Few NXT names appeared extra set for the primary stage than Kona Reeves.
Signed to WWE’s NXT system within the late 2010s, the Hawaiian performer – actual title Noah Pang-Potjes – appeared tailored for the subsequent era of wrestling stars.
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Tall, athletic and charismatic, he was billed as ‘The Most interesting’ and broadly thought of to be a expertise with actual potential.
However Reeves’ dream run ended abruptly in 2021 when WWE made sweeping funds cuts throughout its developmental system, releasing dozens of wrestlers in a single afternoon.
For Reeves, it meant stepping away from the one profession he’d ever chased.
Like so many earlier than him immediately lower unfastened by the WWE machine, he confronted the identical daunting query: what subsequent? For all the brilliant lights and roaring crowds, wrestling hardly ever comes with a fallback plan.
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He stayed near the enterprise, showing at choose occasions and reconnecting with previous friends, however his subsequent full-time function would take him someplace few would ever have imagined – a stage simply down the highway from the Efficiency Middle, however a world away all the identical.
Reeves’ NXT run was a crash course in easy methods to survive the system. He got here by the identical programme that produced Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns and Charlotte Aptitude, below the watch of revered trainers together with Terry Taylor, Norman Smiley, Robbie Brookside, Matt Bloom and Sara Amato.
“There have been so many individuals I appreciated to work whereas I used to be in NXT,” he instructed MuscleMan Malcolm.
“I imply, Adam Cole was superior to work. Johnny Gargano was a professional… Kenta was superior to work. He was somebody that I wished to work.”
His appearances have been few however memorable. A daily on NXT tv between 2018 and 2020, he labored with a bunch of the model’s largest names earlier than damage and the pandemic curtailed his momentum. When the 2021 releases hit, he was amongst them – and immediately, ‘The Most interesting’ was off the cardboard.
Within the months that adopted, it appears clear Reeves by no means misplaced his starvation to carry out. He was pushed by an urge to maintain entertaining, maintain shifting, maintain feeling the response of a dwell viewers.
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Today, he nonetheless does – solely now, the group is stuffed with vacationers, and much fewer of his new viewers have come to see a performer toppled by a metal chair.
“I work full-time over at Disney World,” he went on. “I’m a stunt performer on the Indiana Jones Present. I beat up Indiana Jones for a dwelling.”
It feels like a WWE promo line, nevertheless it’s all actual. The previous NXT star has swapped ring ropes for harnesses, spending his days performing choreographed fights and explosions within the iconic Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular in Orlando.
“I’m having fun with having enjoyable proper now,” he added. “I’m simply doing one thing I really like.”
The transfer could sound uncommon, however Reeves has merely discovered one other outlet for a similar instincts that made him a wrestler.
The stunt present calls for the identical timing, precision and athleticism as a wrestling match – solely this time, the story ends with a spherical of applause as an alternative of a three-count.
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It’s not one million miles away from the Hollywood path so many wrestlers ultimately take, from The Rock, John Cena and past.
For them, it’s blockbuster franchises and purple carpets. For Reeves, it’s a unique department of the identical tree, a live-action film scene performed out in entrance of a whole bunch of households a day.
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Loads of former stars have reinvented themselves in surprising methods – from bounty searching to promoting mortgages – however Reeves’ pivot feels virtually poetic. The identical athleticism, the identical storytelling, just below the Florida solar as an alternative of TV lights.
He performs a number of occasions a day, dealing with packed stands and listening to the identical form of cheers that after echoed by NXT arenas.
He nonetheless will get to scratch his wrestling itch, too. For impartial corporations Boca Raton Championship Wrestling and Coastal Championship Wrestling, he will get to don the tights in his native Florida and compete.
For some, the artwork of performing and the need to entertain could be happy lengthy and much past the most important, brightest lights of WWE – in that respect, Kona Reeves resides the dream.