World Class Championship Wrestling

*This article is about the wrestling promotion based in Denver, Colorado from 1963. For the original promotion based in Dallas, Texas from 1966 to 1986 that merged with this one, see* World Class Championship Wrestling (1966)*. For the 1996 video game of the same name, see* World Class Championship Wrestling (1996 video game). *For the 2007 video game of the same name, see* World Class Championship Wrestling (2007 video game).

 **February 1968; 55 years ago**
 **May 1986; 37 years ago**
 **Owner** | World Class Sports Ventures
 **Website** | WCCWrestling.com

**World Class Championship Wrestling** (**WCCW**) is an American professional wrestling promotion based in Denver, Colorado and owned by World Class Sports Ventures (The Walt Disney Company). It regularly competes with All Elite Wrestling for the honor of second largest wrestling promotion in the United States. The promotion has maintained a working relationship with independent promotions affiliated with the Indie Wrestling Federation since 2021. The company is additionally involved in licensing its intellectual property to companies to produce video games and action figures.

Since September 1995, WCCW has produced a two-hour weekly television show, *Friday Night Intensity*, which airs live. WCCW introduced a second live show, *Tuesday Night Battle Zone*, in August 2005. *WCCW NexGen* premiered in May 2020 followed by *Tuesday Thunder* and *Friday Fury* in May 2023.

## History

### Denver Professional Wrestling Association (1963–1968)

World Class Championship Wrestling was originally founded on February 28, 1962 by nineteen year-old professional wrestler Jack Thompson as the **Denver Professional Wrestling Association** (DPWA). Thompson had recently been fired from Colorado Championship Wrestling and founded the DPWA with a few of his friends. The promotion would operate as a backyard wrestling product for many months until April 1963 when the DPWA announced their first live event would be held on May 18 at East High School. Although sparsely attended, the event was deemed a success and encouraged the independent promotion to continue hosting a monthly house show in Denver. By 1965, these shows had moved to a weekly basis and the promotion also debuted a monthly hour-long television special on local cable called *Denver Prime Time Wrestling.* *Primetime* would eventually be cancelled in 1968 and the promotion would not return to television until 1974.

During these early years, wrestlers were mainly former high school and collegiate wrestlers with little-to-no professional experience. A number of injuries would occur at early DPWA shows as a result of the inexperience. The apparent danger of the in-ring action helped attract a rabid fanbase early-on that would inspire the promotion to book more hardcore matches. By the early 1970s however, hardcore wrestling had been more-or-less phased out as more experienced talent joined the roster.

### Rocky Mountain Championship Wrestling (1968–1986)

In June 1968, the DPWA would join the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) as the rebranded **Rocky Mountain Championship Wrestling**, with plans to host shows across Colorado and eventually expand to Utah and Wyoming. The first RMCW event hosted outside of Colorado occurred two months later on August 17, 1968 in Salt Lake City, Utah when the special Summer SuperShowdown invaded the Einar Nielsen Fieldhouse.

By the mid-1970s, the RMCW was hosting events across the Rocky Mountains region of North America, as far north as British Columbia and Alberta, and as far south as New Mexico with plans to expand even further in hopes to become a national promotion. The company left the NWA ion June 1972 and would return to television two years later in May 1974 with the debut of *Rocky Mountain Championship Wrestling*. The hour-long syndicated program mainly featured matches from various house shows as well as scripted studio segments. By 1977, the program would feature a greater emphasis on wrestling and began phasing out the studio segments. *Rocky Mountain Championship Wrestling* would make its national television debut in 1982 on SuperStation WTBS under the shortened title of *RMCW TV*.

In March 1979, RMCW merged with the start-up Spokane Championship Wrestling, adding approximately twenty-three wrestlers to the roster and helping the promotion break into the Pacific Northwest market. As a result of the acquisition, RMCW hosted their Summer SuperShowdown special on August 5, 1979 at Joe Albi Stadium in Spokane, Washington, the promotion's first ever outdoor stadium event.

Throughout the early 80s, RMCW continued to expand its presence on the West coast, .

