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Oklahoma Title Change NOT Official!

Posted: May 2nd 2007 By: CMBurnham

The NWA Oklahoma Title has been the centre of various levels of controversy for much of the past half-year, however those levels escalated this past week with a title change that now seems to have been made moot.

Slam Shady won the title, which had been vacated by IZW Impact Division Champion John O'Malley back in November, in a Sooner Stampede. It seemed that this would make Shady's fellow Hate, Inc. members happy as he brought more gold into the fold, but NWA-U Universal Champion Rocco Valentino appeared less than thrilled that there were now 2 champions in the group. A face-off between the two occurred in the ring shortly after Shady was declared the winner and the potential for an in-ring collision between the two competitors seemed high, whether it would be for their belts or not.

Things all changed this past Friday. Results were posted on Indywarz.com by someone in attendance at the NWA Pro event held in Houston, TX. The 3rd match on that card was NWA Oklahoma Champion Slam Shady vs. NWA Texas Champion Chaz Taylor in a title-vs-title match and Taylor came out victorious, winning both belts. However there was no mention of this incident on the official NWA-Universal website. Oklafan senior editor and "Intense TV" colour commentator C. M. Burnham posted a mention of the title change on their message board and by Wednesday, the following statement had been made by the NWA-U board of directors:

"The Title vs Title Match was NEVER, NEVER approved by the owner of NWA Universal, yes that being Christopher Fox, nor the booker, Doug Cook. Thus it has been brought to the attention of the proper NWA executives that this title change IS NOT BEING RECOGNIZED BY NWA UNIVERSAL. Mr. Fox found out about this via an email this morning and well...S%&T hit the fan."

Just how far the acknowldgement of the title change has made it is unclear. TitleHistories.com posted the title change on their site and, as of Wednesday evening at the time this story is being written, had not changed that listing. Wrestling-Titles.com still listed Shady as the champion with no mention of the title switch. Nothing appeared on the official NWA site about the status of the championship.

Oklafan's stance on the title change is as follows: Unless word reaches us that the title-vs-title match is being upheld, we will acknowledge Slam Shady as the official NWA Oklahoma Champion. We will add a footnote to the title histories indicating this match took place, but the decision was overturned.

Slam Shady is scheduled to defend his title against Chance Christopher at the next NWA Universal event in Wagoner on May 19. It will be interesting to see if the NWA officials can force Chaz Taylor to return the belt to him by that time.