Previously on NWA Powerrr: The homie SEAN MOONEY joined the broadcast team just in time to hear Nick Aldis challenge Marty Scurll to give every fan in the arena their money back if he loses another NWA World Heavyweight Championship match. Plus, Zicky Dice wore a $16,000 fanny pack.
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 seventeen if you haven’t already:
Lackin’ With Dokken
Before we talk about anything else, I need to point out what a bad idea it was to replace Dokken’s ‘Into The Fire’ with Pantera’s ‘I’m Broken.’ ‘Into The Fire’ was the pitch-perfect into for a wrestling show with a throwback ’80s vibe. Y’all should’ve saved Pantera for when Powerrr got to 1995 and started trying to be ECW. Don’t get me wrong, Pantera’s great, but Powerrr using groove metal is like Nick Bockwinkel coming out to Cannibal Corpse.
In summary,
Throw Momma From The Train
Episode 17 of Powerrr — the “season premiere” of “season 3,” because I guess NWA Powerrr is a British show now — opens with the very Vince McMahon decision to make fun of the only sincere-sounding guy on the roster by sending out a dude in an exaggerated grandma costume to call him shitty and old 20 times. Pretty sure this was the reaction of everyone watching at home:
I get what they’re going for here, but this didn’t do anything for me. If I have to point out a highlight, it was Kamille and Thom Latimer’s sell of the fake Momma Storm. Kamille might be the best non-verbal actor in wrestling now that El Generico’s retired and taking care of orphans in Mexico.
What sucks, I think, is that the segment was actually going really well before that. Storm, as we’ve pointed out, is without a doubt the best babyface in wrestling right now. He truly sounds like his loves his friends and family, and wants to work hard and do the right thing to get back to the top of the promotion. Storm even puts over Thom Latimer as one of the best in the world, despite not liking him. HE IS THE BEST DUDE. Latimer and Kamille showing up escalated the tension, and you got all the heel heat you needed with Latimer reminding Storm he can’t challenge for the NWA Heavyweight Championship anymore because he lost to Nick Aldis — Storm is honoring that pre-match agreement despite being WILDLY cheated by Strictly Business on a regular, consistent basis — and saying he “couldn’t give a crap” about wrestling him. The fake Momma Storm stuff was just lame and unfunny. Bobby Lashley’s sisters is pretty low on the list of segments you should be emulating.
This Week In Strictly Business
Aside from whatever that was, this week’s biggest strict business announcement is that Nick Aldis is willing to accept a “counter offer” to his “pay everybody in the building back if you lose” stipulation for Marty Scurll, and will be at Ring of Honor’s Free Enterprise in Baltimore this weekend to field it. Nick Aldis could talk me into the building for a match against a pile of laundry right now.
Also, Royce Isaacs valet, May Valnetine, has a vlog now. With a pirate font title screen! She sounds a lot like Maryse and mostly talks about how cute her outfits are, and how her boyfriend is a possessive weirdo who barely ever wins matches. I hope they go full Alantutorial with these and let May create an entire sub-universe mythos for NWA Powerrr, full of mystery, romance, and cute dresses.
Atlanta Becomes Beer City
The opposite of Momma Storm’s bit is Eddie Kingston, who cuts a passionate promo in defense of Homicide in the face of The Pope and Pope’s newest recruits, the Dawsons. I don’t know if any show has ever fully utilized Kingston’s ability to sell a program with his words, but man, when he’s on, he’s on.
“He is my blood. Because of him I didn’t commit suicide, do you understand that? That’s reality. That’s real. I’d die for that man. I’d cry for that man. And you disrespect him? I should bury you where you stand.”
To counter the Dawsons, King introduces NWA to Brian Milonas and the Beer City Bruiser, The Bouncers. If you’ve never seen them before, they’re a Ring of Honor tag team that looks like Killer Kross and Timothy Thatcher after 10 years of depression. They help Kingston make a stand against Pope and his also horrible looking tag team, but Pope backs down.