### World Class Championship Wrestling merger and national expansion (1986–1995)

*See also: World Class Championship Wrestling (1966) History*

On February 18, 1986, World Class Championship Wrestling based in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas withdrew their membership from the NWA and one month later, Ken Mantell and Fritz Von Erich sold WCCW to RMCW founder Jack Thompson. Thompson would initially keep WCCW headquartered in Dallas until May 5 when WCCW's head office was relocated to Denver and merged with RMCW. The new venture would, controversially, retain the World Class name in hopes it would aid the promotion's national expansion. With the change, *Rocky Mountain Championship Wrestling* was renamed *WCCW Live* and began being broadcasted live from a house show at arenas across the country. The following month the combined promotion debuted their first pay-per-view, *WCCW No Limits*, which was broadcast live from Houston, Texas.

In August 1988, WCCW would rebrand *WCCW Live* to *World Class Wednesday*, opting to use the WCCW Live name for their non-televised house shows. *World Class Wednesday* would air on SuperStation WTBS until March 1992 when it was cancelled due to low ratings. WCCW would then focus on its house shows while continuing to air its three annual PPVs.

### Debut of *Friday Night Intensity* and continued growth (1995–2004)

The promotion would return to TBS in the fall of 1995 with the debut of *WCCW Intensity* on Friday September 29. The new show was 90-minutes rather than an hour although low viewership caused TBS to once again cancel the show, this time just 18 months after it debuted. Fox Sports Net picked up the show, allowing *Intensity* to air continuously without taking any time off.

By the mid-90s, most fans had warmed to the new WCCW, which saw a decade of growth in terms of roster size as well as audience reach. WCCW was quickly becoming as popular as World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and the World Wrestling Federation (WWF; now known as World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)), with tickets for *Intensity* routinely selling out within a day of going on sale. The combination of high ticket sales and an increasing roster inspired the company to explore the possibility of introducing a second television show that would serve as a companion to *Intensity*. This new show would be announced on the November 19, 2004 episode of *Intensity*, with a planned debut of June 2005. The November 19 episode of *Intensity* was also the first two-hour edition of the program.

###  Debut of *Tuesday Night Fight Zone!* and first brand split (2005–2009)

A second two-hour show, titled *Tuesday Night Fight Zone!,* debuted on August 23, 2005 on Spike TV. The program's debut was preceded by the first WCCW Draft episode of *Intensity* which aired August 19 and split the WCCW roster in two. To support the new Fight Zone brand, WCCW debuted three new championships: the Fight Zone! Heavyweight Championship, Fight Zone! Women's Championship and the Fight Zone! Tag Team Championship. The brand split was inspired by the WWE brand extension and was widely disliked by fans in the beginning. Ratings during the brand split were down constantly as fans took notice in the talent disparity and by 2009, the company decided to allow wrestlers from the Fight Zone brand to appear on *Intensity* and vice-versa. The brand split was officially declared over at the 2009 Clash of the Champions which saw the Fight Zone! Heavyweight Championship unified with the WCCW World Heavyweight Championship, the Fight Zone! Women's Championship unified with the WCCW Women's Championship and the Fight Zone! Tag Team Championship.unified with the WCCW World Tag Team Championship.

###  Brand reunification (2010–2018)

Ratings for both *Intensity* and *Fight Zone!* would soar following the brand split, with a new found synergy between both shows thanks to them airing on the same network and now with the same talent for the first time. The shows would face competition from TNA *Impact!* though, and by 2011, the network had begun pushing for more emphasis on reality television in the midst of a network rebrand. Because of this, WCCW chose not to renew their contracts with Spike and in 2013 began negotiating a new media rights deal that would see *Fight Zone!* move to ESPN2 and *Intensity* move to Fox Sports 1.

With the switch to ESPN2 in August 2013, *Fight Zone!* was rebranded *Tuesday Night Battle Zone* and switched its color palette from maroon to green in order to better differentiate it from the Intensity brand. On May 20, 2014, *Battle Zone* and *Intensity* switched to a full 16:9 letterbox widescreen presentation, with a down-scaled version of the native HD feed on a 4:3 SD feed. In conjunction with this, WCCW debuted an updated stage design that would be shared between *Tuesday Night Battle Zone* and *Friday Night Intensity*.

