NWA International Heavyweight Championship
former wrestling title
The NWA International Heavyweight Championship was a singles title recognized by the National Wrestling Alliance through its partnership with the Japan Pro Wrestling Alliance, and later by All Japan Pro Wrestling. It is one of the three titles unified into the Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship in 1989. In 1983, Giant Baba would elevate the title further in the eyes of many when he, as the reigning PWF Heavyweight Champion, declared Jumbo Tsuruta to be the new "Ace" of All Japan after Jumbo won the NWA International Heavyweight Championship from Bruiser Brody. Following the withdrawal of All Japan from the NWA, the International title was briefly sanctioned by the Pacific Wrestling Federation until the unification of the Triple Crown could be completed.
Under Rikidōzan the belt had a design similar to Lou Thesz's original NWA World Heavyweight Championship belt during the 1950s, but after Rikidōzan's death, the belt given to Giant Baba had the design seen on the belt part of the Triple Crown until 2013. The original design was later used on the PWF Heavyweight Championship, the UWFI belt (which was the original Lou Thesz belt), and a belt later given to Kazushi Sakuraba for show.
“NWA International Heavyweight Championship” enters the record as former wrestling title. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what International, Heavyweight and Championship can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3869692. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1983 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “NWA International Heavyweight Championship” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.