Post by Dan Poutsma on May 29, 2006 20:55:58 GMT -5
Just curious to get some opinions on what you all thought of the decision to resurrect the NWA singles and tag team titles in 1992.
On one hand, I thought it was nice to see WCW going "back to it's roots", so to speak, and it was also great because it helped further co-promotion with Japan, where the NWA name still had value.
On the other hand though, it also caused a lot of confusion. It wasn't so bad with the tag titles because they were immediately "unified" with the WCW belts and one team always held both championships. But the situation with the singles title caused quite a few headaches, especially after Flair returned.
Before he came back, it was held by Chono and Muta of New Japan and was clearly treated as secondary to the WCW title. But after Windham won the belt, it became exclusive to WCW and Flair began preaching about how it was the title he never lost and how he wanted to win it back to become a 10 time world champion. Of course, since this *WAS* Flair talking and his words carried a great deal of weight, a lot of people began to believe that it was supposed to be more important than the WCW championship.
Despite Flair's opinion though, the majority still felt that the WCW title was more prestious because it allegedly carried the true lineage. Since the general perception was that the NWA had become WCW, people looked at the WCW title as the real NWA title and the revived NWA title as a completely new championship, although they were using the old belt.
And when he finally won it, it only got worse. Not long after, WCW decided to sever ties with the NWA for good due to political reasons (the NWA was putting heat on them for refusing to give other promoters dates with the champion and for also planning to switch the title to Rick Rude without NWA approval) and they called the belt several different things (World title, Gold Belt, International World title) before eventually unifying it with the WCW title.
So what did you guys think? Was it a good idea to bring back the NWA? Or was it bad given all the confusion it caused?
On one hand, I thought it was nice to see WCW going "back to it's roots", so to speak, and it was also great because it helped further co-promotion with Japan, where the NWA name still had value.
On the other hand though, it also caused a lot of confusion. It wasn't so bad with the tag titles because they were immediately "unified" with the WCW belts and one team always held both championships. But the situation with the singles title caused quite a few headaches, especially after Flair returned.
Before he came back, it was held by Chono and Muta of New Japan and was clearly treated as secondary to the WCW title. But after Windham won the belt, it became exclusive to WCW and Flair began preaching about how it was the title he never lost and how he wanted to win it back to become a 10 time world champion. Of course, since this *WAS* Flair talking and his words carried a great deal of weight, a lot of people began to believe that it was supposed to be more important than the WCW championship.
Despite Flair's opinion though, the majority still felt that the WCW title was more prestious because it allegedly carried the true lineage. Since the general perception was that the NWA had become WCW, people looked at the WCW title as the real NWA title and the revived NWA title as a completely new championship, although they were using the old belt.
And when he finally won it, it only got worse. Not long after, WCW decided to sever ties with the NWA for good due to political reasons (the NWA was putting heat on them for refusing to give other promoters dates with the champion and for also planning to switch the title to Rick Rude without NWA approval) and they called the belt several different things (World title, Gold Belt, International World title) before eventually unifying it with the WCW title.
So what did you guys think? Was it a good idea to bring back the NWA? Or was it bad given all the confusion it caused?
