The story
Founded by World Boxing Association on Sep 16, 1930.1
In 1921 the National Boxing Association (NBA) was formed in New York City to help regulate and create order in the world of professional boxing in the United States. In January 1930 the NBA attempted to introduce the same sort of regulations and structure on professional wrestling, motivated by the fact that there were a multitude of "World Champions" all over the country, all claiming to be the top wrestler. The NBA required wrestlers who wanted to participate in the inaugural championship tournaments to post a bond, ranging from US$1,000 to US$5,000 in the heavyweight division, used to ensure their participation and their willingness to defend the championship against NBA designated challengers. In the heavyweight division Jim Londos and John Pesek posted the bonds and were set to fight each other but due to various political moves by the people behind Londos and Pesek the match itself did not take place. On September 13, 1930 the NBA founded the National Wrestling Association (NWA) to deal exclusively with professional wrestling while the NBA focused on Boxing. The NWA named Colonel Harry J. Landry the president and opened up their main office in New Orleans, Louisiana. After the formation of the NWA they finally decided to recognize Jim Londos, a move that was not popular with everyone, leading to NWA vice president Harry Davis resigning. The Association would held annual conventions where the various member states of the NWA would meet and vote on who should be the world champions in the various divisions, with Londos being recognized for several years.
in 1948 a number of wrestling promoters across the country decided to form the National Wrestling Alliance, a counterpart to the Association implementing a territory system amongst its Alliance members. The Alliance also consolidated the various "World Champions" in their territories, although unlike the Association the Alliance only regulated the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, allowing various territories to create their own versions of other "World titles," such as the NWA World Tag Team Championship, which were left to each territory to determine, leaving multiple World Tag Team champions across the country. In 1949 the Association's World Heavyweight Champion Lou Thesz was chosen by the Alliance to become their World Heavyweight Champion as well, after previous champion Orville Brown was forced to vacate the title after a car accident. On November 27, 1949 the Association version of the championship was abandoned, folded into the National Wrestling Alliance's World Heavyweight Championship to help clear up the world title picture. The Association also decided to fold the NWA World Junior Heavyweight Championship into the National Wrestling Alliance's World Junior Heavyweight Championship.
By 1950 the National Wrestling Association no longer promoted their own specific championships, instead choosing to recognize several of the National Wrestling Alliance championships, including the NWA World Light Heavyweight Championship, NWA World Middleweight Championship and the NWA World Welterweight Championship promoted by the Mexican Empresa Mexicana de Lucha Libre (EMLL) promotion. The Association continued to hold conventions through the 1960s, but by the end of the decade the National Wrestling Association existed in name only. The National Wrestling Association was officially abandoned in 1980.
From Wikipedia’s article on National Wrestling Association, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3