More NWA in Tennessee news, NWA Top Rope LIVE

NWA Top Rope will be broadcasting a featured contest from this week’s show LIVE on the world wide web. This will be the first time in company history that a LIVE broadcast will occur. Join host Jason James prior to the event for a full recap of the show and intro into the contest. More details to come Friday. 

A disputed NWA World Champion or a typo?

White Tiger, Mr. Paws and Claws of NWA Main Event will be competing for former NWA affiliate Great Championship Wrestling. Some well known names will be appearing at the event like former NWA World Jr. Heavyweight Champion: Jimmy Rave, former WWE Star Bull Buchanan, Johnny Swinger, and Tiger’s opponent and former WWE Referee Mike Posey.

But the confusion comes in regards to the match up between Posey and White Tiger. GCW is billing this match as a NWA World Junior Heavyweight Championship match, however its pretty well known that Mike Quackenbush is the reigning NWA World Junior Heavyweight Champion. Tiger is the reigning NWA Top Rope (NWA Main Event Affiliate) Jr. Heavyweight Champion. So perhaps it is a misunderstanding.

Regardless, White Tiger has been gaining momentum in the Tennessee area and perhaps this branching out is what it will take for him to get a show at Mike Quackenbush. We all remember Quack’s propensity of ripping masks of wrestlers who resemble Tigers. Could it be long before Tiger challenges Quack? Do you think White Tiger should get a NWA World Title shot at Mike Quackenbush?

Coming to NWA Top Rope

NWA Top Rope presents: Saturday Night

NWA Top Rope Wrestling enters the ring at 7:30 p.m. Saturdays at 220 E. High (formerly home to Krooners) in Lebanon. Admission is $10 for ages 5 and older.

The bill for Saturday night includes The Boogie Woogie Boy, Tommy Mercer, Lawrence the Sharp Dressed Man, Kevin Dunn, Chris Echols, Tim Renesto, Chris Stephens, Kliff Hanger, J.D. Fluffy, the Bone Crusher, Justin Rhodes, Rudy Switchblade, Johnny Punch and Randy Royal.

I believe this will be a regular event for the folks in Lebanon.

[NWA Top Rope] Promoter Mike Sircy moves mat action to new venue

By KEN BECK
Special to The Wilson Post

If Mike Sircy’s grandmother hadn’t flipped over professional wrestling three decades ago, the wild and wooly sport just might not be slapping the mat in Lebanon today.

“My grandmother (Ruth Mammie Allen) started taking me when I was around 2-½ years old,” said Sircy, the local promoter of NWA (National Wrestling Alliance) Top Rope. “She was missing a leg but would get us to the matches somehow to the old Hippodrome in Nashville. She was always right by ringside and would beat the heck of the ring posts with her crutches.”

So he knows firsthand how infectious the sport can be.

“The fans love seeing someone get beat up on. They can’t wait for that bad guy to get laid out,” he said. “It’s very entertaining and also an adrenalin rush for them. Some of the fans would love to be inside that ring with an opponent. This is their way to participate in it; being five or six feet from the ring and seeing people pulverize one another at times.”

The 1977 Lebanon High School graduate has organized the pro wrestling events at the Wilson County Fairgrounds since 2003. The matches were being held the last Saturday night of each month, but changes are coming to the local ring this week.

Feeling like he’s won the lottery, Sircy is exhilarated to be taking his production to a new venue on East High Street in the building that formerly housed Krooners and making it a weekly event, beginning Saturday night. The site should seat about 225 fans.

“I looked over the figures for the last 3-½ years for Lebanon, talked to wrestlers and fans, and I listened to the fans, and they kept saying, ‘I want it more often.’ Luckily, this building finally opened up to where I can lease it,” Sircy said.

Not only is wrestling going to be a Saturday night mainstay, but Sircy says it should also be coming to Lebanon cable TV in early 2010 as he is in discussion with a couple of channels.

