NWA wrestlers Bryan Idol and Natalia Markova were returning by plane to Tampa from TV tapings in Nashville last month. When they landed, Markova could not find her purse.

Little did they know at that moment that the lost purse was stolen and that the incident would culminate in them chasing down the thief at a Walmart, tackling him, and getting him arrested.

Markova, 33, told The Post that she’d suffered a minor injury while wrestling and was “not all there” during the flight. She didn’t realize until she exited the plane that she did not have her purse. When she returned to the gate, the plane was already boarding. Airline officials looked at her seat at the back of the plane, and her purse was not there.

“Were your AirPods in your purse?” Idol asked her.

They were, which meant that they could use Apple’s “Find My” app to locate them.

“They weren’t pinging instantly, but probably some time in the next 10 minutes they pinged about a half-hour away,” Idol recalled.

They hopped in an Uber to where Idol’s car was parked, and eventually tracked the thief down at a Walmart in Pinellas Park, about 45 minutes away from the airport.

“As we walked into the Walmart, her phone actually went off with a fraud alert — it said somebody was trying to buy a $700 TV,” Idol said.

Idol approached the thief and tried to talk to him, having recognized him from sitting in their row on the flight.

“He kind of put his hands on me and ran through me, coupled with the fact that he stole her stuff — at that point common sense dictated that law enforcement would think it was okay (to go after him,)” Idol said. “My intent was not to kill the guy.”

Said Markova: “He tackled the guy, like a quarterback sack, and held him down. He wasn’t punching. He made sure to do it in the safest way possible — but still stop him.”

Security footage from the Walmart shows Idol chasing down the thief and tackling him to the ground.

Idol recalled that the general sentiment inside the Walmart, where, of course, everyone in the store started spectating on what happened, was to let the guy go.

“That’s, like, insane,” Idol said. “That’s bizarro world.”

While Idol was dealing with the thief, Markova was telling the Walmart staff to call the police, who arrived about 10 minutes later.

According to the police report, suspect Kevin Koble was detained. He admitted to stealing the purse, which contained $600 cash and Markova’s credit card. He returned the cash and said that the purse had been turned into American Airlines personnel at the Tampa airport. Idol and Markova ultimately declined to press charges.

Both wrestlers are appearing on NWA 74 in St. Louis on Aug. 27-28. Markova is also in a women’s tournament for the lucha libre promotion AAA; she will compete in Monterrey, Mexico, on July 24.

The NWA is owned by Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, and both wrestlers were very complimentary of his leadership.

“He’s the best,” Idol said. “One thing I always want to say about him, besides being a legendary rock star, you might think that somebody in his position might be a bit of a mark, per se, and nothing could be further from the truth. He’s brilliant, and his vision of what the NWA is is very cool and original in the fact that he’s not trying to compete with everybody else. He’s trying to do his own thing.

“He has a proven track record of what it takes to get to the masses, as opposed to just having a corporate business background. He knows how to stay relevant. Here we are in 2022 talking about the Smashing Pumpkins, and they’re still playing in front of 20,000-30,000 people. He has a mind for all sides on this. He’s not just coming at it like a know-nothing person with money in their pocket. He’s very calculated and smart about the direction he’s going.”

Markova is originally from Moscow, Russia. She first came to the United States in 2017 and, after wrestling around the globe for a couple more years, settled permanently in Florida in 2019.

Idol is a pro wrestling veteran who will appear in the upcoming film “Shazam! Fury of the Gods”. A renaissance man, he is also a musician and additionally has appeared on the cover of the romance novels “Blood from a Stone” (re-released in 2022) and “Lincoln.”

Returning to the vigilante incident, Idol pointed to New York City, where bodega clerk Jose Alba stabbed ex-con Austin Simon to death, ostensibly in self-defense. Alba is nonetheless facing murder charges.

“The cool thing about where we live in Florida is the law kind of protects us in that regard, because we caught someone in the act of a felony,” Idol said. “Just nowadays, I feel like criminals have to feel like they can’t get away with everything.”