While several top US indies managed to find ways to hold events throughout the pandemic year of 2020, such as Game Changer Wrestling (GCW), ACTION Wrestling, Limitless Wrestling, and others, a vast majority simply had to shut down operations for months and months, as their areas simply did not have the health clearance to hold such events or a variety of other equally heartbreaking reasons. One such promotion was Austin, Texas’ Inspire Pro Wrestling. Founded in 2013 by Max Meehan, Inspire Pro was part of a Texas indie renaissance in the past decade, alongside other promotions like Anarchy Championship Wrestling (ACW), WrestleCircus, Heavy Metal Wrestling (HMW), Metroplex Wrestling, VIP Wrestling, River City Wrestling, and Mission Pro Wrestling, the new women’s promotion run by NWA/AEW star Thunder Rosa. It’s also a scene home to Booker T‘s very successful Reality of Wrestling. While it doesn’t get the press that the East Coast, Northeast, Midwest, or even the West Coast gets, Texas’ indie scene has quietly been one of the important pipelines of talents into other promotions, from top indie to national television. And Inspire Pro has been a part of that for nearly eight years – names like Keith Lee (WWE), ACH, Sammy Guevara (AEW), Ricky Starks (AEW), EFFY, Raymond Rowe (WWE’s Erik), Delilah Doom, Kylie Rae (IMPACT), and Allie Kat (GCW) all had runs (some still do) with Inspire Pro before launching to bigger platforms. In 2014, New Japan’s EVIL spent time with Inspire Pro on his excursion (as Takaaki Watanabe). But after January 19, 2020’s New Ecstasy of Gold event – which saw EFFY defeat Starks for the Inspire Pro Pure Prestige Championship, Inspire Pro went into a pandemic-induced hibernation. But in September of 2020, Inspire Pro returned to announce they were shedding their skin of the past seven years and was returning under a new banner, the altered Inspire A.D.
INSPIRE PRO is DEAD! LONG LIVE INSPIRE A.D.!
In 2021, INSPIRE shall rise gloriously from dormancy under the INSPIRE A.D. banner with a NEW LOOK, and with the same great action you have always known us for!
We look forward to seeing you all at THE LONG WALK HOME in 2021! pic.twitter.com/1iSiPBcWgt
— Inspire A.D. (@InspireADWres) September 7, 2020
Now know as Inspire A.D., the company was preparing its first show for 2021 and looked ready to return to the vibrant Texas indie scene it had helped to nurture over the past decade. For months, the company went eerily quiet, until a new Tweet on Sunday was released, with some pretty big news for the companies reboot – all Inspire Pro championships were going to be vacated due to the inactively of over a year, with hand-picked match-ups set to determine brand new champions for the company’s new era.
UPDATE: A Major Announcement from us at INSPIRE A.D. on the future! pic.twitter.com/ZVYrf1skYk
— Inspire A.D. (@InspireADWres) January 10, 2021
The stripping of the titles ends the reigns of Inspire Pro Champion Luigi Primo (498 days), Inspire Pro Pure Prestige Champion EFFY (358 days), Inspire Pro Twin Dragon Connection (Tag Team) Champions Thunder Rosa & Raychell Rose (547 days), and Inspire Pro Undefinable Champion Kody Lane (680 days). Two previous Inspire Pro titles were deactivated well before the January lockdown – in May of 2018, Inspire Pro XX Champion Delilah Doom and Inspire Pro Junior Crown Champion Jojo Bravo faced off in a match to unify the two titles, which became the Inspire Pro Undefinable Championship.
They also announced that The Lawless Darkness was being given a proper title and would have its first title defense at the upcoming event, entitled God Complex – an incredibly unique concept, “The Lawless Darkness” was a stipulation for a match held every year in multi-man matches held annually where the winner gets immunity for repercussions for one full year – as in they can compete in Inspire A.D. and for 365 days and they have no rules, no regulations. Instead of being a one-year open cheque, it will now become a new Lawless Darkness title that will be defended as well. The 2020 winner at the last show in January was Dimitri Alexandrov.
In another interesting twist, at their follow-up second show, The Long Walk Home, they will be putting all titles up for NEW ranking. As in, all the newly crowned champions will then face off to determine which title will be Inspire A.D.’s top championship going forward, creating a new tier system for their titles.
Stay tuned to the Last Word on Pro Wrestling for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world.
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