The final wrestling event at the fairgrounds three Saturdays ago featured Jason James, Petey St. Croix, Vic the Bruiser, Slacker J, Chick Cannon, Kliff Hanger, Rudy Switchblade, Johnny Punch, the Boogie Woogie Boy and Miss Boogie, Lawrence the Well Dressed Man, J.D. Fluffy, C.D. Thriller, The Ice Man Chris Echols and Rocksan.

While not exactly household names, the wrestlers enjoyed a love-hate relationship with local fans. This is obviously a vicarious sport as wrestling enthusiasts holler and ring cowbells while cheering the good guys and mocking the bad guys.

The audience runs all ages from babies and school kids to middle-aged and senior citizens. Hailing from Lebanon, Hartsville, Cookeville, Carthage and Smithville, they sit in metal chairs, chewing hot dogs, burgers, nachos and cheese, popcorn and candy bars and sipping soft drinks.

All eyes stay glued on the 18-foot-by-18-foot-square ring with its white canvas floor, red ropes and black corner posts as this is where the action flies fast and furious.

Lebanon’s Mary Barnes, 79, has been attending the matches since Sircy started them six years back. “I like the wrestlers, especially Boogie Woogie Man. Some of them get on my nerves. I fuss with them,” said Barnes, as she works a word search puzzle waiting for the next match.

This night was the first for Nedra Moran of Lebanon. “I thought my 6-year-old son Ledarian would enjoy this, and it was local,” Moran said.

For the wrestlers who grapple here, the thrill is not unlike that for actors who perform live theater. Gary Valiant, 38, aka the Boogie Woogie Boy, has been wrestling since 1989, and even his wife Daphne has gotten into the act as Ms. Boogie. He wrestles full time, performing five to six nights a week in places like Nashville, Memphis, Horse Cave, Ky., and Booneville, Miss.

“I dance and try to kiss the kids and the women,” Valiant said. “The fans keep you going with their hollering and shouting. It’s just a rush, getting in front of a live crowd.”

Roxxanne Biggerstaff, 30, aka Rocksan, resides in Old Hickory and has been wrestling for 10 years. She also manages the career of her boyfriend Slacker J. With long black hair and shoulder tattoos, Rocksan tells of having an orbital bone in her face broken while wrestling on a Pay Per View match.

“We’ve got attitude and a reputation for hitting hard,” she said of the duo. “This is a rush, and it’s fun in small venues. There is a camaraderie you don’t get any place else.”

Manchester’s Paul Arp, 23, competes under the name of Petey St. Croix. He has been wrestling for seven years and has been the NWA Junior Heavyweight Champion. Laid off awhile back from his job of making conveyor belts, he wrestles two to three nights a week in such Middle Tennessee towns as Tullahoma and Columbia.

“My cousin, he wrestled. He brought me into it,” said Arp, handsome with the clean-cut look of a young farmer. He’s wearing tights, trunks, kneepads and black wrestling boots

“I do it for the feeling you get. You just feed off the crowd reaction as you entertain the fans,” he said. “I’m a good guy, a fan favorite with a lotta heart. You wrestle to be the champion and win the belt. That’s what it’s all about.”

But this night good-guy Arp loses his match to Echols and with it goes the colorful belt he had carried since July.

“One of my jobs is to make the people hate me,” said Larry Cartwright, aka Lawrence the Well Dressed Man, who has been wrestling out of Nashville for the past 20 years.

A bad guy, he does this for the sport and for “getting to work with such great guys.” His day job is performing apartment maintenance, and his love for the ring goes back to childhood.

“We lived downtown near the sports arena in Nashville. My dad took me every Saturday night,” Cartwright recalled. “Tojo Yamamoto (a famous Nashville wrestler of yesteryear) started training me. He told me, ‘I’ve taught you everything I can in the ring, Now I put you with somebody else.’ He sent me to Gypsy Joe. Tojo could teach me all the wrestling moves but he couldn’t teach me all the psychology. That’s where my psychology came in.”

