NWA Shockwave

Billy Firehawk founded the CyberSpace Wrestling Federation in Staten Island, New York, in 2001. The name was a bet on where wrestling fans were heading, and the company was owned on paper by Daisy Firehawk through its first five years. Staten Island was the address; the business, like most of the Northeast independent scene, lived wherever a hall could be rented.

By October 2002 the CSWF was running central New Jersey, and it crowned its first heavyweight champion there on October 19 at a show billed Halloween Horror ’02 in Flemington. Smokey M took the belt in a four-way over Danny Doring, Kidd USA and Sinister X. Three months later, on January 25, 2003, the promotion opened a women’s division with a title match — Alexis Laree beat Serena and April Hunter for the first CSWF Women’s Championship. Laree would go on to WWE as Mickie James, which is the sort of footnote this company kept collecting.

What separated the CSWF from the other New Jersey indies of the period was a friendship. Firehawk knew Mike Tenay, the lead announcer for Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, and out of that came a working relationship with the young Nashville company that most independents could only wish for. TNA wrestlers did not just appear on CSWF cards; they held the CSWF Heavyweight Championship, and angles carried across both promotions.

A Staten Island indie’s top title sat on the waists of Ron Killings, Jeff Jarrett, Chris Harris, Abyss and Bobby Roode.

The clearest example came on April 24, 2004, in Wayne, New Jersey, when the CSWF put its heavyweight title on the line between TNA’s Ron Killings and WWE’s Al Snow, with Tenay and Roddy Piper both appearing on the show. The card ran head to head against rival promotions that night. Whatever the house was, the ambition was on the poster: two companies’ names, one indie belt.

In February 2005, at Superbrawl Saturday III, Jeff Jarrett defended the NWA World Heavyweight Championship against Slyk Wagner Brown, and the promotion used the occasion to formally join the National Wrestling Alliance. The CSWF became NWA: Cyberspace. A month later, on March 25, 2005, it launched Shockwave TV as a regular webcast — the company is recorded as the earliest known wrestling promotion to distribute its events that way on a schedule, which is worth remembering the next time a streaming service claims to have invented the idea.

The high-water mark was Superbrawl Saturday IV on January 21, 2006, in Kearny, New Jersey, which drew more than 400 people — the best house in the company’s history. On June 6, 2006, the promotion took the name of its own broadcast and became NWA Shockwave. By then it had relocated its headquarters from Staten Island to Wayne.

Six weeks after the rename, on July 17, 2006, Billy Firehawk died of complications from diabetes. He was 40. Derek Gordon, a former WCW producer and director of operations, took over the company.

Gordon ran it for about a year. A memorial show, A New Beginning, went up on January 13, 2007, in Boonton, New Jersey, and Havok won the vacant heavyweight title in a gauntlet match. On June 2, 2007, in Clifton, Papadon beat Havok and Josh Daniels in a three-fall match to take both the heavyweight and Internet championships. That is the last recorded defense of the top title. There was no farewell card and no statement; NWA Shockwave simply stopped running, and the record ends there.

Judged by attendance, this was a small company — a 400-seat night was its peak. Judged by who passed through, it punched well above that. Over six years the rosters and results sheets carry A.J. Styles, C.M. Punk, Christopher Daniels, America’s Most Wanted, The S.A.T., Lex Luger, Diamond Dallas Page, Kanyon and Vince Russo, along with Jazz, Tammy Lynn Sytch and Talia Madison, later known as Velvet Sky. Most of them were either on their way up or on their way through, and the CSWF was one of the rooms where the two groups met.

• Heavyweight Championship (2002–2007), the title held by five TNA regulars and last won by Papadon
• Tag Team Championship (2002–2006)
• Internet Championship (2002–2007)
• Women’s Championship (2003–2006), first held by Alexis Laree
• Cruiser X Championship (2002–2006)
• CSWF Hardcore Championship (2002–2003), retired before the NWA years

The wire’s verdict is plain. NWA Shockwave mattered for two reasons: it built a real working bridge to TNA when TNA was still a weekly pay-per-view experiment, and it put its shows online on a schedule before that was a thing anyone did. It did not survive its founder by a year, which tells you how much of the company was one man’s phone book.