The company now known as World Wrestling Entertainment began as National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) member Capitol Wrestling Corporation in 1953. After separating from the NWA (then the governing body of wrestling) for good in 1963, Vincent J. McMahon (sometimes referred to as Vince McMahon, Sr. to differentiate from his son, current WWE Chairman & CEO Vincent K. "Vince" McMahon), and his business partner, Joseph "Toots" Mondt rechristened their organisation the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF, which, despite the ambitious name, still only promoted events throughout the northeast regional "territory") with "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers, the recently-dethroned NWA Champion, who had just a short time prior lost the title to Lou Thesz in controversial one-fall fashion (typically, all NWA title matches at that point were best-of-three contests), freeing him to separate from the NWA, as the WWWF's first Champion, having won what is widely believed to be a phantom tournament for the title in April 1963, holding the title for only a month before dropping it to Bruno Sammartino, who would go on to hold it for nearly 8 years in his first of two title reigns. The NWA Board of Directors was unhappy with Rogers being booked almost exclusively in the northeast region that McMahon controlled, and voted the title off Rogers, using legitimate fighter Lou Thesz as the NWA's insurance that Rogers would drop the title. Despite their separation from the NWA, Vince McMahon, Sr. still sat on the NWA Board of Directors, and as such, while there were several title unification matches, they usually ended in some form of disqualification, insuring the titles remained separate.

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