Coming up this weekend for the National Wrestling Alliance is their 74th Anniversary weekend. The festivities are based out of St. Louis, Missouri which was home to the 73rd Anniversary weekend in 2021.
Like last year, heading into the 2022 two-night event as World Women’s Champion is Kamille. It has been well over a year since Kamille became champion and during our chat, she commented on her title reign and expressed that she feels she has come into her own.
It’s meant a lot [one-year reign as NWA World Women’s Champion]. I feel like I’ve come into my own this past year, a little over a year and really kind of shown everybody what I’m made of because when I first won the title, I had only had a few matches with the NWA at that point so, ever since then, I’ve really grown as a performer, as a wrestler, as a talker, just everything so it’s been an incredible year.
At NWA EmPowerrr and NWA 73, Kamille defended the World Women’s Title on both nights and she could be doing the same at NWA 74 nights one and two.
She was asked how she prepares her body to do back-to-backs along with making sure she has two different matches on the shows considering that most of the same crowd will have seen her in action the day before.
I just try to stay in as good a shape as I can. We have a ring that my husband [Thom Latimer] — he’s a coach over here in Hendersonville, Tennessee at a school called FXE Wrestling so luckily I have a ring available where I can kind of keep my cardio and all of that and it’s interesting because when you have to do a pay-per-view match, God willing, I’m doing both [during NWA 74 weekend]. God willing, I’ll win that first match and I’m there the second night. You can’t have the same match twice if that makes any sense so you’re having to find a way to kind of — you’re not having that long in between the pay-per-views where people might forget what you did last time so it’s okay if you did similar things. It’s like literally what you did last night so you’re literally having to turn on your creativity a lot so that’s interesting.
EmPowerrr not being a part of this year’s NWA anniversary weekend has been a topic of conversation. NWA owner Billy Corgan has commented on the matter as well and stated that the show will return, but there was not enough available female talent to bring in.
Kamille said she would have liked for EmPowerrr to be an annual event and felt more energized by that crowd than she did the following night at NWA 73. Kamille mentioned that EmPowerrr was Mickie James’ ‘baby’ and she was a key piece in that show turning out the way it did.
So I do think that it would be something nice to do a once a year type of thing, an EmPowerrr event just because it was such a great turnout last year. I performed both nights and I actually enjoyed the crowd on the first night more. I thought they were even more into it. So, it is something I would like to see but, Mickie James, it was basically her event, she was a huge part of it and I know now that she’s back in kind of the swing of things and she has a lot going on so I mean, that plays a part in it to it not happening this year… because it was her baby, you know what I mean? So, it’s something I would definitely love to see in the future for sure.
Continuing on the topic of EmPowerrr, Kamille bested AEW’s Leyla Hirsch in a Women’s World Title match at the event. Kamille looks back fondly on the lead up to her match with Hirsch and their actual bout.
She said with past opponents such as Thunder Rosa and Serena Deeb, the feedback coming out of the bout was that because of who Kamille was in the ring with, the match was good. She was excited to be in there with someone less experienced in comparison to the two aforementioned opponents to prove that she could hold her own and felt she and Leyla both did that.
When I found out that’s who my match was gonna be against, I was very excited [Kamille reflected on wrestling Leyla Hirsch at EmPowerrr], simply for the fact that the girls I had wrestled like Thunder Rosa and Serena Deeb, they were kind of known in the industry as working a while and everything like that so my matches with them, when they went well, it was kind of like, well, they did it type of thing, well they led the match and so I was super excited to have Leyla because Leyla’s kind of newer in the business and I wanted to be like, hey, you know what? We’re gonna show people that us new girls, we can work together and we can make something magical and that’s exactly what we did so that was super cool for me and Leyla was — she’s so intense and small but mighty and I also just love that story. The big versus small, the goliath versus — I love that so I thought it was a super cool story that we were able to tell and then, being able to show up on AEW for a second and get a little more eyes through the NWA that way was really cool.
Despite being NWA World Women’s Champion for over a year and being in the top ten longest reigning NWA Women’s Champions of all time, Kamille still feels that she is not included in those conversations when it comes to the best women’s champions currently. She cannot pinpoint why that is the case.
I’m not ever in the talks, even though I’m the longest reigning champion right now there is, with the Deonna Purrazzos, Thunder Rosa, Taya [Valkyrie], even though I’ve literally beat all those people and so it’s like is that because I came onto the scene as just a manager? I don’t know. So that’s also an interesting thing to kind of think about and people need to realize, okay, I am a wrestler now and a very legit one at that.
