10 Wrestlers Who Saved Promotions From Ruin
9. Cody
The NWA was such a strange thing to still be a thing in the mid-2010s.
It was nothing but a set of initials. There were no territories left to preside over. The original member promotions had all been killed off, existing only in revised WWE documentaries. Those initials meant less than nothing; ECW had buried them to get over in the early '90s, framing the brand as something lesser than even the cartoon majors they counter-marketed against. The letters were only a license as the old legacy contrived to exist in various, little-known pockets of the U.S. scene. A baffling, oxymoronic association with TNA - when you think of t*ts, ass, and Vince Russo, you of course think of Jack Brisco, too! - didn't legitimise the initials in the mid-2000s.
Nick Aldis produced work that was more admirable than life-affirming, but incredibly, life-affirming it most certainly was by 2018's All In. Aldis' sly, articulate sportsman demeanour collided with Cody's earnest dream-chasing passion to create an absorbing match at the transformative show. The best way of describing it is thus: it had no right to not feel like cosplay, and yet it didn't. Cody conspired to travel through time.
The lustre of the Ten Pounds of Gold was sufficiently reestablished to create the NWA Powerrr YouTube show, which, again, had no right to gain traction in such an oversaturated market.