NWA Hawaii
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NWA HAWAII is an independent Pro Wrestling Promotion in the State of Hawaii sanctioned by the NWA.
The NWA (National Wrestling Alliance) The NWA's roots date back as far as 1936 in Hawaii to the original Mid Pacific Promotions promoted by Al Karasick, who housed NWA matches on a regular basis. As with most independent wrestling promotions, the NWA affiliates have seen many different incarnations, but are all members of the National Wrestling Alliance (N.W.A.). Being that the NWA is the oldest and largest sanctioning body in professional wrestling, they have been the longest represented wrestling association in the United States. Collectively, the NWA affiliates in the State of Hawaii have produced over 300 television episodes for broadcast, mostly by Ed Francis, (followed by the Maivias) with 50th State Wrestling, and the Wrestling Hawaii program on Honolulu's KGMB TV being Hawaii's favorite past time during the 60's, 70's, and the beginning 80's right before the decline of pro wrestling in Hawaii.
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[edit] Past Promoters In Hawaii
Al Karasick (1936-1962)( Mid Pacific Promotions) Ed Francis (1962-1979) (Mid Pacific Promotions) High Chief Peter Maivia (1979-1982) (Polyniesan Pacific Promotions) Lia Maivia (1982-1988)(Polyniesan Pacific Promotions) Steve Rickard (1988-1999)
Source: http://www.midweek.com/content/story/theweekend_coverstory/when_wrestling_was_king/
[edit] NWA Hawaii
NWA Member-
Parrish S. Ho (1999-2001)
Parrish S. Ho, changed name to David "Dave" Heart (2001- present)
[edit] NWA Hawaii History
In its most recent incarnation the NWA resurfaced in Hawaii on Dec 31st 1999, when a journeyman wrestler Parrish Ho fraudulently purchased the rights to the Hawaii territory from the N.W.A. under false pretenses of owning a promotion with a roster, and shows. This was the beginning of NWA Hawaii.
Mr. Ho got involved in wrestling in 1995, as a journeyman wrestler for promoter Lars Anderson of the famed Minnesota Wrecking Crew. Anderson had an offshoot promotion from the Polyniesan Pacific Promotion called World League Wrestling. Ho Had wrestled for Anderson for 4 years before having a fallout with the promotion and its booker Richard Fikani. Ho's first attempt at promoting did not go as he planned, when he co-created Super Wrestling Force S.W.F. with Robert Kapanui and Garrick Paikai. Due to bad business and financial decisions, not to mention the fact that Ho had no experience in any kind of promotional background, SWF closed its doors after just a few mos. and two live events. At this point. Parrish decided to re-think his approach, having failed miserably with Super Wrestling Force. Ho had an idea to use the NWA.
So, he contacted the NWA, knowing that it had a long heritage in Hawaii. He thought to use its history and mark to boost his self image and try to fit himself into the then faltering pro wrestling scene in the Hawaiian Islands. It was Ed Chuman of NWA Midwest, who innocently gave Ho a hand to secure his NWA membership, not knowing what lied ahead.
With the NWA now behind him, Parrish proceeded to promote a false series of wrestling shows under the NWA banner due to the fact that in reality, he did not have a promotion, or titles, or a roster, or even a venue. Parrish went on with his NWA scam. He lied about crowning Heavyweight Champion (Keethan Hawk) and a Jr. Heavyweight Champion (G-Smooth), both of which were not even in NWA Hawaii, but Parrish reported both had won tournaments, and had them officially recorded through the NWA, in order to get approval from the board and justify keeping his membership active. Parrish Ho proceeded with his scheme, through his bogus NWA internet only wrestling promotion, with no wrestlers, no belts, no venue, and no respect for those in the past, who have worked hard to earn the NWA respect and NWA titles the real way, through genuine effort, work, blood, sweat and tears.
After several months of sending in more lies and false results to the NWA, of shows he never had, with wrestlers he didn't have. Parrish desperately sought the help of Robert Kapanui.
It was Kapanui who recruited stablemates Don Fridinger (aka"The Rocker" Don Lee), Kris Underwood (aka "Hotstuff" Kris Kavanaugh), Daryl Bonilla, who currently heads AZW (Action Zone Wrestling), and Ryan Sumiye (Dark Ninja), in an honest attempt to build this new promotion from the ground after the mistakes they made together with the previous, SWF.
