On February 27, 1985, Dory Funk, Jr. defeated Carlos Colón for the WWC Universal Heavyweight Title in Bangor, Maine.

These matches were initially taped in what appeared to be a high school gymnasium, with Lou Thesz and Les Thatcher providing color commentary.

Over the years ICW established a kind of “open door” policy, working with any federation or any individual competitor who was interested in working in the federation; this open door policy even saw the Japanese Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling Brass Knuckles Champion Atsushi Onita challenge the ICW Heavyweight champion Tony Atlas to a Title Vs Title Match.

Due to this working agreement, ICW changed the name of the promotion to International World Class Championship Wrestling (IWCCW), using the same opening sequence as WCCW did in the 1980s, with Earth from the Apollo 16 mission in the background.

Kevin Von Erich had won the WCCW Texas Title and appeared in several promos with the belt to announce the merger of the two federations.

The idea was that down the road the two champions (Tony Atlas and Kevin Von Erich) would meet to create an IWCCW title.

Another World Class mainstay, Chris Adams, was to have been a part of IWCCW, but was not able to join the federation due to his legal troubles.

After a short while Kevin Von Erich returned to Texas, effectively ending any plans to merge the two titles, but the name was kept.

Despite a short lived revival in 1995 that saw former WWF stars such as Tito Santana and Koko B. Ware hold the IWCCW title, the promotion folded in the latter part of 1995.

During its existence, the first over-the-air video music channel V66 added the syndicated show to daily rotation Monday through Friday at 7pm.

IWCCW’s “Revolving door” policy often meant that events would be hyped on Television, but never actually happened in real life, the best example of this was an angle between ”Ravishing” Rick Rude and The Honky Tonk Man over who was the best Intercontinental Champion of all time.

Vignettes were aired for months on end, but neither Rude nor the Honky Tonk Man ever worked in an ICW ring to settle the issue.

The federation was in many ways the breeding ground for future Eastern Championship Wrestling (later “Extreme Championship Wrestling”) performers due to the fact that Paul Heyman worked for the company as head booker [6] in late 1989 and early 1990 and got to know quite a few of the people involved, such as Rocco Rock and Johnny Grunge who both competed in IWCCW under different gimmicks.