411 Interviews: NWA World Heavyweight Champion Adam Pearce Pt. 1

Current NWA World Heavyweight Champion, “Scrap Iron” Adam Pearce has worn many hats during his wrestling career, booking promotions across the United States while holding titles in virtually every promotion he’s ever competed in in his nearly fifteen-year long career. Recently, I got the chance to talk to Pearce in-depth about his career, his start in the wrestling business and everything in between leading into his current venture with NWA Championship Wrestling from Hollywood. In part one of this two-part interview, we look back at Pearce’s training and early years of his career including his relationship with longtime friend Colt Cabana, his first international trips and the beginning of his first reign as NWA Champion, as well as a whole lot more.

411mania: Tell me a little bit about your formative years, growing up in Illinois and what kinds of things you were into in your early years.

Adam Pearce: Well, I kind of grew up in the normal Midwestern blue collar life. My dad was an industrial mechanic for thirty-five years and is still involved in that business on an administrative side. I grew up in a family with my younger brother Dave, who is a couple of years younger than me north of Chicago where I lived until I was about twenty. We did all of the things that normal Midwestern kids did.

The fall was football and springtime was baseball and I played both in high school and lettered in both throughout high school. I hooked up with some wrestling fans in the northern Chicago suburbs who had a cable access wrestling television show that had some independent guys on and I was fortunate to be able to meet some of them while I was going through a rough period after going through a pretty serious leg surgery and it just went on from there.

411: How did you happen to find professional wrestling for the first time?

AP: I was always a wrestling fan. I remember the first time I ever went to a live event, I believe I was six, and my Uncle Mike took me to an AWA card at the Mecca in Milwaukee. I don’t remember a lot of who was on that card outside of Larry Zybyszko and a young Curt Hennig, but from then on I went whenever I could. It was at the time when the WWF had their A, B, and C shows and the C shows would come through my area in Waukegan, IL and we’d get main events like Demoliton vs. The Killer Bees or something like that. I have a bunch of old Polaroids of me and Sgt. Slaughter from when I was young and I was just always into wrestling. When pay-per-views began I used to watch those and spent a lot of time with my uncle, who was a huge wrestling fan and was the one who kept me drawn to the business more than anyone else. As I said before, all through high school, it never really fell off, but you know, you find other interests when you’re going through that age and I was heavy into sports. It was always kind of an outlet and a way to entertain ourselves.

411: Who were some of your favorites when you were growing up and was there anyone in particular that you feel like influenced you to where you model yourself after them today?

AP: You know, people have always asked me that and I have a hard time answering that question because I guess I haven’t really ripped anybody off enough. (laughs) I’ve always been a huge fan of Nick Bockwinkel as we’ve talked about, but even more than him would probably be Bobby Heenan. I always used to get a huge kick out of watching Bobby Heenan get his ass kicked on the AWA cards with the weasel suit matches and all of that stuff and the early interaction with Hulk Hogan and all of that along with Nick Bockwinkel. Moving into the WWF, I mean his track record speaks for itself.

Everyone always assumed that I wear the one strap singlet in some kind of homage to Jerry Lawler because I use the piledriver, but the one strap was always an homage to Bobby Heenan because he always used to wear that and the piledriver doesn’t so much come from Jerry Lawler as it comes from Paul Orndorff, who I was a big fan of as well and was obviously managed by Bobby Heenan as well. That’s kind of where I got those things from, but other than that I mean I obviously wear the robes because I was a huge fan of Ric Flair and the bald head comes from nature, there’s not a whole lot I can do about that. (laughs)

411: Yeah, there are pictures floating around of your look in 1997 or 1998 with long hair and a bandana and it’s kind of jarring to say the least.

AP: Believe me, if I could have it back, I would have it in a heartbeat. I had a lot of fun with that long hair and for some reason, the ladies in the Midwest loved that.

411: When did you decide that you might actually want to get into wrestling?

