the most prestigious 'World' heavyweight title because it was truly defended around the world.  At its greatest point the NWA had twenty-six promotions and countless promoters around the world including the US, Canada, Mexico, Japan and Australia. Some of these promoters were Frank Tunney (Canada), Clarence Luttrell, Fred Kohler, Bob Geigel (Central States), Jim Crockett (Mid-Atlantic), Jim Barnett, Eddie Graham (Florida), Jack Adkisson (World Class), Don Owen (Pacific Northwest), Shohie Baba (All-Japan), Steve Rickard (Australia/New Zealand) as well as others. In the 1980s, however, things started to fall apart when at the end of 1980 the Los Angeles promotion run by Gene & Mike Lebell's closed. Almost a year later Roy Shire's San Francisco promotion also folded.

Also in the 1980s cable TV started to changed the whole face of wrestling as promoters could now get simultaneous national exposure for their shows.  Ole Anderson, who was running Georgia Championship Wrestling, was the first to try to take advantage of cable TV by promoting outside his own territory.    He ran shows throughout Ohio and Michigan, as well as in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and other areas. The promotion changed its name from Georgia Championship Wrestling to World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and for a while in 1983 gave up the rights to the Georgia territories to try to promote nationally. In the summer of 1983 it was rumored that WCW was pulling out of the NWA after they chose not to announce that Harley Race had defeated Ric Flair for the world title on June 10, 1983. Eventually they did recognize Race and continued within the NWA, including a planned joint promotional effort with Jim Crockett's Mid-Atlantic promotion into the Northeast.

Despite what some saw as Ole's basic mismanagement, WCW was doing pretty well competing against the other group that was trying to go national: Vince McMahon's WWF. The competition ended in May 1984 when Jack & Jerry Brisco, the top investors in World Championship Wrestling sold control of the company to Vince McMahon. The WWF took over the TV slot on TBS. Very few of the wrestlers from Georgia agreed to work for McMahon, and Anderson formed a new group, which came under the control of Jim Crockett by March 1985. Crockett then paid McMahon $1 million to get back the rights to the TBS time slot and the World Championship Wrestling name.

However this caused problems for other NWA members.   Toronto had featured Jim Crockett's wrestlers since October 1978 and was the first territory to bring in talent from Mid-Atlantic. Now Crockett no longer felt that he could spare his wrestlers for shows in Toronto, and the quality of the Toronto cards plummeted. With his area starved for talent, Jack Tunney had little choice but to make a deal with Vince McMahon-taking one of the hottest areas for wrestling out of the NWA and into the WWF.

In 1985, Jim Crockett announced that he would no longer allow NWA Champion Ric Flair to accept more than 2 dates per week outside Crockett-promoted shows. Also from that point on, promoters would have to pay a guaranteed amount, rather than the 8% of the gate that was traditionally paid to the NWA Champion. Crockett would later also insist that he supply the wrestlers for the top half of the card for any show on which Ric Flair appeared. This pretty much marked the end of the NWA as it had existed since 1948.

In February 1986, Fritz Von Erich, in an effort to take World Class national, pulled his promotion out of the NWA and recognized his own world champion. Later in the year, Crockett took over the St. Louis promotion, the flagship of the NWA since 1948, and brought in his own wrestlers for shows there. He also briefly took control of Bob Geigel's Central States promotion in Kansas City. Geigel tried to start up again in February 1987 and briefly recognized his own world champion before the promotion folded in 1988.

Crockett bought out the Florida territory in February 1987, and a few months later took control of Bill Watts' UWF (formerly Mid-South and which was not part of the NWA). By the end of the year, all of the territories had been homogenized into a single Crockett-controlled entity, which still ran under the name NWA, but really had little to do with the group that had existed for the preceding 40 years. The only former NWA territories that still operated in the US were Don Owen's Pacific Northwest in Portland, and Continental in Alabama, both of which no longer claimed ties to the NWA

What is the NWA today?

Today, the NWA still exists, however it has returned more to its original form of small independent promoters, currently 15, who recognize a single World Heavyweight Champion. The only relation it bears to the NWA of mid to late 1980s is the name. Currently, the NWA Board consists of following members: NWA Vice-President Dennis Coralluzzo (NJ), Steve Rickard (New Zealand), Tony Rickard (Hawaii), Victor Quinones (Japan & Puerto Rico), legal counsel Bob Trobich from North Carolina, and NWA President Howard Brody (Florida).  Other promotions include the NWA-2000 promotion in North Carolina, Music City Wrestling in Tennessee, NWA Southwest in Texas, Pro Wrestling eXpress in Pennsylvania plus another promoters in Japan and India. 

The NWA is looking for six other promoters to join soon. The NWA, through a working agreement with the WWF (Note: the WWF has not rejoined the NWA), has once again gained national exposure.   Mr. Brody has issued an open invitation to all wrestling promoters to apply for membership in the NWA and although a long way from dominance they once had, things are finally looking up for the National Wrestling Alliance.

Isn't WCW just another name for the NWA?

