TNA ditched their weekly PPVs in favor of making their weekly television show Impact their flagship program and putting on monthly PPVs. They also ditched the traditional wrestling ring for a hexagonal one. Jeff Jarrett held the title for a year until running into, you guessed it, AJ Styles at their fifth monthly PPV. I’m ignoring his fake title loss to Ray Gonzalez in Puerto Rico because I took a look at it and they reversed the decision immediately after the match. If Chris Jericho’s win over Triple H on Raw for the WWE Championship didn’t count then Ray Gonzalez was never NWA Champion. By the way, did you know that Corgan’s NWA doesn’t have a record of the NWA Championship? There’s no lineage of record on the subject!
May 15, 2005 – Orlando, Florida
AJ Styles def. Jeff Jarrett {NWA World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From the inaugural Hard Justice. Tito Ortiz was the referee. This was presented as a match a year in the making (ignoring a title match they had in South Korea), and they tried to go the epic long match route. It didn’t really work. The match just came off as slow, long, and flat. I didn’t realize until this match that TNA had removed the champion’s advantage and allowed the title to change hands by disqualification and count out in all matches. The finisher theft didn’t get any reaction from the crowd, I think because it felt really out of place in a dull match like this. Monty Brown hit Jarrett with a Pounce by mistake as Tito Ortiz, the law and order guy, just watched it happen. The rest of the nonsense with Ortiz where he appears to turn heel also added nothing. It also lasted like five seconds, as he lays out Jarrett and Styles hits the Spiral Tap for the win at 19:39. The commentators tried to get over that it was dusting off that move that won Styles the match after the Styles Clash couldn’t get the job done, but that’s not the story that was told in this match at all. The story told here was that Styles needed Ortiz’s help to win. Boring match, terrible finish. No thanks. **¼
June 19, 2005 – Orlando, Florida
Raven def. AJ Styles, Abyss, Monty Brown, and Sean Waltman {NWA World Heavyweight Championship King of the Mountain Match}
From the inaugural Slammiversary. Raven was taking Jarrett’s place here, as Jarrett had been “arrested” earlier in the show for attacking a “fan.” Sure, why not? I could use a break from Jarrett to freshen things up. I liked the attempt to make this different from the first KOTM match. There was more general plunder use, and rather than having everyone fight when they were in the penalty box together we saw an alliance made between Waltman and Styles. I also got a kick out of watching the referees run around like EMTs trying to get wrestlers after they’d been pinned to the penalty box. That said, there was more down time in this one than the last one. The finish was flat too, as Raven just casually kicked Abyss off the ladder to hang the title at 14:17. This was a weird time for TNA, as they’d lost their TV deal with Fox Sports and were streaming Impact online. They’d get back on TV on Spike in October, but first something else weird happened. ***¼
September 15, 2005 – Windsor, Ontario
Jeff Jarrett def. Raven {NWA World Heavyweight Championship Raven’s Rules Match}
From Border City Wrestling’s International Impact show. The NWA title changed hands on an indie show, which isn’t new for the title but was certainly strange to happen during the title’s time in TNA. The weirdest thing about it is that while there is Border City Wrestling content on Impact Plus (Impact’s Scott D’Amore owns BCW), this match isn’t. Or maybe it is, I don’t know, Impact Plus is hard to navigate. At the same time, Impact streamed it’s final two weeks of shows online before debuting on Spike, and they were best-of shows. Raven’s Rules means no disqualifications, but the referee takes away Jarrett’s guitar because this match is bad. It was a low energy hardcore match, with two guys just going through the motions, and America’s Most Wanted interfering at the end to hand Jarrett the win at 13:46 Jarrett’s music plays before the closing bell rings, which is just bush league. Impact debuted on Spike with Jarrett as champion, Team 3D debuting, and Kevin Nash returning. That’s not nothing, but you’d think it might make things more understandable for potential new viewers if that had been preceded by a big title change. Instead they talked vaguely about an incident in Canada, and also Kevin Nash almost had a heart attack and ended up pulling out of the match with Jarrett. Nobody ever accused TNA of knowing what’s good for business. **
October 23, 2005 – Orlando, Florida
Rhino def. Jeff Jarrett {NWA World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From the inaugural Bound for Glory. Rhino won a four-way From Ball match and a 10-man Gauntlet for the Gold match before this. The battle royal was booked to find a replacement for Nash in the main event. Ortiz was the referee for this match too. Jarrett controlled the whole thing, which made sense but wasn’t interesting. Gail Kim and AMW interfered but Ortiz took care of all of them. Rhino won with the Gore at 5:43. Barely a match. Don West quoted a weird Ultimate Warrior promo to celebrate Rhino’s win. And then even though Rhino won against heavily stacked odds, the show ends with Jarrett and his giant crew of heels putting Rhino in a casket. Team 3D and 3 Live Kru make the save, but it showed a wild misunderstanding of how to make your new champion look strong that the save happened after Rhino was already in the casket. *½
November 3, 2005 – Orlando, Florida