AP: Oddly enough, I never really had any aspirations of getting into wrestling. My whole high school years and early adolescence was all pushing me towards football. I played left tackle at Waukegan High School at a pretty high level as a varsity letterman and I was looking at playing college football and actually had a lot of dialogue with some Big Ten schools and all of that. I was having problems between my junior and senior seasons during mini-camps with excruciating pain in my lower legs. My coaches and the trainers on staff were telling me I was having shin splints because at that point, I was around 285 pounds and I was carrying a lot of weight and doing a lot of squats and that kind of stuff. It would get to the point where I would get done with a practice and I wouldn’t be able to walk for thirty or forty-five minutes until my legs had calmed down.

Long story short, I was diagnosed with Acute Muscular Compartment Syndrome and I was diagnosed on the Thursday and was in surgery for it on the following Monday to have that taken care of. Without going into a huge medical diagnosis, because I’m not a doctor, Muscular Compartment Syndrome happens when you’ve got the muscle fibers affected by some sort of trauma like an injury, or in the case of what I was doing, an excessive use bringing the blood into the muscles. The muscle fibers expanded and the membranes surrounding them wouldn’t. Basically they went in there and the membrane surrounding the four muscle groups in my calves was cut out. I was seventeen at the time and I had a pretty extensive case so the rehab was pretty long.

In a normal case, the rehab is about three to four weeks but in my case it was closer to three months and that effectively shot my senior season of football and sent me physically into a pretty deep depression. I kind of quit eating and had a rough time of it for a few months where I went down from 280 pounds to about 220 pounds and I lost the urge for anything athletic. Without sounding like a sob story, professional wrestling actually provided that physical and athletic outlet that I had grown accustomed to for my whole life with football and baseball and it was just something I gravitated to into getting me to be active again and I’m very happy that it did.

411: How hard was it for you to find your way into the business and tell me a little about your early years of training.

AP: The guys who were running the cable access show would have audience members come in and it was about once every three weeks or so at the cable studio and I would call in and talk about whatever was going on in the wrestling world. So once every three weeks, a few of us fans in the area would get together and go down for the live taping in the studio and watch the “magic” happen as it unfolded. It just so happened that the night that I went down they happened to have “Rockin” Randy Ricci and Sonny Rogers and a couple other local independent guys on.

At that point, I hadn’t been exposed to the independent level of wrestling although I do remember seeing flyers or commercials for wrestling coming to the area where I had no idea who the guys were. Much like younger fans, you’re not in a hurry to see something you’re unsure of. In meeting those guys, it allowed me to kind of get a glimpse as to what their stories were about and being a bigger kid and an athlete, I was primed for the picking. I can totally see what my trainers were saying about me then, I mean this big kid, I was gung ho about wrestling and in awe of meeting them and listening to how they had been in the business. Both of them had worked for Verne Gagne’s AWA and Randy in particular worked for the USWA in Memphis and I mean both of them had made a living in the business. They weren’t household names, but so many of the guys in the business who sustained themselves during that period of time in those days, the territory days, they weren’t all household names.

I just kind of listened to what they had to offer and they were running events and I think I went to one of their events around a month later and there was some sense on their end that they could get some money out of me for training. You know, you hear some of those stories about the old timers training people, and not to say that they didn’t do exactly what they were paid to do because they absolutely did, but I think that they saw potential in me because of my athletic background, which made it more appealing for them to try to get me into the ring. Once I was in the ring, forget it, it was as if I had figured out what I was supposed to be doing.

411: So when did that lightbulb moment come for you that this is what you wanted to do more than anything else? Was it in those first few times you set foot in the ring?

AP: Yeah, I think that I remember first going to camp and the first day of camp they were putting up the ring and I had that first exposure into putting the ring up and watching some of the trainees bouncing around. I remember standing around and watching and thinking “I can do this”. I remember thinking that there was a couple of guys that I thought that I could do better than and just being an athlete, accustomed to competition, I wanted to get in there and as soon as I was able to get in there and get a pair of boots and start learning, I was hooked and I progressed fairly quickly.

