History of the NWA Championship | Part 7 | Prelude to a Pandemic

We’ve been at this for a while so let’s wrap this puppy up. Adam Pearce vacated the NWA Championship because they wouldn’t let him drop the title to Colt Cabana, and the NWA was sold to a holding company after a lawsuit over NWA’s handling of liability insurance. I’m not going to pretend I understand it but of course the NWA would be diminished over some kind of fraud. The new licensing-centric structure of the brand caused Championship Wrestling from Hollywood to cut ties with the NWA. At first, this was an unquestionable disaster. 

November 2, 2012 – Clayton, New Jersey

Kahagas def. Chance Prophet, Damien Wayne, Anthony Nese, Biggie Biggs, Lance Erikson, Papadon, Lance Anoai, and Jason Kincaid {NWA World Heavyweight Championship Elimination Match}
From NWA Dangerous Adrenaline Wrestling Gladiators (DAWG) Wrath Of The Champions, we get a nine man elimination match to crown the new champion. Like I said, a disaster on all fronts. Two men were allowed in at a time, which helped to keep this from going off the rails. Kahagas wasn’t in the match to start. At one point Biggs shoved Anoai out of the ring over the top rope and didn’t get disqualified, so I guess that rule is over. The small crowd is primarily children, and the ring announcer has to ask them to stay away from the wrestlers when they fight on the floor because there are no barricades. Nese eliminated Papadon at 13:53 with a 450 splash after showing off why he was the only guy in this match to make it to WWE TV. Erikson hit Kincaid with a hanging neckbreaker at 14:47 to eliminate him. Wayne eliminated Erikson at 16:08 with a flying elbowdrop. Anoai defeated Biggs in 16:54 with a Superfly Splash. Prophet eliminated Anoai in 17:11 with a dropkick. Those five pins came way too close to each other to be believable. Wayne pinned Nese with a roundhouse kick at 18:46. At twenty minutes into the match, Kahagas joined the fray. That is, after his manager (who said he was on the phone with Bruce Tharpe, the guy that won NWA in the lawsuit) put a complete pause on the match. Near the end of Kahagas’s entrance, Wayne eliminated Prophet at 23:25 off camera.   This is what it would look like if you put used WCW style booking on mostly no-name wrestlers in a school gym with fifty people in the crowd. It wouldn’t have been offensive had Wayne won, eliminating three guys and then overcoming a monster surprise. But Kahagas won at 27:59 with the Last Falconry. That last 8 or so minutes made a medium match pretty damn bad. *¼ 

March 16, 2013 – San Antonio, Texas

Rob Conway def. Kahagas {NWA World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From NWA Branded Outlaw Wrestling (BOW) A Monster’s Ball. Conway was replacing Jax Dane here. Don’t worry, Dane gets his time to shine later. I know you were worried. The match was kind of fun when Conway was making his comebacks, but goddamn Kahagas was just so boring when he was in control. This was mostly just a walkaround brawl with an exciting final three minutes. Conway won in 15:40 with a hanging neckbreaker. **¼ 

January 4, 2014 – Tokyo, Japan

Satoshi Kojima def. Rob Conway {NWA World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 8. Conway had defended the title in New Japan a few times thanks to an agreement between them and the NWA. Tharpe gets knocked out by a very frail looking Harley Race before the match. Cute, if you’re feeling nostalgic for Race. But later, the camera shows them sitting next to each other calmly at ringside. Dumb. This was a solid effort in the middle of a huge show. I especially liked Conway stealing moves from Kojima’s boy Hiroyoshi Tenzan. I didn’t get much out of Jax Dane interfering and then brawling with Tenzan. Kojima won at 8:27 with a lariat. It served it’s midcard purpose, and while it’s a little sad that this was eighth from the top, this was the largest crowd to see an NWA title change in two decades. ***

June 2, 2014 – Las Vegas, Nevada

Rob Conway def. Satoshi Kojima {NWA World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From night two of Vendetta Pro Casino Royale, in front of a considerably smaller crowd. Of this match I’ve seen a 30-second music video from the actual production crew as well as the final 1:42 shot on a fan’s cell phone. After what looked to be the exact same match they had in Japan, Conway hit the swinging neckbreaker for the win. N/A

February 14, 2015 – Sendai, Miyagi

Hiroyoshi Tenzan def. Rob Conway {NWA World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From New Beginning in Sendai. This was a boring match in front of a sleeping crowd. The highlights were Tenzan stealing Conway’s finisher and Tenzan headbutting Tharpe off of the apron. He won with a moonsault at 11:50. Nothing to see here, drive on through. **¼ 

Tenzan lost the title six months later in San Antonio to Jax Dane in a match that apparently wasn’t filmed by an actual production crew. You can find 41 random seconds of it online. You’d think if you spent the money to fly out a Japanese that you’d at least have someone hold up an iPhone during the match so you could try to make a few streaming dollars on it. You’d think wrong though. 

