"Superstar" Billy Graham took the WWWF title belt on a tour of Florida and faced NWA champion Harley Race on 1/25/78 in Miami, FL. The bloody bout went to a time limit draw. Back in the Northeast, the Superstar had his hands full with the challenge of Bob Backlund. On 2/20/78 in Madison Square Garden, Backlund defeated Graham for the WWWF championship. Graham had his foot on the bottom rope at the count of three, but the decision was allowed to stand. The two rivals would then engage in two more classic matches. In the rematch, again at the Garden, Superstar battered the new champion so badly that the referee stopped the match due to Backlund's cuts. The deciding match was held in a steel cage, again at the Garden. After dominating Backlund for close to 30 minutes, Graham missed a running knee in the corner & got his foot entangled in the cage. Backlund crawled out of the cage for the victory as a trapped Superstar could only watch. Graham vowed to get the belt back, but he was soon overshadowed by the flood of rulebreakers that Lou Albano, Fred Blassie and the Grand Wizard began bringing into the WWWF to challenge Backlund for the title. He teamed with his "half brother" Crazy Luke Graham and Ivan Koloff in tag matches. He also feuded with Dusty Rhodes, the two battling it out in a brutal Texas Bullrope match to cap it off. Graham barely won the match and soon disappeared from the WWWF...... for awhile, anyways.

We will deal with the Bob Backlund era.