411: Any good stories coming out of your training or was it a regular “paying your dues” kind of a situation?

AP: I’ve talked to the guys that I broke in with around that time and I very much had one of those “paying your dues” type of training camps. It was all about doing what you’re told and putting the ring up and tearing the ring down and cleaning the thing and all of those things that quite frankly I think are starting to disappear from our business. I think that a lot of the younger guys would benefit from it and I definitely did. I was in charge of making sure the ring got up and making sure it got torn down and flyers and tickets and I had to do all of that. In my training camp, we actually weren’t even allowed in the ring until we had boots. Unfortunately as time has gone by and the various locker rooms that I’ve been in, in the last five or six years, you can see that there’s more guys in the ring without boots than there are with and that was absolutely not allowed when I broke in back in November of ’95.

411: Fast forward a little bit to May of ’96 and what was running through your mind during your first match and was it almost surreal to you to be doing what you had seen on television for so long?

AP: I remember the most fun part of it for me leading up to it was that I was still a senior in high school and I graduated in June of 1996 so probably for eight weeks prior to that, they were doing the advertising in town and I was a big part of that because I had asked the athletic department in my high school to help advertise all through out the school. I kind of had that captive audience because I was a fairly popular kid in high school and I had that athletic background so I had access to all of the booster clubs and what not and I really did my best to get all of the people that I could from the community and the athletic community in Waukegan, IL to come out. I was in a six-man tag, which was probably the best place for me.

It was me, teaming with the two of my trainers against three heels and it was absolutely them leading me by the hand along the whole way. Looking back, I didn’t actually have a whole lot of involvement in the match, a couple of spots here and there that kept it very basic and we actually had a really good turnout. Like you said, the first time you do it and you actually get paid for it, you have a real sense of accomplishment and if nothing else, it just kept my appetite going and here we are today.

411: Now after your first couple of years in the business, you went on a tour of Europe in 1998. How was that experience for you and what was it like getting to go overseas to wrestle?

AP: I’ve always said that the traveling aspect of the business is the thing that I’ve been most grateful for. I mean seeing parts of the world and meeting people that you otherwise would never have the opportunity to and that started very young for me. In ’98, Carmine DiSpirito who was running Mid-American Wrestling out of Milwaukee at the time, had an in and had gone on several European tours throughout Germany and Holland and Austria. He must have thought it was the right time for me to do that and thankfully I had the support of my family to go international at such an early age.

I remember my dad, we found out about a week and a half before the tour was supposed to go on that I was selected to go on the tour so we had to rush at the last minute to expedite my passport and I remember sitting in downtown Chicago for an entire day waiting for the passport office to do that all on one day’s notice and having to pay extra to get it all done. I mean after 9/11, you can’t even do it like that anymore, but I remember getting the passport and getting on the plane and having that first glimpse of seeing an entirely different world and different cultures. I think we went through Germany, Holland and Austria during that tour and I had the time of my life.

That was another in the series of events in my wrestling life that drew me closer and deeper into the business and I think that the thing I took away from that trip more than anything else was how respected from not only the fans but the media, how we were treated. It was far different than how I had ever been treated on the independent level in the United States and I’ve noticed as the years go by that that trend has continued.

411: When you returned, you began working at the Steel Domain training center and began working with CM Punk and Colt Cabana. Tell me a little bit about how that friendship developed and how you all have managed to stay as close as you have for as long as you have in a business that is known for being notoriously hard on those types of relationships.

AP: I mean, coming out of that tour, I was ready to branch out and seeing how you could make some money and have the exposure throughout the country and overseas, I wanted to do more of that and I found that I had outgrown the initial training center that I was at. I moved over to the Steel Domain training center that Danny Dominion and Ace Steel had opened up in Chicago, probably in ’98 or early ’99, pretty close after I had gotten back from Europe. I was there for probably three or four months and I believe Cabana came in first but I could be wrong.

