The NWA U.S. Title belt

[endo]

The NWA US title, or the one that most consider "the" NWA US title, was formed in 1975 in the Mid Atlantic area with Harley Race being introduced as the first champion and it being announced that he had won a "tournament", defeating Johnny Weaver in the finals to win the title.
There were many versions of the US title all over the country, including one in Detroit that The Sheik held for numerous years, at one point using a belt almost identical to the early Mid Atlantic version.

This was the first belt used as the US title belt, and it was made my Nikita Mulkavitch who also made many of the state and territory belts as well as the title belt held by Bruno Sammartino, Superstar Graham and Bob Backlund among others.





Any interesting piece of trivia about this particular belt, is that the word "heavyweight" was misspelled on the belt as "heavyweihgt".





For comparison, this is the belt that the Detroit promotion used, also made by Malkavitch...so not too hard to figure out why it looked similar, lol. The only real differences were the side plates.
Can't tell if this one was misspelled or not.



to be continued...

[NDX]

I find that to be really ugly.

[endo]

Lol, a lot of people feel that way. The majority I'd bet. Growing up, and loving wrestling as much as I did, I always loved the NWA belts.
Probably because all I got on TV was the . So, I had to read the Apter mags to see the NWA stuff and whenever there was a belt shot, I loved it.
I had blond hair, so I liked Ric Flair the first time I saw him in the mags, lol. And, I associated this belt with him, so it's been a favorite ever since. I love it.

[NDX]

I like a bit of symmetry when it comes to belt designs. Doesn't have to be the interiors, but I like a symmetrical perimeter.

[endo]

Oh, I get that completely. I'd probably hate it if I didn't grow up wanting to be Flair, lol.

Anyway, a bunch of guys held this belt...Terry Funk, Rick Steamboat, Blackjack Mulligan, Paul Jones, Jimmy Snuka, Johnny Valentine...probably some I'm missing.





The next version of the title belt went with a smaller, more oval main plate.
It was actually surprising, at least to me, to see the NWA go with this style belt for the US title, as it was normally delegated to state or regional titles at the time.
The US Championship was considered one notch below the World Championship in most territories, so it was surprising to see this type of belt used to represent it. I guess that's why it didn't last long.

[gorepolice]

The plates on the first one looked nice, but my God does the belt look hideous. That second belt looks really nice..

[endo]

Well, they did re-leather the first belt on black when Greg Valentine won it from Ric Flair, and to me the leather looked terrible.
Smaller and black...and I say different plates, look closely, but the "belt experts" disagree with me on that. Anyway, I thought the red leather looked better than the black.

[gorepolice]

Still ugly, but it looks better than the red one to me.

[endo]

On Wahoo it looks pretty good, on Flair the strap looks as asymmetrical as the plates to me. But the color does look better.

[endo]

So, after this version:

the belt was replaced with what collectors call the "10 pounds of silver", mainly because the shape of the belt resembled the Domed Globe which was called the "10 pounds of gold", and because the belt was silver, lol.

When it was first awarded it had paint on it, but with wear almost all of the paint came off, adding to the nick name.

[NDX]

That's much better. Has a very cool boxing prize belt to it. I like it,

[endo]

I liked that version a lot too. It's also one of the belts that a lot of collectors go for. And probably half of them get the belt new with no paint at all on it.
I prefer it painted, but all nickel looks good too.

[NDX]

The full nickel reminds me of the late 80s IC title. Which is my second favorite title ever. So I like that look, although I think it would look better in gold with no paint.

[endo]

I think it would have looked good all gold too. I guess since they were using the Domed Globe as the world belt at the time, they wanted to set this one apart looks wise since it was already similar in shape. I dunno.

Anyway, the next, and final actual NWA U.S. belt was another one that I really liked the looks of a lot.

[gorepolice]

Now THAT is how a title should look.