Fujinami reign question

[edgehead1984]

When Fujinami was NWA champion in 1991, what belt did he have, and was he recognized immediately as champ by the NWA...thanks for the answers...

[Captain Charisma]

As far as I know, Fujinami was immediately recognized by the NWA. I dunno about WCW. I could be totally wrong, but that is my understanding of the situation.

There are a bunch of guys here that know more about Title/Championship histories/lineages than I.

[Hisaharu Tanabe]

During a post-match "press conference" (which was only for WCW PPV angle, not a legit press conference), Flair came in to the room, took the belt from Fujinami, and left the room.

Though Fujinami was announced as the NWA champ for the following matches, he didn't have the belt.

[BadNews]

As far as I know, Fujinami was not recognized as as world champion by the NWA back then. He was only announced as NWA champion in Japan.

[edgehead1984]

During a post-match "press conference" (which was only for WCW PPV angle, not a legit press conference), Flair came in to the room, took the belt from Fujinami, and left the room.

Though Fujinami was announced as the NWA champ for the following matches, he didn't have the belt.

Thanks, Hisa.

[Dan Poutsma]

Fujinami was only announced as the NWA champion in Japan. WCW had already ceased recognizing the NWA by that point (reportedly after getting into a squabble with the remaining NWA promoters) and didn't make mention of the name again until 1992. So their story was that Flair was still the official WCW World heavyweight champion while Fujinami was still nothing more than just IWGP champion since the decision had been reversed because of a disqualification. Later on down the road they would make note of the switch(es) in their magazine, programs, and on their website when discussing Flair's number of titles, but at the time, nothing was said about it.

And from what I understand, it wasn't until the summer of 1991 that the NWA Board of Directors officially announced that Fujinami had won the title in Japan and that Flair won it back at the first SuperBrawl, probably around the same time they came out with their statement declaring that Flair was still the NWA champion despite having been fired by Jim Herd and stripped of the WCW title.