by Nick Aldis
As some of you may know, we at the NWA (National Wrestling Alliance, not the rap group, I had to leave the group due to creative differences) announced this week that we will be shooting episodic content from the GPB studios in downtown Atlanta, a heartbeat away from the former home of Georgia Championship Wrestling and WCW, and a location many feel is the spiritual home of the brand.
The site is perfect for our vision of delivering a studio wrestling show for the modern era, and the fact that it’s in Atlanta was just the icing on the cake.
Since the inception of the “Corgan/Lagana era” NWA there have been a multitude of questions and since our announcement of the episodic show the barrage has only intensified. So, while I speak only for myself and not for Billy Corgan or David Lagana (unless asked) as the current champion and someone who has helped shape the brand in the last two years, I decided this might be a good opportunity to offer my interpretation of what we’re doing and why.
Every year WWE raises the bar higher and higher in terms of production values; as technology improves the possibilities increase and if you have the budget you better be willing to reinvest in the visual quality of your presentation, because that has been a well documented principle of Vince McMahon and WWE for decades.
But in the midst of all the amazing visual effects, I believe that, sometimes, the personalities of the performers can be overshadowed and there can be a sensory overload where you kind of “gloss over”.
This is in no way an indictment of WWE’s product, I just think that it’s left a gap in the market for us; while we will have a studio set up that resembles those of the classic 70s and 80s television eras, it will of course be updated to make use of technologies we have access to in 2019.
Put simply, I have consistently asked the question “if Jim Crockett promotions or Georgia Championship Wrestling were still around today, what would that show look like?”
Yes, there will only be a couple of hundred people in there, but we intend to take advantage of that and do things that can’t be done in an arena environment. You know how they say that when you lose one of your senses, the others become heightened?
The intent is to put the onus solely on the talent to captivate the audience with their personality and I have total faith that we will. The audience will be a part of the show in a totally different way, with direct interaction that creates unique moments that, again, are hard to capture in an arena.
Maybe it’s from working for a rock star for two years, but I think a music analogy fits here: MTV Unplugged provided some of the most memorable performances in several huge band’s careers, not in spite of, but because of the fact that these acts were taken out of arenas and stadiums with thousands of people and stripped away of equipment and what was left was a raw, emotional performance giving a greater glimpse of personality.
That is what we hope to achieve on September 30th and October 1st in Atlanta.
Sign up for the email blast at nationalwrestlingalliance.com for your chance to get tickets to our maiden voyage at GPB studios.
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