NWA World Middleweight Championship

The NWA World Middleweight Championship is a currently inactive professional wrestling championship, promoted by the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). For the majority of its existence it has been promoted by Mexican promotion Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL), where it was known as the Campeonato Mundial Peso Medio de NWA. The title, being a professional wrestling championship, it is not won legitimately: it is instead won via a scripted ending to a wrestling match. The official definition of the middleweight weight class in Mexico is between 82 kg (180 lbs) and 87 kg (190 lbs), but is not always strictly enforced.

The Championship was originally called the "World Middleweight Championship", and was created by Salvador Lutteroth, owner of Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre (EMLL). Lutteroth awarded the title to Gus Kallio, a five-time National Wrestling Association World Middleweight Champion and the "king of the middleweights" in the United States. The title was created at an unknown point before March 29, 1939. When Octavio Gaona defeated Kallio on March 29, 1939 he also won Kallio's other World Middleweight Championship. Kallio's original world middleweight title was retired in 1940 to keep the focus on the Mexican version of the championship. When EMLL became a member of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) in 1952 the belt was given the "NWA" prefix. In the early 1990s EMLL withdrew from the NWA and changed their name to Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre in order to create a clean break from their past NWA association. While they withdrew from the NWA, they retained the ownership of three NWA-labelled championships that all originated in EMLL. The other two titles were the NWA World Welterweight Championship and the NWA World Light Heavyweight Championship. The titles are still promoted as "NWA Championships" by CMLL despite not being officially recognized by the NWA since the early 1990s. In 1994 Último Dragón paid CMLL for the rights to the NWA World Middleweight Championship, giving him control of the Championship. Dragón won the title from Corazón de León on November 8, 1994, after which he began promoting the belt in Japan; where it and the title remained in Japan for almost ten years. In 2003 Último Dragón signed with World Wrestling Entertainment and sold the title back to CMLL. Averno defeated Zumbido to win the vacant title in the first CMLL-based title match since 1994. In March 2010 Blue Demon, Jr., the president of NWA Mexico, sent letters to CMLL, telling them to stop promoting the NWA-branded championships since they were not part of the NWA. NWA Mexico has previously tried to reclaim the three NWA-branded championships promoted by CMLL, but was ignored by CMLL. The promotion did not directly respond to the latest claim either; the NWA Welterweight Champion, Mephisto, commented, simply stating that the titles belonged to CMLL. Finally, on August 12, 2010, CMLL debuted the new NWA World Historic Middleweight Championship and returned the old belt to NWA. NWA has not determined a new champion since getting the title back from CMLL. There have been 84 reigns between 45 different wrestlers. René Guajardo has held the championship on six separate occasions, the most by any wrestler. Tarzán López's four reigns combine for 2,977 days, the longest of any champion, while the Great Sasuke's single reign is the longest individual reign with 1,487 days. Oro is the person who has held the title the shortest time, 41 days.

Title history

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Reigns by combined length

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