10 Weirdest Ways To Create A Wrestling Championship

4. Calling Out The Champion

ECW weren€™t the first promotion with the chutzpah to leave the NWA and kick them in the unmentionables while doing so. In fact, although they weren€™t nearly so dramatic about it. the American Wrestling Association were probably sneakier and cheekier than Heyman in doing so, and in establishing their own world heavyweight championship. On January 9th 1959, Pat O€™Connor had won the NWA World Heavyweight Championship€ but he was NWA through and through. Verne Gagne was the guy that the NWA€™s Minnesota-based territories wanted to challenge him, but the NWA board voted against it, frustrating Gagne and Wally Karbo, who jointly owned the local territory. The decision was made; they would leave the NWA. Establishing the American Wrestling Association, and taking those local territories with them, Gagne and Karbo created the AWA World Heavyweight Championship in May 1960. Their method of doing so was unique: they simply recognised the NWA€™s top guy and world heavyweight champion, Pat O€™Connor, as the first ever AWA World Heavyweight Champion, and then pointed out that he€™d failed to defend the title on AWA shows. O€™Connor was given ninety days to defend the AWA title against the challenger, Verne Gagne himself, or forfeit it altogether. The NWA, completely nonplussed at the novelty of this tactic, simply chose to ignore the challenge - and a new AWA World Heavyweight Champion was born. That meant that O€™Connor is in the record books as the first ever AWA World Heavyweight Champion - a title he never held, in a promotion he hadn€™t worked for.