"The History of the
World Heavyweight Championship”

“The History of the World Heavyweight championship” is a beautifully-bound 3-disc set (released in 2009) designed to resemble a hardcover book. Opening it up reveals a table of contents for each disc printed directly on the backside - no slips or inserts here. The 1st disc contains the documentary and a handful of “NWA Matches”. Disc 2 represents WCW and Disc 3 is strictly WWE. There is a glossy track list stuck on the back of the box with a dollop of glue. It offers a product summary and a quick list of some of the matches you will find on this set. “Witness the epic battles for the glory on this 3-DVD set with over 20 championship matches”!!

THE DOCUMENTARY:
The meat and potatoes of the product rests with the documentary portion of the disc. A nice, succinct piece that chronicles the World championship (aka “WCW’s big gold belt”) and its dubious origins that reach all the way back to cavemen, Abraham Lincoln and Frank Gotch. It’s “Unreal Story of Pro Wrestling”-type historical revision that is surprising to see for longtime WWF fans who were used to pretending nothing else exists beyond the northeast. But as they say, “history is written by the winners” - and VKM Jr is the undisputed master & lord of all pro wrestling. Clocking in at under an hour (for over 100 years of supposed content) is a criminal offense, considering the ECW documentary ran for over 3 hours. But that goes to show the interest level of fans and business sense of the WWE when it comes to this kind of content - and probably why we’ll never see the long-rumored Gorgeous George or Bruno Sammartino DVD. Either the footage just doesn’t exist, isn’t properly licensed, is in really poor condition (sadly the state of some of these Disc One matches) or frankly just isn’t good enough to be captured on modern-day DVD releases. So on one hand it’s an honor that WWE even reached back into the archives for this (what amounts to an “enemy’) release to begin with, even if their version of events is a little sparse and twisted. Our boy (and wrestling historian) Mike Chapman offers insight on a lot of golden era wrestlers, but roughly 10 years after “Unreal Story of Pro Wrestling” was filmed we find him here repeating a lot of the same stuff he said there.

In this story, "Russian Lion" Georg Hackenschmidt is credited as being the first “world” champion after defeating American Tom Jenkins in an early “styles vs. styles” match (Greco vs. catch). Hackenschmidt easily beat Jenkins in both style matches and earned the distinction as champion - until finally being defeated by Frank Gotch. From there wrestling entered a boom era, and kept growing with the rise of Strangler Lewis in the 20s (who was comparable to any celebrity of the time, including Charlie Chaplin and Babe Ruth). They even allude to Strangler Lewis being the bridge between “real wrestling” and “sports entertainment” (an assessment that was spelled out in much greater detail in “Unreal Story”). The 1948 union of the NWA is covered, and the origins of their title (supposed to go to Orville Brown - car accident forced it onto Lou Thesz). Thesz gets some great coverage and props and is credited with the first $100,000k gate in wrestling history (a story covered in much greater detail in the book “NWA: the Monopoly that Strangled Pro Wrestling” by Tim Hornbaker). This segues into the title run of the great “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers and the big record he set with his 1961 Comisky Park title victory (included in the match extras). This DVD claims that attendance record wasn’t broken until Wrestlemania III, but there are many that believe the record was broken sooner and by a non-WWE affiliated organization (which is why it’s been whitewashed from history). From there Gene Kiniski gets his run and jobs out to Dory Funk Jr, with a surreal worked-shoot explanation of how he lost the title (he thought it was a 2 out of 3 falls match, and submitted to Dory’s spinning toehold thinking he still had 2 more falls to go… he didn’t). We get some interesting stories from Jack Brisco on his reign, and the backstage drama between himself and Dory Funk Sr that resulted in Dory putting over Harley Race for the title and NOT Jack Brisco. Jack does get his time in the sun however, before putting over the other Funk (Terry) later on. The story explains how the champion was chosen by committee, and leads to the big Starrcade ’83 clash between Race & Flair - which led to the domination of Slick Ric. Dusty Rhodes gets some shine, as does the sale of Crockett promotions to Ted Turner (although Mike Graham RIP glosses over Sting’s contributions by saying he was “something temporary”). Don’t worry about Sting though, Big Show has some nice words to say about him as champion. Finally we make our way to WCW withdrawing from the NWA and burning the sports entertainment world up with Monday Nitro. Some “dubious” champions are referenced (Sid, Jeff Jarrett, David Arquette) and Hulk Hogan’s run as champion is heavily referenced. We finish with the end of Nitro into the undisputed championship - only to have it reborn on RAW by Eric Bischoff and Triple H.

THE MATCHES

Disc One
Disc one offers a nice variety of early-era NWA matches running all the way up to 1990. It opens with “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers historic title victory over Pat O’Connor, a match that has been aired on WWE Classics on Demand in clipped fashion before. This was the highlight of my purchase and thus far the only Buddy Rogers match released on a WWE DVD or Blu-Ray product. Overall the matches offer a nice look at the lineage summarized over 5-10 year spans. We see Dory Funk Jr win the title from Gene Kiniski in Florida 1969 - fast forward 10 years and Harley Race & Dusty Rhodes are competing for the same piece of hardware in the same state. Jack Brisco vs. Terry Funk represents the best of 1975 - fast forward 10 years and there’s Ric Flair fighting Magnum TA for the NWA championship on an AWA Superclash card in 1985! We wrap it up in 1990 (when WCW was on verge of dropping NWA affiliation in favor of their own recognition) as Sting takes on perennial champion Ric Flair at “The Great American Bash”.

