Previously on NWA Powerrr: Kamille (née Brickhouse) football tackled Allysin Kay to death, “Danny Deals” took off his old lady mask to sic Jax Dane on Tim Storm, and Brody King showed up to back up Marty Scurll. Oh, and Nikita Koloff is bringing Lex Luger to his Jesus Camp and doesn’t think that’ll end in betrayal and tragedy.
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 nineteen if you haven’t already:
Dice, Nice, Baby!
This week’s biggest, dare I say most outlandish, development is new NWA Television Champion Outlandish Zicky Dice. Dice seemed like he was custom made to be the dirty half of a TV title tournament finals, but Ring of Honor shoehorned in some guys and turned the Hard Times pay-per-view upside down. We’re back in normal, sure-footed NWA Powerrr territory now, so it’s Dice vs. Starks (like it should’ve been) with Starks clearly being Dice’s superior, but Dice being crafty enough to pull out a surprise victory and end Starks’ run only 39 days later. Or I guess two days later, depending on whether you’re going by the event date or the date it aired.
Anyway, I really enjoyed them pulling the trigger on this. The TV title is one you can actually have jump around a lot, especially if you’re building up the idea of the “Lucky 7” giving dominant TV Champions something to work toward. Starks went into the bout too confident because he’s already been able to dispatch Dice pretty easily and got caught with a simple sunset flip counter. It happens. Starks doesn’t look any worse for the surprise loss — he actually looks better, honestly, if you consider that it gives him some nominal consequences for being too sure of himself and underestimating his opponents — and Dice gets a TV title run he can milk as long as he wants without ever looking like the kind of guy you’re going to need more than six minutes and five seconds to pin. It takes a truly special individual to choose pastel pink knee-pads and wear them around his shins like he’s Ric Flair.
Additionally,
♫ I Don’t Wait
For Careers To Be Over
I Want To Know Right Now, What Will It Be ♫
Speaking of matches with consequences, this week’s show features an interesting “last chance match” pitting Caleb Konley and CW Anderson against The Dawsons. You can’t expect to stay in a highly competitive promotion like the National Wrestling Alliance if you lose all the time, so they ran a tag team match featuring four losers where the team that wins gets to stick around, and the team that loses doesn’t. This is the kind of simple, logical storytelling that’s missing from even a lot of the good wrestling promotions these days. Why WOULD a company keep hiring and paying someone who doesn’t win? If CM Punk gets brought in to fight in the UFC and loses really badly two times in a row, they don’t keep him around for 10 years and have him keep losing every couple of weeks. They cut him loose and give someone else a try. This explains why jobber squashes happen in the first place; they’re essentially “try out” matches to see if new talent can compete with your top performers. Keep in mind that Bill Goldberg’s WCW debut was treated like he was the jobber, and Hugh Morrus was the star. That’s why Goldberg winning initially mattered. A subversion of expectation, with intensity.
Long story short, NWA Powerrr originals (from 20 episodes ago) The Dawsons lose, which means the NWA’s cutting them loose. Caleb and CW live to fight another day. I’m telling you, there are so many good stories you can tell with this set-up, not limited to a team always being on the bubble and pulling out victories with their backs against the wall until it endears them to the live crowd and turns them into fan favorites.
In Other Fat Guy Tag Team News
The second championship match of the night is The Pope’s new team, The Bouncers, getting an NWA Tag Team Championship shot against James Storm and Eli Drake. Not only does this allow you to put over the champions in a rare case of them being “underdogs” and continue the Pope vs. Eddie Kingston program, it validates Pope’s claim that having him as a manager is good for your career. The Bouncers turned on Kingston to follow Pope, and he immediately gets them a title shot. They don’t win it, but that’s on them, not Pope.
It’s about as good as it can be with The Bouncers involved, as they seem to think they’re a lot more like Mike Awesome than they actually are. Brian Milonas in particular is just a big wall of person, Loch Ness style, so wrestling him is a lot of trying to get your shit in, him avoiding it by being extremely fat, and then gaining the advantage with a clubbing forearm because you threw out your back trying to bodyslam him. Tried and true pro wrestling classifications. Wrestling needs guys like this, as well as ugly people and the perversely unique, to give it character and keep it visually interesting. One of the strangest things WWE did to wrestling in the 2000s was turn it into a Chippendales.
The champs retain thanks to Eddie Kingston showing up to draw away The Pope’s attention and some desperation teamwork. I do want to point out this really concerning moment near the end, though, where James Storm goes for some cowboy shit off the top rope and ends up powerbombing 400-pound Milonas onto his own knee and ankle.
Storm seemed okay afterward, but I hope he actually escaped that without crushing or tearing something. Look at his ankle:
Scary.
In Non-Wrestling News
The Question Mark, accompanied by a ventriloquist with a The Question Mark dummy, explains the Mongrovian flag’s iconography as the, “ostracized cousin of the ostrich,” and, “the anteater’s second cousin once removed, called the planteater,” which reportedly, “symbolizes the evolution of the Mongrovian people [from] single-celled organisms up to complex organisms like the Question Mark over here.” This was confirmed by the dummy’s research on Mongrovian Wikipedia and confirmed via confusingly edited karate emphasis.
I just … wanted to type that all out and make sure I didn’t accidentally drop a bunch of acid before Powerrr started.
The Question Mark and Shooter Stevens want a shot at the NWA Tag Team Championship belts, so they call out the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express and challenge them to a match. Stevens says he won’t waste their time, “because lord knows how much you have left,” and says that if they “do business” he’ll take them out to L.A. and put them in one of his movies. I know where this is going, but I would love it if Ricky Morton straight-up took a Fingerpoke of Doom from Stevens on the next episode of Powerrr and actually ended up playing Smee in some direct-to-NWA pirate movie.
May Valentine tries to vlog with Sal Rinauro and almost gets his good arm broken by her abusive boyfriend Royce, who shows up looking like the third runner-up in a club’s Magnum P.I. lookalike contest. Like a lot of bad relationships, this guy’s girlfriend has no interest in hooking up with the platonic male friend in her life, but is going to end up forced into his open arms because her inadequate jock boyfriend won’t stop being an asshole about everything. NWA getting straight to the heart of modern relationships.
And Everything After
The only other segment to mention is a press conference for the upcoming NWA World Heavyweight Championship match at the Crockett Cup between Nick Aldis and Marty Scurll, which boils down to them standing in front of a lectern and saying, “I should probably be champ,” between still photos of the arena. It keeps the match in the consciousness of the audience when there’s no actual angle progression on the episode, which is what it’s designed to do.
We find out through Sean Mooney that there’s no Powerrr again next week, as it’s replaced by two episodes of Circle Squared. But after that we get the hilariously named Super Powerrr episode, featuring:
- Tim Storm vs. Jax Dane
- Shooter Stevens and The Question Mark vs. The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express
- Marty Scurll and Brody King vs. Nick Aldis and Thom Latimer
- Kamille’s debut, plus Kamille speaking for the first time
After that it’s mostly promotion for the Crockett Cup, including a Crockett Cup selection show, an episode of Ten Pounds of Gold, and something called “Powerrr Surge,” which I hope is just a six-pack of 90s soda with a picture of The Question Mark on the cans. Would buy.
