NWA World’s Heavyweight Championship

The NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship traces its lineage back to 07/14/1948, when the National Wrestling Alliance recognized Orville Brown as its first world champion and established one traveling championship that could be defended across its member territories.

After Brown was injured in a car accident, Lou Thesz was recognized as champion on 11/27/1949, and his reign helped establish the title as the top world championship of the territorial era.

Over the following decades, wrestlers such as Pat O’Connor, Buddy Rogers, Gene Kiniski, Dory Funk Jr., Harley Race, Jack Brisco, Terry Funk, Dusty Rhodes, and Ric Flair helped build the championship’s place in wrestling history.

The lineage then changed course several times as the business changed. It became closely tied to Jim Crockett Promotions and later WCW, and was vacated in 1991 when Ric Flair was stripped of the title. It was revived in 1992, reset again after WCW left the NWA in 1993, and continued through later rebuilding periods that included Shane Douglas rejecting the title in 1994, Dan Severn’s long reign, the NWA-TNA years beginning in 2002, and the independent stretch that followed in 2007.

Champions like Adam Pearce, Colt Cabana, Rob Conway, Satoshi Kojima, Hiroyoshi Tenzan, and Jax Dane kept the lineage active during that period. On 10/21/2016, when Tim Storm defeated Jax Dane, the championship entered the modern NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship era while continuing the same lineage that began in 1948.