They both came in pretty much around the same time but I can’t remember if it was Punk that came in first or Cabana, but I think they both came in and wanted to be trained. I had actually met Punk a year prior because he had come into Sonny Rogers’ camp with a group of guys that he was involved with. I mean, for lack of a better term, they were doing backyard wrestling but they actually had a ring. A few of them actually wanted to be trained and Punk was one of those guys and eventually he turned up at Steel Domain and Cabana was there so I was fortunate to be around them from their very first days in professional wrestling. It’s always been a real pleasure to watch them grow, particularly Cabana.

I’ve grown closer to Cabana over the years than Punk, I’m not sure why that is honestly, but I would consider Cabana one of my closest friends in the business. I’m extremely proud of both of them and the progress that they’ve made and the strides that they’ve made in their careers. It’s been a wonder to be with them on their very first road trips and to see not only how they’ve progressed as wrestlers but as people. It’s funny to think about how we’ve pretty much grown up in this thing together from a very young age and after I moved, Punk and Cabana went on to set the Midwest on fire and it took them to the heights they began to reach. Obviously Punk is on TV every week with WWE and I think that they dropped the ball with Cabana big time.

411: I definitely agree with that. Even just from seeing what he’s doing in NWA Hollywood, I think that it’s something that is kind of crazy to think that they couldn’t see the gifts that Cabana has.

AP: I just think that they really dropped the ball. I mean I’m not exactly sure who it was or why, but I just don’t think that they gave him a chance to do much of anything. They kind of scratched the surface a little bit and before you knew it, it was all over with. I mean, the saddest part of it is that it really crushed him. In a lot of ways, I don’t really know that he’s ever gotten over it to this day.

411: You had brushes with both the WWF and WCW around that time in the late-90’s as well with some tryout matches and appearances and you even turned down a WCW developmental deal. Was it just a situation of the right deal at the wrong time or was the opportunity they were offering less than what you had hoped?

AP: Going back, if there was one thing that I could re-do, not saying that I would necessarily, but if
there was one thing that I would consider re-doing, it would be that first WCW developmental offer. I think I was nineteen at the time and had been talking with Terry Taylor for a while. At the suggestion of all of my trainers, they all thought I was at least ready to take a shot at that and I had done TV matches and dark matches from the WWF for probably a year to that point and wanted to see about taking the next step. So I did what they guys did at that time and put together a VHS tape and some picutres and a resume and sent it to whoever I needed to. In the WWF at that time it was Terry Taylor and in WCW at that time it was JJ Dillon and Terry responded first.

We had an ongoing dialogue about me coming out to Connecticut to their “TRAX” facility, which was where the guys trained at for the first Tough Enough or the first two Tough Enoughs or whatever it was. I was supposed to go out there and it went as far as having Howard Finkel call me with my travel intinerary and all of that and in a matter of days, I had gotten another phone call from Terry Taylor who told me that he was going to WCW or I guess going back to WCW it would have been. He had had a falling out with the office and was on his way back to Atlanta and he gave me the strong sense that because I was a guy that had been discovered by him that he didn’t think necessarily that I was going to get the kind of shake that I would have gotten had he been there. He said that he thought I should come down and talk with WCW and then it kind of snowballed to where JJ Dillon was calling me and Paul Orndorff was calling me and then I had travel intineraries to go to Atlanta.

Within probably a week and a half of having something set up with the WWF I had canceled that and I was heading to Atlanta and spent a week at the Power Plant and had a great experience. It would probably make for a better interview, but I don’t have any of the horror stories that people heard about from guys basically getting tortured down there. My experience was anything but and it was extremely positive and at the end of the day and at the end of the experience, I had a contract offer. I requested that I could go home and have it reviewed by an attorney and looking back, knowing what guys are given now on the developmental level, I was given a pretty damn sweet deal.

