— Reader Sean in Australia sent this one along:
I was at a NWA affiliate wrestling show in Australia tonight, where Adam Pearce faced Colt Cabana in the final match of their seven levels of hate series.
Colt won by submission, and afterwards both he and Pierce cut a promo in regards to the NWA World Heavyweight Championship. Pierce said as part of losing the series he would leave the NWA forever. He said Colt deserved the NWA Championship.
However, Colt said the NWA represented the old era, and he was the future, talking about the podcast, YouTube, etc. Colt didn’t accept the title, so Pierce dropped the belt, vacating the title. He finished the promo with “I wish the NWA the best in their future endeavors.” So apparently right now there is no NWA World Heavyweight Champion.
— Adam Pearce recently did an interview with The Rack Radio to talk about his Seven Levels of Hate match series with Colt Cabana:
Why Melbourne, Australia was picked to be the stage for the last match in the series: “I was going to say; what’s not awesome about Australia? You know, initially Australia was always kind of in the running for the seventh stage just simply out of what I like to call ‘supply and demand’. We initially wanted to do it potentially in Los Angeles, because that’s kind of where everything was born and obviously (Colt) Cabana and I had been working for Dave Marquez and what was known as NWA Championship Wrestling in Hollywood since its inception, for a couple of years anyway So, once things went south, between Marquez and the National Wrestling Alliance, we knew we were no longer going to be able to do that in Los Angeles and Australia, which had always been on the back burner, jumped to the forefront. And here we are.”
How he’s preparing for the final match which is a cage match: “To be honest with you, I’m more worried about the flight than anything else. You know, 15 hours on a plane is no fun, so to mix it up with Cabana for a half-hour, 40 minutes in the cage; I’d rather do that than get on the plane, so first things first. But what a road it’s been; it’s incredible to share this experience with someone I’ve known for, jeez, literally close to half my life now in Colt Cabana and to make a nice couple week tour out of it in Australia; it’s a good life.”
What holding the NWA world title meant to him: “Kansas City was a big deal (the night he won the title). The 21st of July was a good date; our partners there in Kansas City, Metro Pro Wrestling were the ones who put on the event and that night it was two-out-of-three falls, that was the stipulation, and for me personally, it was kind of a bigger night and not so much in a good way. I had been sick, jeez, for about four or five days previous to that with a pretty bad case of the flu. So, when I got on the plane and flew in, I was terrible and I shouldn’t have even been in the ring.
“Honestly, if Cabana wasn’t my opponent and there wasn’t so much on the line, I probably would have missed the date. That morning, I had woken up with and still had 102 degree fever, and I hadn’t been able to hold anything down for a few days, so as you might imagine, I was dehydrated, and cranky and the last thing I wanted to do was anything athletic. And we still went out there and did about 38 minutes, and I give most of the credit of that match to Cabana because I was pretty useless, to be honest.”
What the series means as a whole as a throwback to old school wrestling and feuds: “That’s by design, to a large degree; that’s what we intended it to be, for it to feel like the way pro wrestling used to feel and to kind of give some of that older, darker dynamic that you don’t see much anymore especially with the television products staying right around PG. It’s hard to bring in some of the diabolical things wrestling has been known for over the years and certainly a heightened level of violence which was par for the course in say the 70’s and 80’s with these type of feuds and needless to say with Cabana and myself, this is a blood feud; that’s what it is and it’s largely been one of those things that pushes the level of violence. And be that as it may, the wrestling fans today, particularly the younger ones, don’t necessarily need to see that, but for the older fans who kind of misses some of that or for the diehard wrestling fan, this has given them kind of a taste of perhaps how things might have been and we’re proud of that.
“In terms of what it means to wrestling, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m qualified to answer that necessarily but for me personally, what it has meant is a culmination of a couple of years of my life, interacting and working with someone that I care a lot about and giving, trying to give, our take on that art form and we’ve been largely successful, I think; at least from the feedback we’ve both received both from peers, professionals and our colleagues, especially those we’ve worked with on the series. Everyone seems to be happy and as long as my checkbook is still able to work and my wife can go shopping, I’ll be happy too.”