While Dane was champion, Billy Corgan and his company bought the NWA brand and all that came with it. A couple weeks later in October of 2016, Tim Storm beat Dane for the title at an NWA Texoma Pro show that also doesn’t seem to have been filmed. Corgan slowly but surely started pulling the NWA license from indie companies and getting ready to launch a flagship NWA show on YouTube. But we’re not quite there yet. 

December 9, 2017 – Sewell, New Jersey

Nick Aldis def. Tim Storm {NWA World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From CZW Cage of Death 19. Storm wrestled with taped ribs. His selling was good, but this was barely a match. The crowd’s sarcastic chants were lame, but also I’m not sure what kind of reaction anyone expected CZW fans to give this match. I have a feeling they went home early because of the hostile crowd. Aldis won in 4:10 with the Burning Hammer. He cuts a pretty dope heel promo after the match, crapping on the garbage fans and vowing to never let the title come back to CZW again. *¾ 

September 1, 2018 – Hoffman Estates, IL

Cody def. Nick Aldis {NWA World Heavyweight Championship Match}
From All In, the prequel to AEW. It was smart to put together a hype video package for the match, but it was bad and didn’t tell me anything about how we got here. Cody’s old fart entourage includes his terrified dog. Fuck you for that, Cody. Also Tommy Dreamer? Glacier? Yuck. Aldis has actual former NWA champs Jeff Jarrett and Storm with him. But then also Shawn Daivari and Dexter goddamn Lumis. Yuck. Earl “There’s no one more qualified to call an NWA title match” Hebner is the referee. The commentators clearly didn’t watch TNA. That’s cool, in 2018 I hadn’t either. What were they going for here? A fake injury to Cody on the floor didn’t lead to him even being at risk of being counted out, and then DDP and Daivari fought in the ring. Is that what hardcore indie fans wanted? I mean, we’ve learned through AEW that this crew’s fans will cheer absolutely anything they do, so I guess it doesn’t matter. But that doesn’t change that there were several minutes in this match where the two competitors just laid around doing nothing. Brandi Rhodes taking a flying elbowdrop for Cody? Why? Moments later, Cody got a roll up for the win at 22:01. There was a good match hiding in between all the ridiculous moments here, but I’m not a zen enough guy to appreciate that. Oh, Brandi is totally fine after the match, so what the hell was the point of her spot? **¾ 

October 21, 2018 – Nashville, Tennessee

Nick Aldis def. Cody {NWA World Heavyweight Championship 2/3 Falls Match}
From the NWA 70th Anniversary Show, Corgan’s first attempt at a show helmed by the NWA as a self-sustained company. The production is worlds better than the previous anniversary shows I’ve watched for this project. In the immediate aftermath of the All In match, Aldis brought up everything I said in my review, so there’s hope for the world yet. It’s not great storytelling though to have the heel be the one who sees the nonsense for what it is. Former champs Blue Demon Jr, Dory Funk Jr, Jarrett, Storm, Dane, and Cole Cabana are in the ring during ring intros. They kept it in first gear for the first fall, but the end of it was cool. Cody got Aldis in the Figure 4 Leglock but Aldis and his long body were able to get to the ropes. Aldis then caught Cody in the Cloverleaf right in the middle of the ring and Cody tapped quickly because it would have done too much damage for the long attempt at an escape. A lot of the second fall was a pointless brawl around the building. Why were wrestlers still doing this in 2018? I guess to kill time. There was also some silliness with Brandi, Kamille, and Storm, but they all get kicked out in the third fall. Cody won the second fall with the Cross Rhodes after Aldis went through a table after diving off the top rope. Cody tried to pull the Eddie Guerrero WrestleMania boot trick, but Aldis countered the roll up to one of his own for the win at 36:46. Wow, that was long. The third fall was fun, but the match took its sweet time picking up the pace. I definitely understand where Ol’ Cody Three Stars comes from. ***¼ 

In 2019, Cody and the rest of his friends in the Elite left ROH and NJPW to form AEW. The NWA stopped partnering with Ring of Honor, as they had been doing for a short time, and announced their own weekly YouTube show called NWA Powerrr. It went up on Tuesday evenings, as did AEW’s Dark YouTube show. NWA used Powerrr to build to PPVs, but they ran into some serious roadblocks. First, they came under fire when commentator Jim Cornette made a racist joke on a Powerrr broadcast that wasn’t edited out. Then, the entire world went into quarantine because of the COVID-19 pandemic. While some wrestling companies carried on in empty arena environments (or using wrestlers as fans for small crowds), NWA did not do this and they went on hiatus. During the pandemic, the lack of distractions made for an opportune environment for an anti-sexual assault movement in the wrestling business. NWA VP Dave Lagana was named as an alleged abuser and stepped down from his position. So who knows what’s next for the NWA! Nick Aldis is still champ and that’s all I know for now.