Said the NWA Top Rope Cyberspace Heavyweight Champion, “I’ve been to a lot of wrestling shows, and this is one of the most family friendly wrestling shows that I been at. At a lot of smaller towns they cuss and do stuff. I can bring my son here and don’t have to worry about a lot of vulgarity.” Sure enough, Cartwright’s 12-year-son Austin sits in the crowd this night.

“If they work five nights a week, they can make $45,000 to $50, 000 a year,” Sircy said of the wrestlers he brings to Lebanon.

Most events feature a dozen to 16 wrestlers in one-on-one or tag team matches. As the announcer, Sircy is a part of the show as well as he controls a microphone and speaks to the crowd and to the wrestlers.

Sircy promotes and travels to wrestling events practically every day across Tennessee and Kentucky. He has held promotions in more than 100 towns, mostly in the Southeast. He has put on wrestling matches in 35 different cities this year as he travels about 35,000 miles annually.

“We’re very lucky to be part of National Wrestling Alliance. I can pull wrestlers from around the world,” Sircy said of the NWA, the oldest sanctioning body of professional wrestling in the world. Started in 1943, the NWA maintains its headquarters in Charlotte, N.C.

Lebanon native Sircy spent 20 years in the Air Force as a medical specialist and medical information systems specialist. He holds a degree in information technology that he earned at Almeda University in Atlanta. The father of two grown children, he works for the accounting firm of Deloitte and Touche as senior Web engineer over their international site and reports to their Swiss office.

When Sircy was 6-½, his wrestling-loving grandma died.

“I never got to go to wrestling matches again until it came to Lebanon when I was in the seventh grade. Nick Gulas (a famous Nashville wrestling promoter) brought wrestling to Southside Elementary in about 1971,” Sircy said.

Gulas promoted wrestling in Lebanon from 1971 until 1974. His son George Gulas held wrestling bouts here from 1978 to 1981, and Burt Prentice managed wrestling events from 1989 to 1995, according to Sircy’s best recollections.

Then Sircy revived it in 2003. He’s not quite a one-man show in putting together events, but he wears a variety of hats. Among other talents, he makes the championship belts that NWA wrestlers buckle about their waists.

The sport is his bread, meat and drink.

“I love professional wrestling. I live and breathe pro wrestling,” Sircy said. “I have wrestling videos back from the 1960s that I still enjoy watching to this day. People do not believe me, but wrestling is my form of relaxation.

“Once I go through those curtains in the back (after he introduces the wrestlers in the match), I can sit down and look out at the fans and I don’t have to look at the ring to tell if everything is going right or wrong,” said the Cedar City wrestling guru. “If the fans are on the edge of their seats, we’re doing it right.”

Writer Ken Beck may be contacted at kbtag2@gmail.com

NWA Top Rope Show in Springfield TN

NWA Top Rope: Clash of the Titans

Clash of the Champions 2009
Saturday June 6th
Wilson County Fairgrounds
Lebanon Tennessee
Bell Time 7:30 PM

Vic the Bruiser v U-Gene

Battle of the Midgets
Little Pappa Pump vs Enigma

NWA Cyberslam Championship
Kliff Hanger – Champion vs Wild Thing Will Owens

NWA Tennessee Championship
Vordell Walker – Champion vs Maniac Marc Anthony

NWA Southern Tag Team Championship
Wild Boys – Champions vs The Dream Team

NWA Top Rope Junior Heavyweight Championship
Lawrence the Sharp Dressed Man vs Petey St Croy vs LT Falk

Managerial Beatdown

3 Lucky Women from the Crowd vs Ernest T

NWA Week in Review for Feb. 14th

Like cupids arrow we are being shot through the heart of this weeks NWA news. This is the week in review for February 14th, 2009.

