Paul Heyman had a large hand in helping to diminish the National Wrestling Alliance to independent level with the birth of Extreme Championship Wrestling when new champion Shane Douglas threw down the championship and labelled it a brand that died years before. Heyman had decided that traditional wrestling was outdated and he used NWA as the sacrifice to prove his point. Ring of Honor had a much better working relationship with the NWA, a natural fit given its traditional wrestling product. It also helped that thanks to NWA's fall, Ring of Honor were actually the bigger brand by the time they worked together and so NWA were more than willing to work on ROH's terms. In 2008 the NWA World Heavyweight Championship was recognised by ROH for the first time as champion Adam Pearce revealed the belt at the end of his match. This led to a battle of supremacy between Pearce and ROH World Champion Nigel McGuinness that ended in an ironically NWA-esque "Dusty finish". Pearce would lose to the championship to Brent Albright at an ROH event and later recapture it from him. The championship would vanish from ROH again a month later as Pearce lost it to a non-ROH competitor. It was only brief and towards the end of Sapolsky's run with ROH, but it was undeniably a more friendly relationship with the former wrestling giant than Heyman and his ECW had.
