10 Greatest NWA World Heavyweight Champions

Mr Muttonchops is one of the surliest, most menacing wrestlers the industry has ever seen. Expelled from school for beating the snot out of both a fellow pupil and the headmaster, 'Handsome' Harley moved into wrestling and never looked back. Nothing from polio to a life-threatening, widower-making car crash could hold the tough chainsmoker back from reaching his destiny as the ace of the NWA.

During the '70s, Race made the rounds as champion, grumpily defending his title and establishing its prestige in gritty, gruff promos. Brawling and grappling like a high-pain tolerance tough guy, everything about Race was authentic bar that unfortunate diving headbutt. As an eight-time NWA World Heavyweight Champion, the dependable crowd puller carried himself and his title with conviction, pride and grit.

As the '80s rolled in, Race proved to be instrumental in setting up and legitimising his successor at the top: Ric Flair. The pair's blood-soaked cage match at Starrcade '83 is a seminal classic in North American wrestling that firmly established 'The Nature Boy' as the leading man of the new generation.

Via his '70s feuds with Dusty Rhodes, Race also helped get 'The American Dream' over at the main event level while he was still a fashionably challenged eccentric and not the working man hero he became. Between ruling the NWA frequently with an iron fist and helping to set up its two biggest draws of the '80s, Harley Race was the gift that kept on giving to good old southern rasslin'.