The unfortunate part for me was that I was going through some stuff at home and was actually engaged to be married to a girl who I had been with and in effect we were high school sweethearts. Her family was 1000% against her leaving the Chicago area as she was going to school and one of the requirements of me taking that job with WCW was moving to Atlanta and I would have been full-time at the Power Plant. I had to make a decision and at that young age, I followed my heart and not my brain and so it goes.

411: A lot of people may not know that around the year 2000 you took some time away from the business and actually had to be convinced back into action. When you spoke about Colt earlier, this came to mind, so was it one singular thing that led to you leaving or a bunch of smaller things? What ultimately led to you deciding to want to take time off?

AP: You know, honestly, what it was, I was just at a point where I think I was getting burnt out on the Midwest independents. At that point, I mean I was working a lot, twelve or fifteen times a month. I was very busy and wanting to progress in the business and when WCW didn’t work out, admittedly that was my choice and my doing, but when that didn’t work out I kind of started to wonder if I wasn’t good enough to take that job. I didn’t necessarily burn a bridge at the WWF but I wasn’t beating down the door to call them back after cancelling on the opportunity that they had given me up there. So fast after I said no to WCW, I started having problems with my fiancee at the time and I ended up not marrying her and we broke up. At that young age, you think that you have this opportunity that you worked so hard for and you turn it down because of somebody and when that doesn’t work out, you get bitter about the whole thing. I just needed time away from all of that and it was at that time that I relocated out here to Southern California.

411: Was there any one thing that brought you back or were you just looking for a reason to get back in the ring?

AP: You know, at that point I wasn’t really looking for a reason. I mean I still had the itch, but when I relocated out to Southern California, that was a period of time where I was kind of trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. I had enrolled in school and met new people and met the woman who would become my wife and I was probably out of the ring for seven or eight months before a combination of Christopher Daniels and Kevin Kelly, who was still working for the WWF at that time, got me back in. There was a spot on an independent card here that I think someone had called in or canceled or something and Daniels, who I had known from Chicago from Windy City Wrestling before he relocated to Southern California, he got a hold of me either with an e-mail or over the phone, but he recommended me for that card in LA.

It was one of those things where I remember thinking that I didn’t have anything better to do and I got to go see Chris and I was kind of intrigued as to what the Southern California independent scene would be like, not knowing anyone involved in it. I took that chance and at the same time Kevin Kelly was doing his best to look out for me and he hooked me up with Rick Bassman’s UPW, which was a developmental territory for the WWF at that time. I began to talk to him about going in there and there I was eight months later, back in the thick of things just on a different side of the country.

411: Working through places like All-Pro Wrestling, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla and the Alternative Wrestling Show promotion saw you garner some real success as only the second PWG Champion and you began to do some booking for the AWS promotion. Was booking something you always had an interest in or were you drawn to it once you had spent a few years in the business?

AP: Oddly enough, I had no interest in booking. By the time that rolled around, it was probably 2004 and I think that it just kind of happened. I was asked if I wanted to help to put the shows together and I just went for it. I don’t think it was something that I had set out to do, but I think that at that particular company, I was more qualified to do that than some of the other guys may have been. I’ve always been a locker room leader of sorts so I think I was kind of an obvious choice. That was kind of something that happened spur of the moment and it turned out to be something that was a challenge on a different level to see if we could get some houses drawn. Instead of doing it in the ring, I was doing it with a pen and paper and working with a crew of guys and obviously that was a foreshadowing of what was to come for me.

411: Was it something that you fell into rather quickly and it felt natural to you, or was it something you had to work at with some growing pains?

AP: I didn’t really have so much growing pains with the AWS, I’ve always been one of those guys that’s always got an opinion. (laughs) Some bookers like that and some bookers don’t like that, but I was always kind of sticking my nose into creative wherever I was because I thought I had a sense for what good wrestling was and I was never shy of sharing those opinions with anybody. Even going forward, guys would come to me with questions or if they wanted another opinion on how they could do something. I was always one of those guys that was a veteran guy that people would come to anyhow so I was accustomed to giving my opinion and feedback and throwing my ideas out for things so I think that it was kind of a natural segue into helping put the shows together.