During the early stages of Kamille’s pro wrestling career, she decided that while she was training in Florida, she would head over to the WWE Performance Center and attempt to secure a job with the company.
Kamille added that this was during a time when she was not aware of wrestling etiquette and did not know that one could not just show up and ask for a job. She’s thankful she was not aware because she did end up receiving a tryout.
Luckily, I had no idea about wrestling etiquette, any of the unspoken rules because I don’t have anyone in my family who’s in this business. Like it’s a completely new venture for me, so I knew nothing about it. So when I moved down to Florida to train at Team 3D, I didn’t realize that I wouldn’t have time to have a normal job because I had always had a very regular job up until that point. So, one day when I first moved there, I got my resumes together and I was all dressed up, looking nice for interviews and stuff because I’m old school. I like to go in person and drop off my resume and meet whoever is most in charge and while I was doing that, I was like, you know what? I know the Performance Center is down here somewhere and at that point, you could not find the address to the Performance Center so, you know, I’m a female so I’m a super sleuth so I somehow figured it out and figured where it was and then I was like, I can just go there, drop off my resume and I thought that I would maybe be able to work in marketing there and then train as a wrestler at the same time, like I had no idea and so I just buzz on the buzzer and I was like, ‘Hi. I’m interested in working here and also becoming a wrestler’ and they were like, ‘Uh… one second’ and then they buzzed me in and I just talked to the manager of the building and then yeah, led to me getting a tryout but they did explain to me, they were like, ‘But you can’t work a regular job and be a wrestler.’ They were like, ‘That’s not how it works.’ I didn’t know any better.
As the conversation rolled on, Kamille was asked what the long-term in the NWA looks like for her personally.
She expressed that she loves it there and all things involving the company. Once her in-ring career is over, Kamille is interested in transitioning to a behind-the-scenes role and helping with the women’s division.
So, I love working for the NWA. I love my bosses, I love my co-workers. It’s just a really great atmosphere especially when it comes to professional wrestling. The reason I quit a long time ago, even on the indies is because it can be a very toxic place and some pretty bad people involved and that’s something I just truly stand behind the NWA is that the locker room is great, the office is great and at the end of the day, I hope to stay with the NWA and right now, it’s my career and I make a good career doing it and as long as I can stay happy, healthy and make a living doing it, I’m in it for the long haul and when I’m done in-ring, I would still love to be involved in the company, helping the women’s division in any way I can. Something I take pride on is the way I put my matches together and I think that’s something that I can help a lot of girls with so that’s something I would definitely be interested in doing in the future as well.
Adding onto the World Women’s singles title and the World Women’s Tag Team Titles, the NWA has added the Women’s TV Championship to the fray. Kamille feels it’s a great opportunity for talents to be spotlighted and thinks the belt would fit well on NWA USA.
She went on state that she hopes the Women’s Tag Title division can be grown more, adding that there should be more legit teams in the division.
So I think it’s great that more women will get even more opportunities through that [NWA Women’s TV Title] and a little more eyes on them is something that they can hold that feels important to them, and we also have NWA USA and I think that’s a great title for that show, so I think it works out really well. You mentioned the NWA Women’s Tag Team Titles, I do wish that we could grow that division a little bit more because to me, if you’re gonna have the titles, you need to kind of have people in that division if you will. So that’s something within the next year I would like to see grow a little bit more.
Among the backstage producers for the NWA are Jazz and Alundra Blayze (Madusa). Kamille states that Blayze is often agenting the men’s matches.
She described Jazz as her ‘mama bear’ and says she talks to her about everything. Kamille feels that Jazz is a down to earth individual and laid back. She went on to add that Jazz never talks down to people and is someone everyone can learn from.
She [Alundra Blayze] works a lot with the guys, the guys’ matches so she hasn’t been my agent or anything but just as a person, obviously everyone knows she’s just super cool and down to earth and then Jazz, she’s like my mama bear. I talk to her about everything and Jazz is so cool, especially for everything that she’s done in this business and she already doesn’t get enough credit for it. She’s so laid back and humble and that’s just somebody that everybody can learn from and she doesn’t talk down to you. She’s just such a cool person.
On night one of NWA 74, Kamille is defending her title against Taya Valkyrie and if she wins, she’ll be heading to night two to defend against the winner of the Burke Invitational.
Kamille can be found on Twitter @Kamille_brick and on Instagram @kamillebrickhouse. Our audio interview can be heard via the player at the top of this article or on the Andrew Thompson Interviews YouTube channel.