The Worlds Heavyweight Title is scheduled to be defended at the El Rancho Restaurant in Tepotzotlan, MX. This is the second of many efforts to bring affordable wrestling action to the fans of Mexico. It is well known that Mexico is suffering from the harsh economic conditions and this is NWA Mexico’s effort in trying to make their style of Lucha Libre more accessible to the fine people of Mexico. Blue Demon Jr. will take on rival El Dandy. When asked about the qualifications of El Dandy in receiving a title show, legendary 2nd generation wrestler Bret Hart had this to say, “Who are you, to doubt El Dandy!” Sorry folks, that joke will never get old for me.

Speaking of the champ, Blue Demon Jr.’s appearance on the Showcase 09 took place yesterday on ColoursTV. If you’ve been keeping up with this blog, you’d know that the match was made available earlier this week on NWAWrestling.com. Demon defends against Border Patrol member Derrick Sanders. The card also features the Showcase debut of Cade and Murdock, Joey Ryan, Tristan Gallo, and Adam Pearce bullies poor David Marquez.

Controversy, confusion, and perhaps a little hard feelings were the sentiment in Music City this week. Apparently NWA Main Event and associate NWA Top Rope couldn’t even agree to disagree as Main Event’s promoter, Mike Porter claimed that only his television taping in Nashville was the only sanctioned NWA event last week. However, Top Rope promoter Mike Sircy, who recently created NWA Cyberslam, which is a union of the NWA Top Rope Promotion with Tennessee Indy promotions USWO and ATL begs to differ. “This taping is a NWA Top Rope Production. The internet show will be called NWA Cyberslam. So I would have to say this portion of the night would be a sanctioned NWA Show,” claimed a representative from Top Rope. That night of action did see the crowning of a new Cyberslam Champion in Kliff Hanger who defeated JD Fluffy, Raul Loco, and LT Falk in a tournament to gain the crown. Porter’s group ran a television taping for its Weekly action on Nashville’s ION Network.

Brandon K has to be at least nominated for the Worst Tag Team Partner Award. Brandon K and Sterling James Keenan became the North American Tag Team Champions by defeating the Wrong Crowd last year. Aside from a handful of defenses K and Keenan hadn’t really had that much competition. Brandon K had focused his energies on former National Champion Crusher Hansen. While Champion, Hansen evaded K for months. Finally being pinned in a match against Brandon that featured 4 other competitors. Brandon K thought he won the National Title before an executive decision gave the title back to Hansen. Hansen was later defeated by NWA Anarchy’s Phil Shatter. Ok back to why K is a terrible partner, he puts up his partners half of the tag team title against Hansen’s rematch against Shatter. If Hansen wins, he keeps his shot at the National Title and becomes Brandon K’s new partner. If K wins, SJK keeps his spot in the tag team and K gets a show at Shatter. In the infamous words of some fan at the Championship Wrestling from Hollywood tapings “[Brandon K] you’re a bum!” This all goes down today at the Valentine’s Day Massacre for NWA East.

Earlier in the year we reported that TJ Perkins lost a loser leaves town match in the NWA Pro associate EWF. When it seems that Perkins isn’t just leaving the town, that he’s actually leaving the state. Pro Wrestling Guerrilla broke the news about Perkins last match as a SoCal Resident against long time foil B-Boy at the PWG’s Express Written Consent takes place Saturday, February 21. Perkins has been a foundation of the wrestling scene in So-Cal not only being a start attraction, but also trainer to many of the new talents. Perkins will be missed. There is speculation that TJ Perkins will be moving to Florida. This could be great news for our NWA fans on the East Coast. If you get a chance to catch a Perkins match, do it.

