World Class Championship Wrestling, based out of Dallas, Texas was probably the most famous third national promotion during the 1980s. While many fans are familiar with the promotion from its 80s heyday and its ownership by Fritz Von Erich, the promotion had actually been in existence for nearly two decades earlier, since 1966, when it was known as NWA Big Time Wrestling. The parent company of WCCW was Southwest Sports, Inc., whose president was Fritz Von Erich, which would establish his ownership of the promotion later on.

Even when WCCW was promoting events internationally, when they were in Dallas, their shows would always originate from "The Sportatorium, the world-famous Sportatorium" to quote long-time WCCW play by play man, Bill Mercer. This was in stark contrast to their main rival promotions, where their shows would constantly be on the road. The concept of having a home arena would give WCCW a local feel to loyal Texas wrestling fans, and indeed, The Sportatorium was a very famous Dallas arena, holding all kinds of events within its walls from other sports such as boxing to concerts until it was eventually demolished in 2003 after nearly 60 years.

The theme music from WCCW (what you heard as you landed on this page), as well as its memorable opening sequence (shown at the bottom of this page), were almost as famous as the promotion itself.

After the promotion's demise, ESPN aired a series of retrospectives, called Legends of World Class, hosted by long-time ring announcer Marc Lowrance, which featured matches from what was considered to be the glory days of the promotion. This retrospective was the final time World Class Championship Wrestling would air on television.

In the 2006 documentary Heroes of World Class, WCCW producer Mickey Grant detailed how he had pioneered the use of the camera at ringside that offered a different and (at the time) unique perspective of the action that deviated from the (then) industry standard long shot and close shot, letting cameramen get right up on the ring apron to gain a different view of the action. Grant's innovations have subsequently been integrated into the modern industry standards. Bill Mercer also discussed that World Class Championship Wrestling was putting on "main event" matches that other promotions rarely did at the time, and that to keep interest high in the television main event, they introduced the concept of "quarter hour maintenance" which was to hype the upcoming portions of the show and especially the main event at least once every fifteen minutes, but especially prior to commercials. This practise is also now commonplace on televised wrestling programming.

Also in 2006, Kevin Von Erich would sell the WCCW library to WWE, and on April 4th, 2009, the night before WrestleMania XXV, Kevin would represent the Von Erich family as they were inducted into the WWE Hall Of Fame by long-time rival, Michael Hayes of The Fabulous Freebirds.