A look back at Rob Conway’s NWA World Title reign.
There were two separate occasions throughout Rob Conway’s in-ring career when he was crowned NWA World Heavyweight Champion.
His first title reign began in March of 2013 and he went on to defend the belt multiple times under the New Japan Pro-Wrestling banner. He would eventually lose the belt to Satoshi Kojima at Wrestle Kingdom 8.
Conway reflected on his reigns while on the 75th Café De René livestream. He recalled New Japan telling NWA that if they put the title on him, then they’d be willing to do business with the organization.
It was a big moment for me (becoming NWA World Heavyweight Champion) because I had known ahead of time… New Japan talked to the NWA and they were thinking about making me the champion and they said, ‘If you make him the champion, we’ll do business with you.’ So I won the championship. Went over there for the first time not with WWE. When I was with WWE, we wrestled (William) Regal and TAJIRI so I’d wrestled them 50 times. When I got over there and was NWA World Champion, over there, they treat it like you’re Ric Flair or Terry Funk or Harley Race still. So I was immediately in — there was like a triple main event. There was like 15,000 at the show. I got to wrestle a legend by the name of (Satoshi) Kojima and go over with my finish. The built me up then I beat Jushin Liger with my finish and I beat a guy named (Manabu) Nakanishi with my finish and it was all leading up and then I did (World) Tag League where we had 15 matches in 14 days and I only lost one of the — every time we lost, my partner would lose because they were keeping me strong and then I eventually had a match for the NWA World Title at the Tokyo Dome for Wrestle Kingdom and Harley Race was the one holding up the belt. So yeah, that was pretty cool.
Over the past five years, Conway has guest coached at the WWE Performance Center on multiple occasions. He said he’d be willing to come back to the company as a producer or coach but is not looking to go back as a talent with a consistent schedule.
Yeah, I considered going back (to WWE) as a producer or coach but I couldn’t wrestle four nights a week anymore.
Conway is 50 years of age. He last wrestled in a sanctioned match in March 2022.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Café De René with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
