3. Shane Douglas "Threw Down" The NWA World Heavyweight Championship
Any story involving wrestling promoters Dennis Coralluzzo and Paul Heyman should likely be considered in the same vein as stories that begin, "hey, there's a bridge in Brooklyn that I'd like to sell you." Coralluzzo was the New Jersey-based promoter of the resurrected National Wrestling Alliance, the famed company re-started by Jim Crockett after the no-compete he signed when he sold his controlling interest in the NWA to Ted Turner in 1988. The NWA's Philadelphia-based Eastern Championship Wrestling held an NWA Title tournament, a tournament won by the largely ECW-booked Shane Douglas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi6MOHFZEBc There are those who believe what Coralluzzo believed, which is that Crockett and Gordon were in collusion, and the throwing down of the ECW title was a slap in Coralluzzo's face. As well, there's the idea that Gordon and then-ECW booker Heyman didn't care about Crockett either and wanted ECW to secede from the NWA. Of course, in all of this, there's no mention of Crockett himself, who, if made aware of ECW leaving, could see the value of Shane Douglas throwing down the NWA title as either Crockett realizing the folly in his plan of resurrecting the NWA name, or believing that the level of intrigue surrounding the angle could have potentially been a boost to the NWA, too. But Douglas "surprising" the NWA with his move? More than likely not even possible.
Besides having been an independent professional wrestling manager for a decade, Marcus Dowling is a Washington, DC-based writer who has contributed to a plethora of online and print magazines and newspapers writing about music and popular culture over the past 15 years.
