It's not the NWA Title and never has been. This one is a little complicated.
The NWA World Title has been around since 1948 and was the first real World Title. That's all you need to know about it until we get to 1987. Around that time, Jim Crockett, the biggest promoter in the NWA, overstretched his boundaries and ran out of money. Ted Turner bought Jim Crockett Promotions and changed the name to World Championship Wrestling. They were still a member of the NWA, but they were rapidly becoming bigger than the NWA itself. WCW starts to phase the NWA name out and that's where things get confusing.
In January of 1991, WCW makes its own World Title, meaning there are two world titles. Flair beats Sting to become the first champion while also being NWA World Champion. He held both belts, but they stopped mentioning the NWA World Title name, even though Flair was still champion. In June, WCW boss Jim Herd fired Flair while he was still champion because Jim Herd was a lunkhead. Flair was stripped of both titles, but he owned the NWA Title itself, as in the Big Gold Belt.
With Flair in the WWF, Masahiro Chono wins the NWA World Title and Barry Windham wins the WCW World Title. The titles stay split until September 1993 when WCW leaves the NWA for good. Like I said though, the NWA didn't own the belt itself so WCW starts calling it the WCW International Heavyweight Title. It's the belt itself with no lineage behind it at all. That's the key thing to remember here: the NWA Title was vacant at this time but its most famous design was still in WCW. Those belts were unified in 1994 when WCW World Champion Flair beat International Champion Sting at Clash of the Champions. The Big Gold Belt became the WCW World Title belt and that's it.
Basically, WWE is saying the lineage is the same because the design of the title was the same. The WWE World Heavyweight Championship dates back to September of 2002 when Bischoff invented it for HHH. If you REALLY want to stretch, you can say the title's lineage dates back to 1991 but saying it's the NWA World Title is just flat out wrong. It's like saying the NWA Virginia Heavyweight Title is the same lineage as the Intercontinental Title because the Virginia Title used to be an Intercontinental Title replica belt.
Does that make sense?
