NWA The Crockett Cup
April 27, 2019
Cabarrus Arena in Concord, North Carolina
I don’t really talk about pro wrestling much on this blog. Maybe I should because it’s been a huge part of my life growing up, and it still is. I don’t watch WWE anymore. I’m not a fan of the policies and outlooks of the people that run it, and also the product itself has been terrible for years. These days, New Japan Pro Wrestling (based in Japan!) is the promotion I watch the most. Major League Wrestling (MLW), the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), Impact Wrestling and the upcoming All Elite Wrestling (AEW) are the other promotions I am most interested in.
Anyways, after watching a lot of New Japan shows last week, I’m caught up and ready to dive into the NWA’s most recent show– The Crockett Cup!
This is the fourth Crockett Cup to be held in the history of the NWA (the first three took place in 1986, 1987 and 1988) and it is another welcome attempt from NWA owner (and Smashing Pumpkins frontman) Billy Corgan to connect his modern-day NWA to the 1970’s and 1980’s glory days of the promotion. Corgan’s vision of today’s NWA is not “sports entertainment”, but rather traditional professional wrestling that draws heavily on the legacy of professional wrestling, the National Wrestling Alliance specifically.
New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW), Ring of Honor (ROH) and Mexico-based Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) all lent talent to the tournament. I really love seeing this. It’s great to see promotions from all over the world working together. It’s become a common occurrence over the last few years for many wrestling companies to share wrestlers or loan them out to other companies, and I think that’s great.
The Crockett Cup itself is a tag team tournament where the winners traditionally win a trophy and bragging rights at the end. With the Cup’s return for 2019, the stakes were higher as not only was there a trophy to win, but the winning team would also be crowned the new NWA World Tag Team Champions (and the first tag team champions of the Corgan era). The three other current NWA titles (World/National/Women’s) were announced to be defended on the show as well.