Eddie Kingston really carried this. Pope is a great talker who desperately needs an edit button, and those tag teams are extremely local. Still, I’ve long thought pro wrestling needs more big fat ugly guys (especially in contrast to WWE, where a large percentage of the Superstars look like models with little to no body hair), so I’ll reserve this spot for three months down the line when I’m like, “you know who fucking rules? The Beer City Bruiser.” I did just learn that in previous promotions he’s named himself after low quality beef stew in a can, twice, wrestling as both “Dinty Moore” and “Dinn T. Moore.” BRB, gotta check and see if Brian Milonas has ever competed as “Chef Boyardee.”
Some Matches Happened!
Don’t worry, this week’s show wasn’t all model vlogs and grandma goofs. Matches also occurred!
The first match of the night was between two guys who were eliminated in the first round of the Television Championship tournament at Hard Times: Matt Cross, and Caleb Konley. You can see right away what a guy like Cross adds to the show, as he turns what would be your run-of-the-mill NWA Powerrr match into six minutes of competitive action with a brisk pace and combative athleticism. Cross wins, of course, and TV Champion Ricky Starks is at the announce table to watch him do it. After the match, Cross respects the code of honor by shaking Konley’s hand. Good stuff all around.
The new NWA Tag Team Champions are also in action, squashing the NWA jobber super team of Jocephus and Mims. I’m not sure we’ve ever had any character development for “Mims,” but he’s pretty clearly written to be the worst wrestler at the tapings. Even Jocephus bails on him after the match, and that dude returned from suspension dressed as Santa Claus. That’s a low bar. Eli Drake and James Storm look great, though.
NWA Third Degree National Heavyweight Champion Aron ‘Shooter’ Stevens, whose name gets a little longer every week, goes to a time limit draw with Trevor Murdoch. The NWA has made a strange decision to book Trevor Murdoch like he’s Seth Rollins or something, but it works in context. Here, he shows what a poor sport he is by going up top, hitting a top rope bulldog, and “pinning” Stevens after the time limit’s expired to show that he would’ve won if he’d had 20 more seconds. But, you know, he didn’t, and Aron Stevens isn’t out here manipulating the clocks. Ah well, not everybody can be Tim Storm.
It’s also worth noting that ?THE QUESTION MARK? gets ejected from ringside simply for doing karah-tay poses in Trevor Murdoch’s direction, suggesting that even the pose constitutes an offensive attack. Mongrovian Style is the most powerful style, prove me wrong.
Rosa Gold
This week’s show’s main event is a rematch for the NWA Women’s World Championship between the new champion, Thunder Rosa, and the former champ, Allysin Kay. That match was one of the best at Hard Times, and the rematch is CLEARLY the best match of the week. These two have great chemistry and Thunder Rosa’s developed into one of the most engaging and dependable performers on the show. Watching her hoist and throw around the much bigger Kay is impressive.
The only downside is that there’s way too much happening at ringside. Like, here’s an image:
Melina’s sitting in on commentary in her best Beetlejuice slash Robin Thicke MTV awards suit, watching the match and (presumably) waiting for a good time to drop an anvil on Thunder Rosa’s head for being good at wrestling. Marti Belle shows up and gets yelled at to leave by Kay and Rosa, because she’s basically Bad Luck Schleprock right now. Belle’s presence brings out Tasha Steelz and Ashley Vox, and they all hang out at the announce table. Counting the wrestlers in the ring, this is enough for the NWA to add an automatic 18% gratuity.
Rosa retains her championship, and very clearly doesn’t want anything to do with Melina or Belle during the post-match. I think the best thing they could do going forward is have Rosa roll through these two, cement her as the company’s top female babyface (which her MMA videos on Powerrr already set up), and then bring in some better heel characters from the independents to face her. I know AEW and WWE have basically scooped up everybody already, but Rosa as your beloved focal point is a good start.