No.  Absolutely not. This is one of the most frequently asked and wrongly answered questions on RSPW, and needs to be cleared up. The confusion comes from several sources:

1) The seamless transition on WCW TV
2) The propaganda spread by WCW
3) WCW and the NWA had the same champions for a six month period
4) By 1991, WCW had almost completely taken over the NWA.

WCW was formerly the Mid-Atlantic region, as well as the Georgia region, both of which were under the NWA banner.  As they grew, they became the only major portion of the NWA to have TV coverage, and thus the NWA became Mid-Atlantic in the minds of the fans. This was patently wrong from the start, as the NWA was in fact many organizations under one banner.

The rapid loss of World Class, the UWF, Florida and Portland left Mid-Atlantic (WCW) as the sole major player in the NWA by 1988, which is the point at which Ted Turner purchased Crockett Promotions and the NWA unofficially died.

On 01/01/1991, WCW officially dropped the NWA name entirely and operated without a World champion or World tag team champions for a period of 10 days.  They continued to recognize the Mid-Atlantic version of the NWA US title, which was held by Lex Luger at that point, as well as the Mid-Atlantic version of the NWA World TV title, which was held by Tom Zenk.  These two titles were renamed the WCW US title and WCW TV title, respectively, and have direct lineage to the original NWA versions of the titles.

On 01/11/1991, Ric Flair defeated Sting to win the NWA World title, and immediately after WCW named him as the first WCW World champion.  It cannot be pointed out strongly enough at this point that these were TWO DIFFERENT TITLES.   Ric Flair was simultaneously NWA and WCW World champion, and one title did not follow from the other.  The WCW World title was created completely separate from the NWA World title and has NO direct lineage to the NWA World title, aside from the fact that the NWA champion happened to be the first WCW champion.

The same situation existed with the tag team titles, as WCW created the WCW World tag team title at the same time, awarding them to Butch Reed and Ron Simmons, the current NWA World tag team champions. Again, this was a separate championship. However, because no distinct break ever occurred to distinguish the two belts, it was assumed that one simply became the other, when in fact this is PATENTLY untrue. However, the NWA was reinstated in 1992 and WCW World tag team champions Steve Williams and Terry Gordy captured the NWA World tag team titles in a tournament final, thus unifying the two championships and giving the WCW World tag team titles a direct lineage to the NWA World tag team titles once again.  The lineage exists only from 1992 on, however.  For simplicity's sake, one is assumed all the way back to the NWA World tag team title's creation, although this is factually incorrect, despite being easier to deal with.

The NWA World title is a different story, however.   In 1992, after the re-creation of the NWA, Masa Chono was established as NWA World champion.  His reign, and those of the Great Muta and Barry Windham are regarded as legitimate World titles.  WCW pulled out of the NWA for good in 1993, however, which rendered the "NWA World championship" being defended in WCW totally meaningless. When Ric Flair, as WCW World champion defeated Sting, the WCW "International World champion", to "unify" the titles, it actually unified nothing, as the NWA had died many months prior to this match.

In short, WCW is not the NWA and never was.  WCW's World titles were created in 1991, and there is simply no lineage to the NWA from before that.  No matter how much believers of the opposing viewpoint may scream their opinion on the matter, the FACTS are as presented above.  The constant claims of lineage back to 1904/1905 by WCW are simply lies used to solidify a heritage that does not exist.

The title lineages on this website are presented as follows:

• the roots of the NWA World Championship starting in the 1880s.
• the NWA World Championship from its inception, to the point when WCW severed ties with NWA and became a new promotion.
• the WCW World Championship as it stood as its own promotion.
• the WCW World Championship as it now exists, under the WWF umbrella.
• the roots of the other NWA and WCW Championships, from their earliest possible points (ie., TV Title, US Title, Tag Titles, etc.), concentrating specifically on the Mid-Atlantic, Georgia, St. Louis, Florida, and Mid-South territories which "evolved" into WCW. I will try to include as many NWA promotion-wide titles as possible, along with the appropriate regional titles. I will, much to the dismay of some fans, cease to follow NWA after the succession of WCW.

When did the NWA become WCW?

The NWA never actually became WCW, WCW broke off from the NWA. The company now known as WCW existed for years before as both Georgia Championship Wrestling and Mid-Atantic Championship Wrestling.Ê The two companies were both under Jim Crockett Promotions and so amounted to being the same thing, despite the different names.

Between 1985 and 1987, the Georgia/Mid-Atlantic conglomerate merged with NWA St. Louis, Florida Championship Wrestling, and Universal Wrestling Federation (formerly Mid-South, which was not an NWA territory).

In November, 1988, Jim Crockett sold Jim Crockett Promotions to WTBS. Crockett promotions had been the promotion most widely associated with the NWA. In order to distance itself from the NWA, which still existed as a paper organization at the time, WTBS began to change the name of its titles and television programs from NWA to WCW. The change took place in late 1990. By January, 1991, the WCW name was fully in place and the NWA name was all but dropped by the organization. For the full details, please see the NWA section in this document.

--rberko1 updated from http://www.thesmarks.com/home/rspwfaq/part2/nwa.asp and http://www.thesmarks.com/home/rspwfaq/part2/wcw.asp

Help me support my website! Credits and Sponors

You are visitor to this page!