Ho then found great success mending his rocky relationship with Lars Anderson. Anderson provided Ho with TV production, while Kapanui and company handled creatives. Ho partnered up with World League Wrestling and promoted shows on a regular bimonthly basis. After 6 mos. of co promoting NWA Hawaii with WLW, its booker Dorian Chaney left the islands.
New booker Bobby Carillo was brought in, and at the same time Parrish had brought in Joseph Tramontano and his son Joe Jr. into NWA Hawaii. Both Ho & Carrillo could not see eye to eye on creativity and thus the partnership between NWA Hawaii and WLW was strained. It was about this time that Tramontano had generated and created The Island Xtreme Wrestling Federaton IXWF, mainly so that he can feature and headline himself and his son. Both Wolfen and Ho shared alot of the same ideals when it came to wrestling and the business in general.
Ho severed ties with WLW and partnered up with IXWF, within 3 mos. Soon after, WLW closed its doors and the IXWF/NWA Hawaii was born. Under this new partnership the NWA Hawaii and IXWF managed to run shows for almost a couple of years along with the help of Dr. Paul Kamanu and his Grace in Action Ministries. IXWF/NWA Hawaii was able to run weekly shows out of G.I.A. Studios. However, with Joe Tramontano (JT Wolfen) and Parrish Ho in charge of promoting and creative, the shows declined in quality and attendance drastically.
In late 2000 local television producer Linda Bade met JT Wolfen (real name Joseph Tramontano) at a local 24 Hour Fitness Club where he worked out with his friend Parrish Ho, and was invited to an early IXWF show at a small church in Kaneohe, called "The Cave" (which is what they had renamed the G.I.A. Studios). Since Bade was already in the PR field with media background having worked with several local TV stations such as KHNL, K-5, KMGT, KHON, and KIKU when she asked who was promoting IXWF, and Wolfen replied, "no one", she agreed to see a few shows and decided that she could help them. So, Bade was brought in to help with promoting, booking venues, and various talent coordinations, since IXWF/NWA Hawaii was struggling with extremely low attendance. Bade brought the company out to Honolulu from Kaneohe, and in 2001 proceeded to get media attention through local television, starting with free "live" spots on programs such as KHON's morning show and Hawaii's Kitchen through long time media associates, Bruce Sawyer, Manolo Morales, and Michael Harris. From there, moved on to Tiny TV on Oceanic Cable channel 16 through Tiny Tadani, a local personality. This was the connection used to secure a weekly series on commercial cable television on Oceanic Cable, before the sale to Time Warner, as well as various newspaper coverage through Bade's contact with Honolulu Star Bulletin's, Dean Sensui to start, and kept knocking on doors that seemed slammed shut on pro wrestling for years in Hawaii. Regardless, Bade had been repackaging and promoting the wrestling shows as "family entertainment", and continued to hit the pavement.
Towards the end of 2001, by the advise of some so called "close business associates" of Ho, Parrish Ho suddenly, legally, changed his name to David "Dave" Heart. It was revealed to be due to serious criminal charges against him that resulted in the termination of Ho's employment with the Oahu Community Correctional Center, which needed to be kept quiet, in order to pursue his involvement in local pro wrestling. Until about this time, very few people knew that professional wrestling in Hawaii had been kept alive in the background. Slowly, attention on local pro wrestling was being brought back to surface and a criminal record at this point would not have been something that the promotion would want the public to find out about, due to the nature of the crime, especially being promoted as "Family Entertainment". So, the IXWF/NWA Hawaii management kept it very quiet.
From there, the promotion went on with advertising on commercial television, first promoting Tramontano's tag team, ECC with 30 sec. spots created with the help of Bade's long time associate,and local videographer, Neal Izumi, for IXWF's "Rage Over Palama" campagn, and started booking shows into venues that were more accessible to potential fans.
