By Sean Radican, Torch columnist

RADICAN’S DVD REVIEW SERIES
“Seven Levels of Hate”
By Sean Radican, Torch columnist

“Seven Levels of Hate” is a documentary produced and directed by Adam Pearce looking back at his feud with Colt Cabana over the NWA Championship. With a couple of exceptions, this is a well-produced documentary that offers a compelling look at what Cabana and Pearce hoped to do with their feud that was compromised by NWA politics multiple time.

If you’re a fan of independent wrestling or wrestling in general, you will find this DVD captivating. The early portions of the documentary establish Cabana and Pearce’s longtime friendship before going into what Cabana and Pearce were hoping to do with their feud over the NWA Title. It’s fascinating to listen to David Marquez of NWA Hollywood in California talk about the origins of their feud. Before their best of seven series took place, Cabana and Pearce had a long feud in NWA Hollywood, which had local television in Los Angeles. It was understood that NWA Hollywood would have control of the title and be able to build their programming around the Cabana and Pearce feud. The feud between Cabana and Pearce was built around the classic premise of good vs. evil with Pearce playing the antagonist and Cabana playing the protagonist.

The Pearce and Cabana feud had an eight month build leading in their title match on NWA Hollywood television in 2011. The documentary does a good job of using clips of promos and highlights of Pearce doing dastardly things to Cabana to build the match. Cabana’s win was a magic moment and it was a blast to see footage of Cabana fulfilling his promise of winning the NWA Championship from Pearce and having a milk celebration with the studio audience complete with milkmen passing out milk to the audience as they celebrated.

Pearce, who is very good as a talking head throughout the documentary, explains that he felt that he and Cabana could make the NWA Championship mean something. The feud had buzz and Cabana, another strong voice, appears talking about Dave Lagana filming footage of the title change and putting it up online to get people buzzing on social media. It seemed that Pearce and Cabana were on their way to making the NWA Championship mean something again, albeit on the independent wrestling level and not a national level.

The idea was with Cabana as NWA Champion, he would bring a lot of attention to the title. The documentary shows clips of people from all levels of wrestling congratulating Cabana on his win. With Cabana’s visibility from his podcast and his strong presence on social media, he seemed primed to achieve what he and Pearce had set out to do with him being the babyface NWA Champion and bringing the title out of the ashes with his strong following.

NWA politics prevented Cabana from ever getting off the ground as champion and he was forced to drop the title six weeks later to The Sheik in a baffling decision that came down from NWA brass. Pearce and Cabana both appear and talk about their inability to understand the decision and how slighted they felt given the effort they had put into their feuding building up to the title change. Former NWA Executive Director Bob Trobich appears and makes a ridiculous statement about how if you total up Dusty Rhode’s title reigns, they didn’t last very long.

As expected, there was a lot of backlash after The Sheik won the NWA Championship. He didn’t have nearly the level of recognition that Cabana had. It truly baffled me at the time it happened, as I had heard the buzz about the Cabana-Pearce feud and the good things they were doing in NWA Hollywood and having seen The Sheik wrestle, it was clear to me he wouldn’t draw a single fan to any event where he defended the title.

The move backfired and The Sheik was stripped of the title. The NWA came back to Pearce and Cabana and asked them to rekindle their feud over the NWA Title. Marquez appears and says they essentially hit the reset button on the feud with Pearce being crowned the new NWA Champion. When discussing recreating their feud, Pearce discusses how they would avoid falling back into the same position as they were previously where they would have no control over who held the title.

The idea was to rekindle the feud and Cabana would eventually get a long title reign. Pearce and Cabana came up with the idea to do a best of 7 series, as they knew they couldn’t repeat what they had done in 2011. Trobich guaranteed them that Cabana would hold the title for at least a year in the aftermath of the feud.

The feud was rekindled and Cabana and Pearce managed to get the fans talking once again. NWA Hollywood was doing good numbers on TV in LA and it showed in the attendance at the TV tapings. Pearce talked about how the feud meant something to the people watching it in the community in Los Angeles.

One of the things that stands out about the series of promos and highlights that are shown building the storyline for the best of 7 series is how strong Pearce is on the mic. It’s truly a shame he hasn’t gotten a chance with a national wrestling promotion for a sustained period of time. I’ve also been baffled for a long time as to why Colt Cabana isn’t a star on national television. Watching Cabana and Pearce build their feud and discussing the behind the scenes details is fascinating.

The idea was to take the Seven Levels of Hate series to different markets with the series beginning and ending in NWA Hollywood with each match having a different stipulation. It was really a great idea and the different promoters that hosted the Pearce vs. Cabana series talk about what bringing the feud to their town did for business. Sheldon Goldberg’s, who owns New England Championship Wrestling, is particularly interesting to listen to as he discusses what the feud did for his company. Mick Karch from Steel Domain Wrestling also appears and provides a lot of good insight on what the feud meant for SDW.

The series was going well and Cabana and Pearce’s idea to bring attention to the NWA Championship was working, but once again just as they were about to conclude the series, politics once again came into play and derailed their plans.

A new group lead by Bruce Tharpe based out of Texas sued the NWA for insurance fraud and the NWA ran out of money to defend itself and Tharpe’s regime took over. The one weakness of this documentary is that Tharpe and Chris Ronquillo from the Texas regime refused to speak on camera. Their point of view is needed to balance out the views of Cabana and Pearce on the situation, but it does speak volumes that they didn’t appear.

The new regime wanted nothing to do with Cabana as NWA Champion or NWA Hollywood and ultimately wanted to change directions, which in hindsight was a terrible decision because the NWA Championship has had nowhere near the level of recognition it had since the Cabana and Pearce feud ended. Pearce and Cabana vent their frustration and ultimately they were forced to end their feud in a match without the NWA Championship on the line.

This is a fascinating look at Cabana and Pearce, who came up with a great idea to use their feud to build up the NWA Championship and make it relevant on the independent level once again. Be sure to be on the lookout for the Paul Bearer cameo, which is fantastic. Some of the interviews aren’t as well produced as others, but the overall production values are fantastic considering that Pearce put this together himself without the help from a major production company. The commentary from the talking heads is compelling from start to finish and it’s clear Pearce and Cabana were on the verge of doing something special multiple times only for NWA politics to come along and ruin what would have undoubtedly been a great thing for the company and its affiliate promotions with Cabana touring all over the place as champion and using his huge exposure to bring recognition to the title. The DVD is well-worth investing in, especially given the bonus features which includes the entire Seven Levels of Hate series.

You can purchase “Seven Levels of Hate” by clicking HERE or by visiting SevenLevelsofHate.com

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