NoDQ CAW

**NoDQ CAW**is a CAW Wrestling League created by Aaron Rift , considered the second of its kind to be shared widely online (second only to Wade Needham's Slam 'n' Jam) and held in high regard among fans and other CAW league producers.  It ran from February 2004 to May 2007 with a one-night-only revival in August 2009 and primarily used the Nintendo GameCube video games WWE WrestleMania XIX and WWE Day of Reckoning.  Originally uploaded to wrestling news website NoDQ.com, almost the entirety of the league's history is preserved online at YouTube on the NoDQ CAW Vault Channel , with only two matches part of the storyline "canon" missing from the archives.  NoDQ CAW was highly influential in the medium of CAW wrestling, leading to the existence of many CAW leagues and YouTube Channels and maintains a strong following to this day.

## Beginnings

In January of 2004, Aaron Rift uploaded to his website NoDQ.com a trio of music videos featuring horror movie icons Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers set to theme music from their film series (Friday the 13th , A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween , respectively).  These videos were recorded using not footage from the movies but Nintendo GameCube video game WWE WrestleMania XIX, using which Aaron had created digital representatives of the characters (commonly referred to as CAWs as shorthand for Create A Wrestler, a staple game mode in most wrestling games to allow the user to create custom characters for use in the games other modes).  These videos are now considered lost footage.

Inspired by these videos, Wade Needham of World-Wrestling.net set about creating an entire league revolving around created characters- this would be Slam 'n' Jam.  Aaron created his own league in response to Slam 'n' Jam's popularity with the members of NoDQ.com's forums and shortly thereafter enlisted Wade's help as commentator for the matches.

## The Original Format

   Seasons 1-4 of NoDQ CAW followed a straightforward format.  Each episode would feature a single wrestling match, generally without entrance sequences to keep video length and filesize down.  At the end of a series of these matches (25 in Season 1, 15 in Seasons 2 and 4 and 20 in Season 3) would come at least one Mega Event, a larger scale show with multiple matches and full entrance sequences akin to a professional wrestling supercard.  These Mega Events would usually conclude the season, but Seasons 2 and 4 featured further events that introduced storyline elements that would affect the following seasons.  For these first four seasons, Aaron used WWE WrestleMania XIX on Nintendo GameCube to produce the matches.

Aside from seven matches from the first season, every match in these seasons featured commentary, generally from Wade Needham, with Bobby Spade joining the commentary team at the conclusion of Season 2.  Wade served as a play-by-play commentator (meaning his job was to mostly call the matches in an unbiased fashion and focus on the moves, though generally leading the viewers to favour and respect babyface performers) whereas Bobby was brought in as a colour commentator (meaning he showed bias toward the heel performers and generally encouraged underhanded behaviour, which led to discussion and debate between the two commentators).

Towards the end of Season 4, animosity between Wade and Bobby led Aaron Rift to decide NoDQ CAW was to be split into two brands in which the company's talent roster was to be split down the middle between two shows, with each commentator taking a producer role on their respective show- this was similar to the WWE Brand Extension  of March 2002 which divided the massive roster of talent WWE had after the buyout of rival companies WCW and ECW.

## The Brand Split and NoDQ Action

   Season 5 would see a change of video game used to produce the matches.  *WWE Day of Reckoning* on Nintendo GameCube would become NoDQ CAW's primary video game from this point, though the ocassional return to *WrestleMania XIX* did occur in order to make use of certain match types that were not available in *Day of Reckoning*.

Instead of being a series of single matches leading to a Mega Event at the end of the season, Season 5 saw two seperate brands of NoDQ CAW- NoDQ Pacific under Wade Needham and NoDQ Eastern under Bobby Spade - competing against each other, with both hosting half of the total NoDQ CAW roster.  These brands hosted weekly episodes that featured multiple matches and segments, feeling like a scaled down version of WWE shows Raw  and SmackDown .  Different Championships were born in this Season for the Superstars to fight over, and Superstars sometimes switched rosters or allegiances to freshen up storylines.  The episodes were posted weekly on the forums at NoDQ.com and were posted in a head-to-head fashion at the same time, with actual download figures being factors in storylines as both brands fought for supremacy.  Mega Events occured after six episodes of each show had broadcast, with NoDQ Eastern hosting Jackpot after the sixth episodes, NoDQ Pacific hosting King of the Pacific after the 12th and both hosting a Mega Event after the 18th and final episodes.

As the Season went on, Bobby Spade turned face and eventually he and Wade would reconcile as the season ended.  Similarly, the talent roster would recombine and now-extraneous Championship titles would be merged with the NoDQ CAW Championship.  Bobby would be reassigned to backstage duties away from the commentary table and Wade would go on to commentate Season 6 and 7 solo.

Seasons 6 and 7 would be a best-of-both-worlds approach to NoDQ CAW episodes.  Each episode would feature only a single match, but the use of entrance sequences- used regularly throughout Season 5- remained.  At the end of Season 6, Slam 'n' Jam concluded (though it was later revived) and one of Season 7's key storylines saw SnJ Legend The Babe make his NoDQ CAW debut.  Season 7's Fully Charged Mega Event would be the final chapter of NoDQ CAW before it entered a brief hiatus.

## End of the Day of Reckoning Era

    Though its direct predecessor was the shortest, Season 8 of NoDQ CAW would go on to be the longest and by far the most ambitious season in the league's history- if watched back-to-back with no break, it would take over a day to view in its entirety.  Rather than feature a single Mega Event or a series of them at the end of the season, Season 8 would see a number of Mega Events throughout the season, with the season itself divided into multiple parts.  In this respect, Season 8 operated similarly to a real life wrestling organisation, with regular programming leading to a supercard.  Season 8 saw Aaron Rift himself provide commentary.

A typical Season 8 part would feature instalments of "The Road to" whichever Mega Event was upcoming, which would be a single match, usually with an episode of NoDQ CAW's Main Event before the Mega Event itself- another episode of NoDQ CAW's Main Event would generally follow the Mega Event at the start of the next part of the season, until the show's discontinuation after Holiday Havoc.  The notable exceptions to this are the first part, which focuses on the 2006 NoDQ CAW Cup, and the fourth part, which features only two Mega Events (both of which to commemorate a certain date or event).

Season 9 was to be the final season of NoDQ CAW so far, initially comprising only of the 2007 NoDQ CAW Cup and the return on commentary of Wade Needham and Bobby Spade .  In August 2009, the series was brought back for a one-night-only revival with the Bragging Rights Mega Event.  This event is generally accepted as part of Season 9.

## Revival

Following Bragging Rights, NoDQ CAW entered an eleven year hiatus. In 2018, Wade Needham supplied commentary for seven matches of Season 1 that were missing commentary, meaning every match now had full commentary. The following year, NoDQ CAW made its return, this time using *WWE 2K19* for Microsoft Xbox One to record the matches. Wade Needham was credited as producer for Season 10 as well as providing commentary, joined once again by Bobby Spade.