WCPW Heavyweight Championship | |||||||||||||
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Details | |||||||||||||
Promotion | Windy City Pro Wrestling | ||||||||||||
Date established | April 13, 1988 | ||||||||||||
Date retired | 2001 | ||||||||||||
Other name(s) | |||||||||||||
WCW Midget Championship | |||||||||||||
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The WCPW Midget Championship was a professional wrestling midget title in Windy City Pro Wrestling (WCPW). Originally, WCPW was known as Windy City Wrestling (WCW), however, a lawsuit brought by World Championship Wrestling forced the smaller promotion to change its name to "Windy City Pro Wrestling" in 1997. The championship remained active until 2001 when it was discontinued.
Professional wrestling is a form of performance art and entertainment that combines athletics with theatrical performance. It takes the form of events, held by touring companies, that mimic a title-match combat sport. The unique form of sport portrayed is fundamentally based on – and evolved from – classical and "catch" wrestling, with modern additions of striking attacks, strength-based holds and throws and acrobatic maneuvers. Much of these derive from the influence of various international martial arts. An additional aspect of combat with improvised weaponry is sometimes included.
Midget wrestling is professional wrestling involving dwarves or people of short stature. Its heyday was in the 1950s and 1960s, when wrestlers such as Little Beaver, Lord Littlebrook, and Fuzzy Cupid toured North America, and Sky Low Low was the first holder of the National Wrestling Alliance's World Midget Championship. In the following couple of decades, more wrestlers became prominent in North America, including foreign wrestlers like Japan's Little Tokyo.
Windy City Pro Wrestling was an American regional professional wrestling promotion based in Chicago, Illinois. Established by retired wrestler Sam DeCero in 1988, the promotion was one of several major regional territories in the Midwest during the late 1980s, along with Dick the Bruiser's World Wrestling Association, and among the oldest independent organizations in the United States until its closure in 2011.
The inaugural champion was Little Tokyo, who defeated Cowboy Cottrell at a live event in Chicago, Illinois on January 1, 1988 to become the first WCW Midget Champion. Little Tokyo and Lone Eagle both hold the record for most reigns, with two each. At 1,758 days, Little Tokyo's first reign was the longest in the title's history. Chris Cruz's only reign was the shortest in the history of the title lasting only 85 days. Overall, there have been 8 reigns shared between 6 wrestlers, with two vacancies, and 1 deactivation.
Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and the third most populous city in the United States. With an estimated population of 2,705,994 (2018), it is also the most populous city in the Midwestern United States. Chicago is the county seat of Cook County, the second most populous county in the US, with portions of the northwest side of the city extending into DuPage County near O'Hare Airport. Chicago is the principal city of the Chicago metropolitan area, often referred to as Chicagoland. At nearly 10 million people, the metropolitan area is the third most populous in the nation.
# | Order in reign history |
Reign | The reign number for the specific set of wrestlers listed |
Event | The event in which the title was won |
— | Used for vacated reigns so as not to count it as an official reign |
N/A | The information is not available or is unknown |
+ | Indicates the current reign is changing daily |
Name | Years |
---|---|
WCW Midget Championship | 1992 — 1996 |
WCPW Midget Championship | 1997 — 2001 |
# | Wrestlers | Reign | Date | Days held | Location | Event | Notes | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Little Tokyo | 1 | January 1, 1988 | 1,758 | St. Joseph, Missouri | Live event | Little Tokyo defeated Cowboy Cottrell to become the first WCW Midget Champion. | [1] [2] |
2 | Chris Cruz | 1 | October 24, 1992 | 85 | Mt. Vernon, Illinois | Live event | [1] [2] | |
3 | Karate Kid | 1 | January 17, 1993 | 1,119 | Springfield, Illinois | Live event | [1] [2] | |
4 | Little Tokyo | 2 | February 10, 1996 | 189 | St. Joseph, Missouri | Live event | [1] [2] | |
5 | Bobby Dean | 1 | August 17, 1996 | 394 | Springfield, Illinois | Live event | [1] [2] | |
6 | Lone Eagle | 2 | September 15, 1997 | 687 | Nashville, Tennessee | Live event | [1] [2] | |
— | Vacated | — | August 3, 1999 | — | N/A | Live event | [1] [2] | |
7 | Puppet the Psycho Dwarf | 1 | August 17, 1999 | N/A | Sedalia, Missouri | Live event | [1] [2] | |
— | Vacated | — | August 1999 | — | N/A | N/A | The title is vacated when Puppet the Psycho Dwarf is stripped of the title. | [2] |
8 | Lone Eagle | 2 | August 1999 | N/A | N/A | N/A | Lone Eagle is awarded the vacant championship. | [2] |
— | Deactivated | — | 2001 | — | N/A | N/A | The title becomes inactive after 2001 and is subsequently discontinued. |
Rank [N 1] | Wrestler | # of reigns | Combined days |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Little Tokyo | 2 | 1,947 |
2 | Karate Kid | 1 | 1,119 |
3 | Lone Eagle | 2 | 687+ |
4 | Bobby Dean | 1 | 394 |
5 | Chris Cruz | 1 | 85 |
The NWA World Midget's Championship was the National Wrestling Alliance's midget wrestling singles championship. Large parts of the championship history is undocumented due to lack of documentation of Midget wrestling for large periods of time from the 1950s to the 1980s. In that period of time there were two touring groups of midget wrestlers in the United States, both had a "World Champion", leading to some uncertainty as to who was the NWA World Midget's Champion, often based on if the champion was booked as defending the championship in an NWA territory. The first wrestler to lay claim to the Midget's World Championship was Sky Low Low after he won a 30-man tournament in Paris, France. The tournament was either fictitious or not an NWA sanctioned event as it took place in Europe. But at some point after 1949 the NWA recognized Sky Low Low as their champion.
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