Jeff Jarrett def. Rhino {NWA World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Impact 72. Huh, I guess they weren’t interested in having Rhino look strong after all. This was a perfectly fine match that ended with a ton of AMW interference and Jarrett hitting the Stroke for the win at 12:49. Rhino felt very midcardy (TNA in general feels very midcardy) as champion, so it’s probably for the best. **½
February 12, 2006 – Orlando, Florida
Christian Cage def. Jeff Jarrett {NWA World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From the second Against All Odds. I’ve never been as big a fan of Christian’s as folks who were fans of his time in TNA and his World Championship run in WWE. To me he’s never felt like a top of the card guy. There are plenty of things he did here that felt telegraphed, and I suppose that’s part of my issue with him. He’s not bad, in fact he’s pretty good, he just feels like a midcarder to me. Pretty much the same as Jeff Jarrett, but without the connections for the ridiculously sustained runs on top of companies. And this was a fine midcard match, dressed up in a main event robe. I did like Jarrett avoiding being disqualified by hitting the referee with a low blow before he could call for the bell. That’s clever heeling. My biggest problem with this match was that they made a huge deal out of Earl Hebner being this tough, experienced referee, but he spent a good five minutes of the match unconscious because of a nothing bump. I also didn’t need Christian hitting a powerbomb on Kim. He won the title at 16:23 with the Killswitch. ***
June 18, 2006 – Orlando, Florida
Jeff Jarrett def. Christian Cage, Sting, Ron Killings, and Abyss {NWA World Heavyweight Championship King of the Mountain Match}
From the second Slammiversary. So this is what it looks like when the bottom falls out of this stipulation. Pretty much the whole match was just mindless brawling around the arena. It felt like an ECW main event. It just went on forever and everyone seemed lost all the time. After a million years of nothing, Larry Zbyszko came out to hit Christian with a low blow. Hebner was asleep forever so Sting used his arm to count Jarrett out. Then Hebner woke up and shoved Christian and Sting off of the ladder. Why wait until so long into this match for the turn? Jarrett wins at 23:04 while the crowd throws a lot of garbage at him. That’s hilarious. The match sucked. Afterwards, a random referee steals the belt from Jarrett and hands it to Jim Cornette. Jarrett freaks out as if he can’t beat up an old fat man and take the belt back. Jarrett remained champion so that was stupid too. *
October 22, 2006 – Plymouth Township, Michigan
String def. Jeff Jarrett {Career vs. NWA World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From the second Bound for Glory. Kurt Angle was an outside enforcer. The commentary during Sting’s entrance was brain buzzingly bad. Don West made a huge deal about Sting’s new look, which was just red tights and a bit of red in his face paint. Mike Tenay said that Sting had a bat with him as a tribute to the Detroit Tigers. You know, the bat he’s had as part of his gimmick for almost a decade at this point. Also, you could watch three episodes of Adventure Time in the time it takes you to drive from the former Compuware Arena (where this show was held) to Comerica Park. Sting was looking quite fit here, and was mostly on his game aside from a few clumsy moments. I liked the use of Angle too, as he attacked the referee to keep him from counting both guys out after a crossbody collision. The finish was solid too, as Sting no-sold the guitar shot and put on the Scorpion Deathlock for the win at 15:11. This actually exceeded my expectations a bit. **¾
November 19, 2006 – Orlando, Florida
Abyss def. Sting {NWA World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From the second Genesis. When they were in the ring, Sting and Abyss put on a solid hardcore match. The finish made it hard to account for the plunder though because they didn’t get disqualified for using weapons but then Sting did get disqualified for hitting the referee. Refs get attacked in TNA all the time, so that just didn’t make any sense. I also could have done with a lot less James Mitchell interference because it killed the otherwise lively crowd. I’m not one to body shame, but I also didn’t need to see the gnarly growth on Abyss’s side that was exposed when Sting hogtied him. He clearly didn’t want it exposed either because he kept pulling his shirt to cover it up. Anyway, the match went 15:08 and finally paid off years of threats of the title changing hands by disqualification or count out. Sting pushes Abyss through barbed wire boards after the match. Woof, those last five minutes really destroyed the match. *¾
January 14, 2007 – Orlando, Florida
Christian Cage def. Abyss and Sting {NWA World Heavyweight Championship Three Way Elimination Match}
From the third Final Resolution. Since Genesis is about beginnings and this PPV has the world final in it, I think the two should have swapped places on the calendar. Tomko was locked in the penalty box for this match, so of course he interfered anyway. Remember when the internet was into Tomko? Wrestling fans are dumb. Sting eliminated Abyss with the Scorpion Death Drop in short order. Mitchell released Tomko from the cage (why did he have the key?) and Tomko attacked Sting. The overbooking in general was a mess thanks to Tomko being a total stiff, and Abyss’s fake face turn getting no reaction from the fans. Christian got the pin off of Abyss’s attack at 13:18. Shrug. **
Four months later, the NWA’s deal with TNA ended and the two acronyms parted ways. TNA created its own titles. I’ll get to that world title eventually but I need a break from TNA for a while after this. So it’s back to the indies we go for our the next chapter in the NWA Championship lineage.
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
