10 Greatest NWA World Heavyweight Champions

As the simultaneous holder of the NWA and AWA World Titles, the New Zealand-born amateur wrestler turned headliner was a class act and one of the biggest draws of his generation. His over 900-day reign in the NWA saw him set box office records.

One of the original big time box office draws in pro wrestling, Pat O’Connor enjoyed an exhausting two and a half year run on top. The New Zealander had a respectable competitive wrestling background, as was essentially mandatory back then. He used it to his advantage in the realism-focused NWA, defeating fellow shooter Dick Hutton to begin his long reign of stretching hapless challengers.

A smiling, white meat babyface in an era where that was actually somewhat cool, O’Connor was one of the first big time stars to be impacted by television. Like so many things at the time, wrestling was permanently altered by the arrival of the small screen. For O’Connor, it meant slightly less time hopping from territory to territory and a lot more time in Vince McMahon Sr.’s Capitol Wrestling (no prizes for guessing what CW turned into). By the time he dropped the strap to Buddy Rogers in 1961, the Kiwi was as close to an international superstar as wrestling had.

It would take more than 25 years for anyone to break his ticket sales records. A seminal figure from a key moment in the growth of professional wrestling as a major industry.