Previously on NWA Powerrr: Colt Cabana defeated James Storm to become the National Heavyweight Champion, Aron Stevens got pinned twice in panties that made him look like he was naked, and Party Marti Belle fell under the influence of a ghost lady (?) who used to be a royal snake.
If you’d like to keep up with these columns, you can do so on the NWA Powerrr tag page. Remember, NWA Powerrr and all its extra Rs is free to watch on YouTube, so check out episode six if you haven’t already:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqPPn1mWMFY
What A Mark!
Episode six’s most important development is the in-ring debut of The Question Mark, an impossible to identify man in Jerry Lawler gear wearing a black mask with a question mark on the forehead. You’ve seen his “watch this to boost your high” preview vignettes, and now he’s here, and he’s perfect. The wrestling world as a whole needs fewer hairless bodybuilders, fewer lithe guys with floppy haircuts who do flips and name their moves after swords, and more guys from your local gas station putting on a hood and calling themselves shit like “The Question Mark.”
Quest-love’s first opponent is returning jobsman Dan Parker, who is still dressed like Bird Person from Rick and Morty. Ol’ Dan really missed out on some choice cross-promotion with All Elite Wrestling, but that’s beside the point. Here, his job is to do a full backflip for The Question Mark’s finish, which I’m pretty sure is the Touch of Death from The Simpsons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fXutzDwftM
Five things they should do with The Question Mark as soon as possible:
- say he’s unable to make it to a big match due to his complicated legal history, as he’s always at the end of a sentence
- give him a luchador tag team partner whose Question Mark is upside down, and who starts all of their matches
- bring in Rhyno, put him in a similar mask, and call him The Exclamation Point
- have him trade finishers with John Cena until the strikes collide and explode, blowing up the arena and killing everyone inside
- make him NWA World Heavyweight Champion, don’t @ me
Speaking Of NWA Champions
Lots of lateral movement in the various title pictures this week.
NWA Power(rr) is already doing a great job of tying together all of its loose plot threads to make the studio look and especially feel like a competitive wrestling promotion. One of the things I loved about Lucha Underground is that it initially established every single person on the show on a level playing field, and let their successes or failures develop them from there. WWE has an adamantium-hard division between “top guys” and “everybody else.” AEW even started off by admitting that The Elite are better and more important than everybody else, which necessitated the creation of the Inner Circle. The NWA has champions and “top stars” too, sure, but the closer grouping of new and older stars as equals allows you to invest in the characters and performers for who they are and make your own decisions about them. It’s GREAT. You can watch this show and think Ricky Starks is the best wrestler you’ve ever seen, but the show itself doesn’t necessarily feel like it’s insisting you do so, and Starks could lose to The Maestro or whoever next week and you’d continue developing the nuance.
What I’m getting at is that there’s a surprising amount going on in just these first six episodes, on a level I honestly didn’t expect when I started tuning in. The benefit of the aforementioned level playing field with the intimacy and low stakes of a YouTube studio show allow the promotion to feel “lived in,” like it should. The NWA’s been around a long time. We’ve written a lot about Nick Aldis manipulating his challengers and patting Colt Cabana on the back a little too much to get him to unseat James Storm, and his ongoing insistence that Tim Storm (no relation) keep at it. Eli Drake shows up pretty early in the show and suggests that this is why Kamille isn’t speaking — Aldis doesn’t want any of his secrets getting out.
Interestingly, that line of questioning doesn’t bring out Aldis, but instead brings out the NWA Tag Team Champions, the Wild Cards. Bram and Bram’s friend. The Descension, whatever you wanna call them. Thom ‘Brham’ Latimer weirdly gets in Eli Drake’s face about staying out of his business, and while he tries to turn it into a “by my business I mean THIS business because I am GOOD AT WRESTLING and THIS BUSINESS is MY BUSINESS” thing, it’s suspicious. I don’t know if this is the direction they’re going with, but in case you’ve never visited Kamille’s social media, she and Bram are a real-life thing. So does Bram not want Kamille being forced to speak up for fear that she’ll reveal the corruption and collusion behind the scenes at the NWA? That Nick Aldis is pulling the strings on literally everyone to keep them all in line?
