The AWA World Heavyweight Championship was a

professional wrestling Professional wrestling is a form of theater that revolves around staged wrestling matches. The mock combat is performed in a ring similar to the kind used in boxing, and the dramatic aspects of pro wrestling may be performed both in the ring o ...

world heavyweight championship promoted by

Paul Bowser Paul Forbes Bowser (May 28, 1886 – July 17, 1960) was a professional wrestling promoter who was active from the 1920s to the 1950s in the Boston area.Tim Hornbaker,Paul Bowser Biography" 2006 Wrestler Bowser grew up on a farm in western Pennsy ...

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

. The title was created by Bowser after

Gus Sonnenberg Gustave Adolph Sonnenberg (March 6, 1898 – September 9, 1944) was an American football player and professional wrestler of German descent and World Heavyweight Champion. As a wrestler, he was National Wrestling Association world heavyweight ch ...

, who had beaten Ed Lewis for the original World Heavyweight Wrestling Championship in 1929, was stripped of recognition as champion by the

National Boxing Association The World Boxing Association (WBA), formerly known as the National Boxing Association (NBA), is the oldest and one of four major organizations which sanction professional boxing bouts, alongside the World Boxing Council (WBC), International Boxi ...

. Browser continued to recognize Sonnenberg as champion and named his championship after the "American Wrestling Association" governing body, which hitherto did not actually exist. Rival promoters, including

Jack Curley Jack Curley (July 4, 1876 - July 12, 1937), born Jacques Armand Schuel, was a sports promoter of the early 1900s. He managed several high-profile boxing events around the turn-of-the-century and he also established professional wrestling as a vi ...

, countered by forming the

National Wrestling Association The National Wrestling Association (NWA) was an early professional wrestling sanctioning body created in 1930 by the National Boxing Association (NBA; now the World Boxing Association, WBA) as an attempt to create a governing body for professional ...

and its

NWA World Heavyweight Championship The NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship is a world heavyweight professional wrestling championship owned and promoted by the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), an American professional wrestling promotion. The current champion is Tyrus, who is i ...

. During Don Eagle's second reign, splinter titles were created by regional promoters in Chicago and Ohio. Bowser abandoned the championship later in Eagle's reign, while he was rendered inactive due to injuries in November 1952.

Title history

AWA World Heavyweight Championship (Boston version)

Splinter titles

AWA World Heavyweight Championship (Chicago version)

AWA World Heavyweight Championship (Ohio version)

Ohio-based promoter

Al Haft Albert C. Haft (November 13, 1886 - 10 November 1976) was a wrestler (both professional and amateur), wrestling and boxing promoter and wrestling trainer who was a prominent promoter in the United States from the late 1910s until the 1960s, runnin ...

created a splinter version of the title after recognizing Don Eagle's loss to Dr. Bill Miller on May 1, 1952 as a title change. The change was not recognized by Bowser. That title continued until 1954 when incumbent Buddy Rogers was stripped of the title.

Footnotes

References

External links

{{Portal bar, United States
AWA World Heavyweight Championship (Boston)
at Pro Wrestling Historical Society

at Pro Wrestling Historical Society

at Wrestling-Titles.com World heavyweight wrestling championships Professional wrestling in Boston