411: Through 2005 and 2006 you spent a lot of time in Mexico and Japan. How were those experiences wrestling for crowds with such different views on pro wrestling and what kinds of things did you learn and take away from those matches?

AP: Hands down, of all the places I’ve wrestled, my favorite place to perform is Mexico and I don’t see that changing. It’s just such a different vibe and the fans treat it so differently. Lucha Libre is obviously a cultural phenomenon down there and being a white American going down there made for such natural and genuine heat and you don’t find that practically anywhere in the business anymore outside of Mexico and maybe Puerto Rico. Going down there and just being a part of it and being immersed in that atmosphere and not having to be worried about workrate or impressing smart fans or performing for critics, it made the experience so much more fun. You get such an organic response from people who either love you or hate you and there’s rarely an in between. You never have people sitting on your hands and you’re getting this genuine emotional response and it just kind of propels you to want to perform that much more.

At the same time, working with the Santa Monica dojo for New Japan opened doors for me in Japan and I’m not one of those guys that had ever aspired to go to Japan. Quite frankly, and I still feel this way today, I’ve never been a huge fan of that style. I’ve always liked a little bit more sizzle with my steak than what I thought Japan could offer and I never thought that my style would translate with a Japanese audience. That said, being able to train at the Santa Monica dojo and later at the New Japan dojo in Tokyo were invaluable experiences for me. The one Japanese tour that I did for New Japan was an incredible experience. I spent my time living out of the dojo and again found myself so many years removed from when I broke in, but still in a kind of young boy status in paying my dues in a completely different way. I had such a greater respect for the Japanese tradition after the fact than I did before that trip and I wish I could go back and do some more with Japan.

Unfortunately during that trip to Japan, I still had a pretty steady day job and as such I wasn’t as available as they would have liked me to be. At the same time, I wasn’t necessarily getting a full-time contract offer to go over as a semi-regular gaijin so the politics at play there, I think I turned down a couple of tours and they didn’t like that so I haven’t been asked back since. You never know though, as I had a great experience in both places and the last night of the tour for New Japan, I worked the Tokyo Dome so it doesn’t get much better than that.

411: In 2005 you debuted in Full Impact Pro and eventually made your way into Ring of Honor. I’ve seen previously that you credit guys like Punk and Cabana with helping you into the promotion and getting your foot in the door. Tell me a little more about that process and how you felt coming into promotions that had such big reputations in the independent wrestling scene.

AP: I had been badgering Gabe Sapolsky for probably six or seven months and had sent him a couple of tapes previously. It’s kind of a funny story, I sent him one tape and didn’t hear much and I badgered him to ask if he’d seen it and he said no and asked if I could send it to him again. So I waited and started badgering him again and told him that I had sent it again and it’s been a while so I wonder if he remembers this or not, but I remember him saying that he had gotten it and it was great, but the funny part is that I hadn’t sent it the second time so he was lying. (laughs)

I figured I was getting bullshitted around and I kind of let it go, so at the same time Punk and Cabana were coming through with me and this was right around when Punk had signed with OVW and he was getting ready to begin his WWE journey. I’m pretty sure it was he that had pushed for Gabe to give me a look in FIP. It was going to be Punk’s last weekend in FIP and he wanted me and Ace Steel down there because we were, in effect, family being from Chicago all of us. I went down there and had a couple of matches and Gabe Sapolsky must have seen something that he liked out of me and that he though the could use in Ring of Honor and it just went from there.

411: While you were part of the Ring of Honor roster you began to work as part of the NWA Pro promotion as well. What was it that initially drew you to the NWA and was there a part of you that wanted success there as such a student of the game and someone with such an appreciation for the history of wrestling?

