WWE's origins can trace back as far as 1952 when Roderick James "Jess" McMahon and Toots Mondt created the Capitol Wrestling Corporation Ltd. (CWC), which joined the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) in 1953. McMahon, who was a successful boxing promoter, began working with Tex Rickard in 1926. With the help of Rickard, he began promoting boxing at the third Madison Square Garden. Though, it was not the first time Jess McMahon promoted wrestling cards as he had already promoted wrestling cards during the 1910s.
In November 1954, Jess McMahon died and Ray Fabiani, one of Mondt's associates, brought in McMahon's son Vincent James.[14] The younger McMahon and Mondt were very successful and soon controlled approximately 70% of the NWA's booking, largely due to their dominance in the heavily populated Northeast region. In 1963, McMahon and Mondt left the NWA and Capitol created the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF), following a dispute with the NWA over "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers being booked to hold theNWA World Heavyweight Championship.[15] Both men left the company in protest following the incident and formed the WWWF in the process, awarding Rogers the new WWWF World Heavyweight Championship in April of that year. He lost the championship to Bruno Sammartino a month later on May 17, 1963, after suffering a heart attack a week before the match.
Capitol operated the WWWF in a conservative manner compared to other pro wrestling territories;[16] it ran its major arenas monthly rather than weekly or bi-weekly, usually featuring a babyface champion wrestling various heels in programs that consisted of one to three matches.[17] After gaining a television program deal and turning preliminary wrestler Lou Albano as a manager for Sammartino's heel opponents, the WWWF was doing sell out business by 1970.
Mondt left Capitol in the late sixties and although the WWWF had withdrawn from the NWA, Vince McMahon, Sr. quietly re-joined in 1971. Capitol renamed the World Wide Wrestling Federation to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1979.[18]
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