*Chicago 1961 - 2 out of 3 Falls: Pat O'Connor vs. Buddy Rogers
*Florida 2/11/69 - Gene Kiniski vs. Dory Funk Jr.
*Florida 12/10/75 - Jack Brisco vs. Terry Funk
*Florida 8/21/79 - Harley Race vs. Dusty Rhodes
*AWA SuperClash - Ric Flair vs. Magnum TA
*Great American Bash '90 - Ric Flair vs. Sting
　

Disc Two
This is the strictly WCW era - and for longtime northeast wrestling fans such as myself (bred to thumb our nose at anything non-WWF affiliated) this is the first time I saw most of these matches. I always kept abreast of WCW developments via the wrestling periodicals of the time (including a short stint of WCW magazines, of which I still have a few issues), and I remember reading about wrestling “classics” like Flair vs. Scott Steiner (the pre-Poppa Pump phenomenon) or Vader‘s early 90‘s championship run, so it’s good to see those moments represented on here. I was also excited to have the historic Ron Simmons vs. Vader title change on disc as well. One of the few WCW moments I do remember firsthand (and still get chills about to this day) was the incredible Hollywood Hogan vs. Goldberg match from Nitro. So much to say about this match (both negative and positive), but suffice to say it is still one of the most awe-inspiring audience reactions I’ve ever seen and I’m super glad to have it on disc (again and again, as this match has made it’s way onto numerous WWE DVD releases over the years). There’s also a sick match I never saw between Steamboat & Vader, but Jesse Ventura’s WCW commentary is edited out. This disc also includes the Booker T vs. Jeff Jarrett match that concluded the big “Russo shoots on Hulk Hogan live on PPV” angle earlier in the night (but that moment is not referenced). We finish Disc 2 in the blurry-era of 2001 WWF as The Rock & Chris Jericho battle for the big gold belt at No Mercy.

*Clash of Champions XIV - Ric Flair vs. Scott Steiner
*Great American Bash '91 - Lex Luger vs. Barry Windham
*Baltimore 8/2/92 - Vader vs. Ron Simmons
*WCW SaturdayNight 10/16/93 - Vader vs. Ricky Steamboat
*Halloween Havoc '94 - Career vs. Career Steel Cage Match: Hulk Hogan vs. Ric Flair
*SuperBrawl VIII - Sting vs. Hollywood Hogan
*Nitro 7/6/98 - Hollywood Hogan vs. Goldberg
*Bash at the Beach '00 - Jeff Jarrett vs. Booker T
*No Mercy '01 - The Rock vs. Chris Jericho

　
Disc 3
This is the WWE disc, and the one that could be termed “total blasphemy” to any non-WWF brainwashed fans of yesteryear. The time after WCW had been bought by WWF - the world title “merged” into the Undisputed championship - and then rekindled on Monday Night Raw (by Eric Bischoff) in response to the “brand split”. The belt was awarded to Triple H that night, even though I remember he wound up fighting Ric Flair in a really good match later on that should have just been a championship finale to begin with. That moment is not represented on the disc, but a Triple H match with Rob Van Dam from Unforgiven 2002 is. We trace the (now strictly known as) “World” championship through Shawn Michaels - to the match of the year candidate between Undertaker/Kurt Angle (No Way Out 2006) - Rey Mysterio - Batista - and John Cena (featuring his World title win over Jericho at Survivor Series 2008 in Boston that I was there live for). In a far cry from Hackenschmidt and his single leg trip/bear hug combo of 1908 - we wrap it all up with an Extreme Rules ladder match between new age daredevils Edge & Jeff Hardy from 2009. Another in a long line of their thrilling encounters - this one punctuated by the World title being at stake and Jeff Hardy‘s historic victory (then ruined by CM Punk‘s MitB cash-in). And there you have it. 100 years of history and evolution summarized within an approx. running time of 9 hours.

*Unforgiven '02 - Triple H vs. Rob Van Dam
*Taboo Tuesday '04 - Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels
*No Way Out '06 - Kurt Angle vs. The Undertaker
*SmackDown 4/7/06 - Rey Mysterio vs. Randy Orton
*Armageddon '07 - Batista vs. Undertaker vs. Edge
*Survivor Series '08 - John Cena vs. Chris Jericho
*Extreme Rules '09 - Ladder Match: Jeff Hardy vs. Edge

OVERALL:
This is the 3rd set of its kind (following the WWE and IC title compilations) and arguably the weakest of the three. The documentary is skimpy, some of the matches are clipped, cut or blurry and a lot of creative license is given to the titles evolution. On the plus side, very few of the matches have been re-released or included on prior DVD sets, so it’s a lot of *new* DVD content. Personally, I’m a huge fan of the retro stuff (that I watch with an MMA-eye) so to have an entire disc filled with material from the 60s-70s is awesome by my book. Most of the WCW disc was first time viewing for me, and the WWE disc brought back all kinds of sweet memories. As a story on the “World title” - for a diehard WWE guy like me, it’s cool to see this completely alternate universe actually get credit for existing. Props to VKM Jr for honoring the dead and remembering his enemies contributions, even if the overall story isn’t his to tell. I just wish the documentary portion had been 3x as long - but that’s just me. Overall, good stuff and I recommend it for the new school, WWE-bred wrestling historian.

8 out of 10

Peace,

MSD

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