AP: I think during that time, it was probably my first really extensive experience with the NWA. I had had matches for various NWA promotions during my days in the Midwest, even going back to my days in Michigan. I think it was around Thanksgiving 1997 that I wrestled Reckless Youth, who was the NWA North American Champion at the time, but I’d never really spent a lot of time and hadn’t been involved in anything in depth in any of the NWA promotions outside of what I had grown up loving and watching with Jim Crockett Promotions and the NWA “heyday”. When everything went down with Shane Douglas and ECW in 1994, myself and much of the wrestling public at the time was under the impression that the NWA was, if not dead, definitely on life support and that they didn’t have the exposure and the money coming through and didn’t carry the same weight that they had had in the “heyday”.

I had known David Marquez by name only going back to my time in the Midwest when he was part of World Legion Wrestling with Harley Race and Gordon Solie. I remember trying for the life of me to get down to Missouri and be booked by them, not only because of Harley’s involvement and Gordon’s involvement, but because they had television and also were a feeder system for the WCW and I believe the WWF at one point. My trainers Ace Steel and Danny Dominion had gone down there and worked for Harley periodically and they didn’t have a spot when I was available and by the time that I was able to go down there, their schedule had slowed down and I had moved to California. It wasn’t long after that that Dave Marquez came back to California and he was always involved with the NWA on some level and it was a natural fit and it was right about that time that we started working together and I think that it’s been a very fruitful relationship for the both of us since then.

411: You actually became the first NWA World Heavyweight Champion following the belt being removed from TNA in 2007 when you beat Brent Albright for the title in Puerto Rico. What was running through your mind when you knew you’d be NWA Champion and tell me about the match with Albright and everything that was involved in that huge accomplishment in your career.

AP: You know, going through that period of time, the NWA Board decided to part ways with TNA. Depending on who you talk to, if you talk to TNA people they’ll tell you that they’re the ones that decided to split and if you talk to NWA they’ll say that they took the titles away from TNA. Regardless, the two entities were not going to be working together anymore and the NWA was making a big deal about getting the titles back and it was the first time that they had had an opportunity with any momentum behind it to take their intellectual property and make something of it on their own. That tournament, the Reclaiming The Glory tournament, began and I think it was good for the NWA as it took some of the NWA promoters that were still around and wanting to promote and got them gung-ho about promoting the NWA again.

That tournament took place across a bunch of different promotions and I was lucky enough to be included in the tournament and had some pretty good matches with guys that I think I might not have been able to work with otherwise. I worked with Aaron Aguilera out in New Jersey, a guy that I had worked with numerous times in California, I worked with Chad Parham, who I don’t know what happened to him. He was a guy out of Georgia and was a really solid wrestler but he just seemed to fade away. I worked with him in California and then my semifinal match was against Bryan Danielson in Vancouver, British Columbia and I lost that match. In fact, Bryan was supposed to go on and become champion and I think that a week or two weeks before that final bout in Puerto Rico, we were all booked in New York for Ring of Honor and Bryan had a match against Takeshi Morishima from NOAH and got his orbital bone broken and a detached retina.

It was obvious that he was not going to be able to compete for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship and I remember getting a call four or five days before the final match when they determined that Bryan couldn’t go and they wanted me to fill in considering I had wrestled him in the semifinals. I had assumed that I was going down there to put Brent over and I hadn’t met Brent up to that point, I didn’t know him. I found out a day or two before the match that they were going to go in the other direction and take a chance on a heel with the belt right from the get-go. I was fortunate enough to go down to Puerto Rico and had a pretty good match with Brent and start that chapter of my career.

Looking back on it, everything was so chaotic and it was such a whirlwind because of what was supposed to happen and what eventually ended up happening with everything and Bryan was actually there as an outside referee and we ended up incorporating him into the match. We were just trying to make something of a situation that was so different from what it was supposed to be that everyone at that point was just hoping for a good match to build some momentum coming out of the tournament. I’m not sure what they plans were for Bryan, if he was supposed to get the title right after he came back and got healthy and go back in that direction, but they must have been happy with how things transpired because I held that thing for almost a year the first time around.

