10 Things You Didn't Know About The NWA World Heavyweight Championship
1. It Has Changed Hands In WCW, ECW, TNA & NJPW, But NEVER WWE
Jeff Jarrett's reinvention as a traditionalist professional wrestler in early-1998 WWE flew in the face of the guitar-toting wildman they'd try to present him as later that year, but at least his dated Aztec attire and straight-laced persona suited their limp attempt at using the National Wrestling Alliance as a heel stable.
Alongside Jim Cornette, The Rock and Roll Express and later Barry Windham, 'Double J' became the 'NWA North American Champion' on Monday Night Raw, but the famous belt was never part of the tepid invasion story.
The angle came during the aforementioned lengthy title tenure of Dan 'The Beast' Severn, and though he'd shortly become a WWE full-timer himself, he'd never end up defend the Championship on McMahon turf.
With the title's lineage contested almost entirely outside of the public's glare save for it's TNA spell between 2002-2007, there's been no opportunity for the company to promote a match of significant magnitude for the '10 Pounds Of Gold' outside of an extremely rare Champion Vs Champion clash between Bob Backlund and Harley Race in 1979, and even that only went to a draw.
That Cody not only managed it at ALL IN but got the consequences over as the most important stakes on the entire show acts as a yet another reminder of why he's so fittingly placed to be the one to guide its renaissance.