Later in the night, sure enough, Nick Aldis shows up before and sits nearby during the Wild Cards’ defense of the Tag Team Championship against Eddie Kingston and Homicide. He’s like, “Kamille can talk, it’s fine, shut up about it, and James Storm can go jerk off in a lake for all I care.”
He sits in a chair at ringside to watch the match, and when it’s over — the champs retain, by the way, and for all intents and purposes appear to have put Outlaw Inc. behind them — Kamille shows up to visibly talk to Aldis about what’s going on, and why he’s hanging out with and supervising her, you know, boyfriend. I might be reading into it too much, but the mysterious relationship between all these folks is the key storytelling component. This brings out James Storm, and Colt Cabana, and the Dawsons, and everyone else tangentially related to the story of the NWA’s version of a bench-clearing brawl. It’s a group atmosphere of intense questioning and conversation.
Anyway, I hope that when Kamille finally does talk, she has Michelle Wolf’s voice. Either that or Dr. Girlfriend, I can’t decide which would be funnier. Maybe a Nailz voice?
Get Aron Stevens A Guest Role On Atlanta
Aron Stevens has quit the National Wrestling Alliance for good, forever due to the constant disrespect he receives from the audience from that one set of tapings and is heading to Hollywood to star in Shogun of Malibu. Isn’t that called Daybreak? The interview features the incredible line, “I’M GOING TO GO PUT MY PANTS ON,” made even better by Joe Galli kinda raising his eyebrows and nodding about it. The announce team for Power, Jim Cornette notwithstanding, is really fantastic. The Championship Wrestling From Hollywood team has always been special. But yeah, no, Stevens responds to an e-mail about the movie in front of everybody so we can all see how much he wants us to kiss his ass. So good.
Aron Stevens will of course actually be gone and stay gone forever, so fire up the Fuel.
Cyrstal Rose Scoured The Trailer Park And Found A Partner
It’s Brooklyn Creed! Creed is from Los Angeles and lives in Philadelphia, though. Isn’t Brooklyn Creed just Mike Tyson? Regardless, Crystal Rose and Brooklyn Creed combine their skills of making sure after-church pot lucks are fully stocked and buying cartons of menthol cigarettes to take on Thunder Rosa and Marti Belle.
In case you haven’t been following along, Thunder Rosa can summon a drum familiar and used it, alongside a Sean O’Haire style of emotional manipulation, to turn Marti against her “best friend” Allysin Kay. Now she’s got a “vision” of them rising “like a phoenix” and taking down Kay together. Them crowding Dave Marquez was funny, and it’s even funnier that all it took to turn Marti Belle from a well-meaning friend into a jibberish-spouting cult member was, “do you wanna kick your friend? Come on, you know you want to.”
Who Would Win In A Fight: 1982 NWA, Or 2014 EVOLVE?
Tune in to Trevor Murdoch vs. Caleb Konley to find out!
The Spider So Humbly Requests You View His Holdfast’s Upcoming Pay-Per-View Event, My Lord, Sure To Be A, MOST Enjoyable Evening. Yes, Quite Enjoyable.
“William Patrick Corgan of the NWA” pops in looking like Gru from Despicable Me to thank us for watching his show, and to suggest we tune in to the upcoming INTO THE FIRE pay-per-view event. You should know I’m going to watch, Billy, how many times do I have to tell you I Adore the NWA? I feel like I gish about it every week. It’s in the zeitgeist!
I Think The Edibles Just Kicked In
I don’t want to go to the “this character’s secretly THE DEVIL” well too many times, but … for anyone who saw this week’s Tony Falk Wrestling Farm commercial, is … is Tony Falk the devil? Seriously. He’s asking for 15 grand to make and send you a brainwashed human, his commercial devolves into complete insanity as it goes, and his phone number is presented forward and backwards. Are the Sumerians involved? What’s going on? Does he sell golden tire irons alongside his gluten-free waffles in the hopes that you’ll worship it as a graven image?
Next Week:
James Iha is here to introduce the big title match between Colt Cabana and the dread Baphomet! Plus, The Question Mark and The King in Yellow! I might start blogging in tongues! See you next week!
