NWA World Middleweight Championship
| NWA World Middleweight Championship | |||||||||||||||
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Averno, the 85th NWA World Middleweight Champion
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| Details | |||||||||||||||
| Promotion |
Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre (1939–1990) Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (1990–1994, 2003–2010) Various (1994–2003) |
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| Date established | 1939[G] | ||||||||||||||
| Date retired | August 12, 2010 | ||||||||||||||
| Other name(s) | |||||||||||||||
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World Middleweight Championship (1939–1952)[G]
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| Statistics | |
|---|---|
| First champion(s) | Gus Kallio[G] |
| Most reigns | René Guajardo (6 reigns)[G] |
| Longest reign | The Great Sasuke (1804 years, 26 days) |
| Shortest reign | El Satánico (Less than 1 day) |
| Heaviest champion | El Satánico (97 kilograms (214 lb)) |
| Lightest champion | Averno (79 kilograms (174 lb)) |
The NWA World Middleweight Championship was a professional wrestling championship in the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) between 1939 and 2010. For most of its existence, it was defended in the Mexican lucha libre promotion Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL), who called it the Campeonato Mundial Peso Medio de NWA. As it is a professional wrestling championship, its holders were determined by promoters or promotions, not by athletic competition. The official middleweight limits in lucha libre are 82 kg (181 lb) to 87 kg (192 lb), but this rule is broken when convenient.
The championship was created as the "World Middleweight Championship" in early 1939, by Salvador Lutteroth, owner of Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre (EMLL).[G] He awarded it to Gus Kallio, a five-time National Wrestling Association World Middleweight Champion, nicknamed "The King of the Middleweights" in the United States.[G] When Octavio Gaona defeated Kallio on March 29, 1939, he won both middleweight championships. The National Wrestling Association title was retired in 1940, to give prominence to Lutteroth's creation. When EMLL joined the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) in 1952, the belt was prefixed with "NWA".
In the late 1980s, EMLL withdrew from the NWA and in the early 1990s changed its name to Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL). CMLL retained ownership of three NWA-branded championships which originated in the promotion.[G] The other two were the NWA World Welterweight Championship and the NWA World Light Heavyweight Championship. All continued to be billed as "Campeonatos de NWA". In 1994, Último Dragón bought the NWA World Middleweight Championship and its booking rights from CMLL.[G] He chose to make himself first champion, and won it in a match with Corazón de León at a Wrestle and Romance (WAR) show on November 8, 1994, in Korakuen Hall. At that point he began promoting the title exclusively in Japan, holding it himself until vacating it in 1998. During his run with the championship Último Dragón also won the J-Crown championships, eight unified lightweight championships, but the NWA World Middleweight Championship was never integrated into the J-Crown. In 2003, after ending The Great Sasuke's long reign, Dragón signed with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and returned the championship to CMLL who he worked with off and on until that point. Averno defeated Zumbido to win the vacant title in its first CMLL match since 1994.
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