Professional Wrestling Championships - World Heavyweight Championship (Paperback)

Chapters: World Heavyweight Championship. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 60. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The World Heavyweight Championship is the name given to certain championships in professional wrestling. Although various professional wrestling promotions have used the term "world heavyweight championship," it is almost exclusively used as a moniker for the championship that is under competition between the top contenders of major organizations. The territorial nature of early professional wrestling, in which promotions would each operate in different regional territories across the nation, suggested that few organizations could legitimately promote a World Heavyweight Championship, in the sense that the title could theoretically be defended against any challenger anywhere in the world. However, with the emergence of professional wrestling in mainstream and popular culture during the 1980s professional wrestling boom, many organizations grew to receive national and international exposure and thereby gained the platform to promote worldwide. Most of the well-recognized World Heavyweight Championships today are derived from the first recognized version held by Georg Hackenschmidt in 1905 and Frank Gotch in 1908. Established in 1948, the NWA World Heavyweight Championship of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) directly traces its lineage to these reigns, thus making it the oldest active world title. With many regional territories appearing across the United States, the NWA was formed in 1948 as a governing body in professional wrestling, operating as a talent and brand name franchiser for the territory system. Though promotions that were members of the NWA retained their ownership and recognition of its champions, they were to recognize the NWA World Heavyweight Champio...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=364797