In 1953 the Chicago-based promoter Fred Kohler introduced the team of Lord James Blears and Lord Lathol Laytham as the local NWA World Tag Team champions, billing them as having won the championship in a different NWA territory before they began working for Kohler. Historic records do not indicate that Blears and Laytham had actually won the championship elsewhere. From mid-1953 the championship became the main tag team championship of the Illinois-Wisconsin territory. A few months later promoter Ed Don George brought in the Chicago champions to his Ohio-Upstate New York territory and used them to bring an air of legitimacy to his own version of the NWA World Tag Team Championship, allowing local wrestlers Bill Melby and Billy Darnell to defeat Blears and Martino Angelo (who substituted for an injured Athol).