This is a work in progress.

If someone would have polled the membership of the National Wrestling Alliance in 1948
when the organization was expanded out of the backyard of Des Moines promoter Pinkie
George and again every year, I'm pretty sure that each member would have a different
explanation to why they were a member, what it was there for, and how it was helping
professional wrestling.  The members joined for selfish reasons, no doubt about it, and
felt during the early days that the organization would help preserve their business by
whatever means necessary.  That would include the nefarious actions of blacklisting
wrestlers and running rival promoters out of the business.  And, don't forget, protecting
individual territories.

You get the impression that Sam Muchnick, by reading scores and scores of letters found
at the Jack Pfefer Collection at Notre Dame and in the Department of Justice files, was a
true, die-hard believer in the positive aspects of the NWA.  Around every corner, he
talked up the organization, expressing that he felt the Alliance was good for the business
even in the face of major crisis.  He was, without a doubt, the backbone of the National
Wrestling Alliance, and without him, it wouldn't have survived as long as it did.  The NWA
probably wouldn't have survived past 1956 had he not been so firmly behind it.  No one
else in the organization would have stepped up to perform the arduous duties that he did
on a daily basis.



On October 8, 1949, Muchnick wrote to Ted Thye in Portland, explaining to him that the
National Wrestling Alliance "was formed for cooperative purposes with everyone and not
to injure anyone."

Johnny Doyle told the Department of Justice that the NWA was formed for the following
purposes:

1.  To obtain a nation-wide booking monopoly of wrestling talent;
2.  To guarantee each NWA Member a local monopoly of booking wrestling talent in his
own territory;
3.  To assist each NWA Member in obtaining control, in some cases a monopoly, over the
promotion of wrestling matches in his territory;
4.  To obtain a monopoly over the wrestling talent in the United States

Orville Brown's point of view in 1955, revealed in a March 4, 1955 letter to Muchnick, on
the main reason so many booking agents joined the NWA was "to get on the Bandwagon
when the big TV scare came." But he noted that "TV's real Hey Day is over," and that if
the NWA was to fall apart, "perhaps another little band of five or six who have a real
purpose and whose word need not be questioned can start all over again and accomplish
what the original six started to do."









Research by Tim Hornbaker
The Reasons for Having a "National Wrestling Alliance"