However, after several disputes with IXWF/NWA Hawaii management and fall outs between Bade and Heart including an attempt to misuse her personal finances in an attempt by Heart to invite NWA star Jeff Jarrett, and among other incidents, there was also the use of fraudulent insurance certificates. The insurance fraud was supposedly, handed down from WLW's Lars Anderson which the IXWF/NWA Hawaii management asked Bade to submit to the City and County of Honolulu on the promotion's behalf, which Bade refused to do. There were many other issues that they could not see eye to eye, and Bade finally decided to leave the company and formed Hawaii Championship Wrestling (HCW) in January 2003 with WWE Hall Of Famer and Punahou graduate, Don Muraco (aka The Magnificent Muraco), alongside Ryan Sumiye (aka Dark Ninja), Robert Kapanui (aka Lopaka), Daniel Schuster (aka Kaniala), and Kevin Kacatin (aka Ref Kazz). At this time several workers on the NWA Hawaii roster left the promotion to join with Bade and HCW. Leaving the IXWF/NWA Hawaii Roster Low. at this point Dave Heart and JT Wolfen (real name Joseph Tramontano) replenished the ranks of The IXWF with new talent, and brought in Scott Russo (Real Last Name Sylvia) as a consultant.with the new roster and team in place IXWF NWA Hawaii tried to go head to head with Bade and HCW, in a year long dispute in which they acted childishly in a territorial war, while rosters thinned dramatically, mostly with military wrestlers getting transferred, and rookies not being able to catch up quick enough.
In January 2004 a year to the day the split between HCW And IXWF took place, Linda Bade made a personal "peace" call to Joe Tramontano (JT Wolfen) to patch things up between them on grounds that all the fighting seemed stupid and unproductive. With HCW's Battle Hawaii 2004 coming up, and finding out that IXWF NWA Hawaii had such a depleted roster, offered to book a few of the IXWF 's local talent on the card, and both decided to forgive and forget in order to strengthen the local pro wrestling scene. Bade, Tramontano, Heart and Sumiye had met, thus creating a new partnership between IXWF & HCW in which IXWF would be there in support of HCW, and working under the HCW banner, and HCW in turn agreed to house NWA Hawaii title matches along with HCW's.
Shortly after, Bade then joined the AWA through recommendation by long time friend of HCW, Bill Apter, after a couple of recruitment letters from the president of AWA Dale Gagne. After some months, it became apparent that the promotion had way too many belts now. With 2 of each kind, almost everyone would be a champion, and needed to condense them in a creative way, so the unification began, with the idea and agreement that the newer "original" belts should be used and not the older WCW replicas that NWA Hawaii had been using for the past few years. A decision was made to use 1 NWA Heavyweight "original" belt owned and paid for by HCW's AWA senior referee Kevin Kacatin. This is when the relationship between HCW and Dave Heart became fragile and instead of moving forward together, Dave Heart "stole" Kacatin's belt, and once again the relationship was jeopardized. Furthermore, Bade received several disturbing warnings from Heart's estranged mistress who resided in Connecticut, about some serious issues in connection with Heart's behavior, which was the big red flag which led up to the final break up.
At this point, Bade knew that if Tramontano was not focussed in moving forward with HCW, and if he did not show up to the following event on September 23, 2006, HCW would already know to move forward separately. The relationship between HCW and IXWF/NWA Hawaii in fact, did end in September of 2006, when a few of the former IXWF wrestlers including Tramontano (JT Wolfen) unprofessionally "no showed" and left HCW to reform NWA Hawaii separately, and thus taken off the HCW roster severing its ties.
The current status on both promotions is that IXWF is now working under NWA Hawaii, and currently using the NWA title, which was "stolen" by Dave Heart (original name: Parrish Ho), and reportedly, showing a few old bootleg HCW wrestling matches and clips that were illegally tampered with on their website as their own, with no regards in respect to US copyright laws. HCW (Hawaii Championship Wrestling) has moved forward on its separate way, and is now also recognized as the "official" AWA HAWAII.
[edit] NWA HAWAIIAN CHAMPIONSHIP HISTORY
The NWA Hawaii United States Championship was the version of the NWA United States Heavyweight Championship that was defended in Hawaii. It existed from 1962 until 1968. It was renamed the NWA North American Heavyweight Championship (Hawaii version) in 1968 and renamed again as the NWA Pacific International Championship in 1978. The title was retired in 1980. No one has been able to successfully recreate and revive the NWA title in Hawaii since.
Reference Link: http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2005/Jul/24/il/507240325.html