###  Influx of WWE talent and launch of second brand split (2018–2020)

On May 15, 2018, WCCW relaunched the brand split, billed as "World Class Forever". Subsequently, *Battle Zone* and *Intensity* have each featured their unique rosters, announcers, championships and ring sets/ropes. A draft took place to determine which wrestlers would appear on what show.

WWE announced on November 4, 2019 that it had "expanded" its partnership with the General Entertainment Authority through 2027, under which it would hold two "large-scale events" in the country per-year as well as pursue a possible sale of the company to Saudi Arabia. When word of a possible sale spread through the locker room, multiple wrestlers either quit or demanded to be released from their contracts. While the biggest talent like Brock Lesnar, John Cena and Roman Reigns remained at WWE, a majority of the roster chose to sign with WCCW, with the remaining few signing with Impact Wrestling or All Elite Wrestling.

### COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021)

From March 12, 2020 to May 20, 2021, WCCW announced that all of its live programs would air from the Sacramento Credit Union Center in Sacramento, California without an audience until further notice beginning with the following day's episode of *Intensity* due to the COVID-19 pandemic that resulted in the suspension of many professional sports leagues. On May 21, 2021, WCCW announced that they will return in front of live fans with a 25 city tour, therefore the July 13, 2021 edition of Battle Zone would be the final WCCW held behind closed doors.

### Walt Disney merger and move to ESPN+ (2021–present)

One day before announcing their return to touring, WCCW announced on May 20, 2021 that they had agreed to a $15 million deal to merge World Class Championship Wrestling, Inc. into the The Walt Disney Company through a new subsidiary called World Class Sports Ventures. The new company would be overseen by then-Disney CEO Bob Chapek and WCCW founder and chairman Jack Thompson. Chapek would be replaced with Bob Iger as of November 20, 2022.

With the formation of World Class Sports Ventures, all of WCCW programming would be moved to Disney-owned streaming services.

## Programming

###  Non-televised house shows

*Main article: WCCW Live*

Originally formed in 1962 as the Denver Wrestling Association, the independent promotion mainly hosted house shows across Denver while also airing a monthly hour-long television special on local cable called *Denver Primetime Wrestling*. *Primetime* was eventually cancelled in 1965 and the promotion would not return to television until 1974. In 1968, Denver Wrestling Association would rebrand as Rocky Mountain Championship Wrestling, with plans to host shows across Colorado and eventually expand to Utah and Wyoming. The first RMCW event hosted outside of Colorado occurred on August 17, 1968 in Salt Lake City, Utah when the special Summer SuperShowdown invaded the Einar Nielsen Fieldhouse.

The first RMCW event hosted outside of Colorado occurred on July 6, 1968 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin when the special Fourth of July Bash invaded the Milwaukee Arena.

* *Halloween Hell Night*: Annual special hosted 1963 until 1975; revived in 2015 as PPV *Halloween Havoc*
* *Thanksgiving Throwdown*: Annual special hosted 1963 until 1975
* *Christmas Chaos*: Annual special hosted 1963 until 1981; replaced with *X-Treme X-Mas* until 1983; replaced with *'Twas the Fight Before Christmas* until 1985; revived in 1998 as PPV *Christmas Chaos* until 2006; replaced with *X-Mas Slaughter* until 2012; revived in 2015 as *December to Dismember*
* *The Great American Bash*: Annual special hosted 1964 until 1975; replaced with *Freedom Slam* until 1977; name revived by NWA's Jim Crockett Promotions in 1985; promoted by WCW 1989–2000; promoted by WWE 2004–2009, 2012; promoted by NXT 2020–present
* *Sunday Stunner*: Monthly television special hosted 1965 until 1977 as replacement for *Primetime;* name revived by WWE in 2022
* *Rocky Mountain Showdown*: Monthly television special hosted 1977 until 1982 as replacement for *Sunday Stunner*
* *Final Frontier:* Series finale of *Rocky Mountain Championship Wrestling* featuring a 20-man battle royal and every championship on the line (Oct 1988)
* *WCCW No Limits*: Annual PPV hosted every November from 1988 until 1995; name revived in 2023

###  Pay-Per-Views

Theme Songs:

* Korn - Evolution (NexGen: Evolution)
* Eminem - 'Til I Collapse (WCCW Battle Zone)
* nickleback - Edge of a Revolution (NexGen)