Inaugural World Champions of major pro wrestling promotions

#4. NWA Worlds Championship - Orville Brown

Orville Brown was the first NWA Champion

The National Wrestling Alliance has had a number of ups and downs over the years. Once the most prominent wrestling promotion in the world, the NWA brought various regional promotions under their umbrella, ensuring that each territory would have only one promoter holding shows. Wrestlers would work in a territory for some time, before moving on to a new one to have fresh feuds.

The advent of national television crippled the business, with fans being fed the results of multiple territories at the same time. Vince McMahon's WWF opted to go national, buying out many regional promoters and further weakening NWA's territorial system.

All of this however, cannot downgrade the great history of the NWA. The concept of a wrestling alliance was introduced by promoter Paul George, who wanted to combine multiple regional wrestling promotions in to recognising a first ever 'World' Champion. Orville Brown - a wrestler and promoter - who operated the Kansas territory became the first NWA World Champion.

Brown would begin NWA's project of unifying various championship across the territories with the NWA world title. He held the title for 501 days before an automobile accident forced him to vacate the title. He would be succeeded by Lou Thesz who would continue Brown's work, holding the title for well over 2000 days!