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Upon its founding in 1948, the NWA Board of Directors recognized only three championships as world titles. There were however no rules within the organization preventing individual members promoting titles in other divisions as world titles. Currently, only four are currently recognized by the Board.
NWA promoters from EMLL, later renamed the CMLL, in Mexico began promoting two more championships as World Titles, which were essentially regional titles controlled by EMLL. When the company withdrew from the organization in the 80's, the titles were no longer officially sanctioned by the NWA, however they were still promoted as NWA sanctioned titles by EMLL. In Lucha Libre, titles generally stay with their holder when that competitor leaves a region or company. This practice has caused theses titles, along with the Light Heavyweight Championship, to be accepted as "world titles" in Japan and Mexico. Weight limits for the titles are loosely followed by Lucha Libre promotions.
Prior to 1992, many NWA promoters sanctioned a regional version of a tag team championship as the "World Championship". Although named as world titles, none of the titles were sanctioned as the official world title by the Board of Directors, and were technically regional championships. The Mid-Atlantic version, promoted by Jim Crockett Promotions, became widely accepted as the legitimate World Title when many promotions began folding, or being bought out by JCP. With this consolidation, the Mid-Atlantic version became known as the World Tag Championship, although it was not technically recognized as such by the Board of Directors. It was, however, recognized as such by kayfabe magazine Pro Wrestling Illustrated. As JCP evolved into World Championship Wrestling, this version of the title would become known as the WCW World Tag Team Title.
The following titles were also called "World Championships", but were actually just regional or company titles.
While the names of these championships suggest they were defended on a national, or even international, basis, it was rarely the case. The vast majority of the championships listed were rarely, if ever, used outside of the respective NWA territory they belonged to. As a result, most of them were technically regional titles rather than nationally based titles.
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