411: What did it mean to you to be the first NWA Champion after the end of the TNA affiliation and what were you hoping to bring to the NWA title after the previous four years of the belt being involved with TNA and guys like Jeff Jarrett, AJ Styles and Sting to try to put the NWA’s stamp back on the belt?

AP: What I wanted to do and what the organization was looking for in taking their championships back from TNA was to allow the actual NWA members to share in and use and utilize their intellectual property. That was one of the main complaints from NWA members at that time was that while TNA was giving the NWA brand good exposure by showcasing those championships and educating the fans on the history of them and all of that by putting them on television, the actual NWA members weren’t allowed any opportunity to showcase those titles on their local events. As time went on, that was a huge problem for those promoters as they were NWA promoters but had no way of getting NWA Champions to appear at their events.

That was one of the first tasks that I was given and thankfully at that time I was able to go back to that mold of the 70’s and 80’s as the “touring champion” and really get out there. That first reign became all about that and becoming acquainted with the NWA promoters across the country as well as proving myself because they’d heard of me and had heard my name, but hadn’t seen me wrestle and didn’t know what I could do or what kind of hand I was in the ring. It was one of those quintessential feeling out periods that I am very proud of in terms of how it turned out and it really set the table, not so much for my second title reign as that one was short, but my third reign which has been extremely gratifying for me on a number of different levels.

411: On that note, guys like Ric Flair have been on record and said that it’s not so much the first title reign that counts or defines you as a champion, but the reigns that come after it. You spoke of your second reign being a bit of a shorter one, but do you think that this third title reign is going further towards legitimizing yourself as one of the true NWA World Heavyweight Champions?

AP: I don’t know if I’m in any position to answer that as I think that it’s up to the promoters and the fans. I will say that I think personally that this reign has been much more solid in terms of the response. I feel like obviously now all of the NWA promoters know who I am and know what I’m about and the people in those areas are accustomed to seeing me perform. I would say that my name in the NWA circuit carries a lot more weight than it did during my first reign, so I guess in a way I’m saying yes to your question, but again that’s really for the fans to decide.

411: Your first title reign saw the majority of your defenses take place in the Southern California area in various promotions that were viewed as more stable and able to run regular shows. Was this the beginning of the seed that became NWA Championship Wrestling From Hollywood in terms of the relationships you developed during that time?

AP: I think it was more what you initially said that those promotions were more stable and in a better financial position to do business with me. One of the things that I have been critical of the NWA about is the promotions that are out there paying their dues every year, contrasting with those promotions that are paying their dues every year and actually running events. That ratio isn’t what I think that it should be. I’ve always had a problem with the fact that if you’re going to spend the money and call yourself and NWA promoter, you ought to do business with others in the NWA because it only benefits the brand. You’d think that you’d want to showcase that intellectual property and bring in the NWA Champion or the NWA Tag Team Champions or North American Champion or just do something.

Do something to promote the brand that you’re investing in and paying money in every year to be a part of. The first reign, because I didn’t have a relationship with a lot of the NWA promoters, 65 of 70% of those were set up by me personally, without any help from anyone within the NWA and I’ve always thought that that’s not the way it should be. You can call it what you want, whether it was me being an unknown quanity or them not having money, there’s a lot of factors that can go into it. A lot of those reasons figure into predominantly why that reign ended up being a bit more of a West Coast reign.

Join us on December 23rd for Part Two of 411’s interview with Adam Pearce where Pearce touches on his two other reigns as NWA World Heavyweight Champion, his time spent as booker in Ring of Honor and the fallout that led to his departure, as well as his current project, NWA Championship Wrestling from Hollywood. For more information on Adam Pearce, check out the NWA Hollywood website and to see Adam perform live and in person in Southern California, visit SaveFans.com for tickets to the next TV Taping for NWA Championship Wrestling from Hollywood at the Regent Showcase Theatre in Hollywood, CA on January 8th, 2011.