Lastly this week I got some clarification from Mr. Bill Behrens, about the NWA House Shows that were ran at the end of the year. “The three events were to be co-promoted with the [venues],” said NWA Promoter Bill Behrens. To my knowledge these were the first events that were not promoted in conjunction with the NWA Pro Wrestling promotion. The first Ohio show was headlined by Trevor Murdock vs. Pepper Parks. Murdock had already worked some dates with NWA Pro/NWA Southwest as a challenger to Brent Albright’s Worlds Championship. Parks continues to work for the NWA Empire promotion with working some dates with the NWA Showcase television show and is a former National Heavyweight Champion. The second big event in Ohio was headlined by Al Snow vs. Pepper Parks. The third event which was to take place in Michigan was canceled because of low ticket sales. That event was to see Mike Quackenbush defend his Junior Heavyweight title against Shannon Moore and the Skull Krushers were to defend their belts against the Phoenix Twins. Unfortunately these shows were not taped. However Behrens assured me that these won’t be the last efforts of running these house shows in larger venues.

NWA in Tennessee, a state of confusion?

Amidst the controversy of the National Wrestling Alliance in the State of Tennessee, The National Wrestling Alliance had a shared presence in the Music City. Mike Porter’s NWA Main Event ran a television taping for its show on Ion, at the Community Life Center in Nashville this past Saturday. However Porter wasn’t alone in Nashville. Mike Sircy’s NWA Top Rope, who is an associate member of Porter’s Main Event, has centered its promotion in Lebanon, Tennessee. However Sircy has joined a union of other Nashville promoters, USWO and ATL to create NWA Cyberslam.

NWA Cyberslam taped a show also on Saturday at the Stadium Inn. Porter had claimed that this show would not be sanctioned by the National Wrestling Alliance. However, a represenative for NWA Top Rope said “This taping is a NWA Top Rope Production. The internet show will be called NWA Cyberslam. So I would have to say this portion of the night would be a sactioned NWA show.”

The night saw a crowing of a new NWA Cyberslam Champion in Kliff Hanger who defeated JD Fluffy, Raul Loco, and LT Falk in a tournament to gain the crown.

There seems to be some confusion between what is sanctioned in Tennessee, but when there is more to report, we’ll let you know.

Tennesse Wrestling Heating up for the NWA.

Some interesting notes coming off the Mid-Southern Wrestling Message Board

NWA Main Event Promoter is pleased to announce that on July 5, 2008 NWA Main Event Wrestling show that is presently on ION TV-Network Comcast Channel 17 in Nashville at 8 AM on Saturday will move to 12 noon and will continue at 12 noon every Saturday thereafter.

Yours in Sports!

Mike Porter
National Wrestling Alliance
Board of Directors Alternate

There also seems to be some legitimate foul play for NWA Main Event. As Mike Porter has announced the following about the NWA Mid-American Championship Belt…

A $500.00 reward is being offered by NWA Main Event for the arrest and conviction of the person or person that stole the belt. A police report has been made and the incident in under investigation. The belt was last seen at the NWA and Hollywood Video Slam Jam 08 June 21 at the Sports Arena At the Tennessee State Fairgrounds. That night at approx. 11 PM the belt left the building with Marc Anthony and disappeared from his possession sometime between that time and 2 PM the next day. You can e-mail Mike Porter or NWA Main Event or call their office Telephone number, or call the Metropolitan Police Department Theft Division. Your name and any information will be kept confidential.

And was later followed up with…

Our belt was returned completely destroyed. It really took a big man to destroy someone’s property. I know who did it. It was exactly done as Marc Anthony wanted to do to Tony Falks belt on our TV, but we refused to let him do that. The police investigation will continue, I am sure that they will find fingerprints on the belt and hopefully the person responsible will be successfully prosecuted. I will do everything in my power to make this happen. So feel real safe the detectives will be behind you real soon.

NWA Main Event was airing promos from Adam Pearce in which Pearce is said to cut a classic heel promo. Pearce recently defended the NWA Worlds Title against “The Boogie Woogie Boy” Gary Valiant. It appears that things in Tennessee are picking up.