WCW World Television Championship | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Promotion | World Championship Wrestling | ||||||||||||||||||||
Date established | February 27, 1974 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Date retired | April 10, 2000 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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The WCW World Television Championship was a professional wrestling television championship owned by the now-defunct World Championship Wrestling (WCW) promotion.
The title was introduced on February 27, 1974 in Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling/Jim Crockett Promotions, a territory of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). Jim Crockett Promotions was purchased by Turner Broadcasting System in 1988, and subsequently renamed WCW. In March 2001, certain assets of WCW were sold by AOL Time Warner to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE). As such these assets, including the rights to the WCW World Television Championship, inactive since April 10, 2000, were now WWF property.[2] Before it was known as the WCW World Television Championship (from 1991 until the title's deactivation), it was known as the NWA Mid-Atlantic Television Championship (1974 to 1977), the NWA Television Championship (1977 to 1985), and the NWA World Television Championship (1985 to 1991).
The title was often defended in matches with a time limit of ten or fifteen minutes. More often than with other championships, title matches resulted in time limit draws and the champion retaining the title. This was often used as a heat-building device to allow a villain champion to retain his title. The NWA version of the belt had the logos of the major television networks in the U.S. (NBC, CBS, and ABC) on either side of the belt, while the 1992–1995 WCW version of the belt had TBS on both sides of the belt.