NWA PPV Musings

NWA Samhain 2023

Thank you, Brian Zane, for that wonderful line from your Worst Of 2023.

And yes, it fits.

So, for those who need further context, the above shot is taken from the aforementioned NWA Samhain PPV that took place last October and in case you need further clarification, that is indeed the Sinister Minister himself, Father James Mitchell, doing some of the coke live and in barely living color on Pay-Per-View. It served no real purpose in context to the rest of the show and in a vacuum, it was something that made you go “Why is that even a thing?”

So you’re probably wondering “Why is this even a thing?”

Well, you see, shortly before this PPV took place, Billy Corgan had announced that he reached a deal with the CW Network to air the weekly NWA Power show (as well as another show) onto their TV network, which seemed like a pretty big step forward to them. And then the spot above happened, someone posted it on Twitter, and all of a sudden, the CW were signing a deal to bring NXT over to the channel, while the NWA stuff was relegated to the CW app, which is almost as bad as having to watch two AEW shows on a shitty TSN app.

So yes, because of that spot, the NWA went from going on TV to being stuck on another app that fewer people use… but to label this entire show as god awful because of this one spot is being a bit unfair. After all, this show had plenty of other reasons that it sucked. And the few who did give the show a fair shake even went so far as to call it as bad if not worse than Heroes Of Wrestling from 1999.

That, my friends, is a bold statement.

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NWA Nuff Said 2023

(Hey, there. I had this written back in February, but family commitments and a lack of opening in the blog space kept me from posting this until now. I’m posting this today to get this out of the way while the Ramblemania 39 post is slated for a Friday morning release because… yeah.)

Hey, look. Another PPV from the National Wrestling Alliance… that I got thanks to a friend… a show called Nuff Said… and here I thought WWE had the market cornered in shitty PPV names, but there you go. Nuff Said.

Anyway, I’ve heard bad things about this show. My hopes weren’t high going in considering who was the reigning World Champion. Though I did see said World Champion on a Fox News program and sure enough, he had the ten pounds of gold with him, which must make William Patrick Corgan happy that the NWA is getting some exposure on a major network show. If only that would translate to viewers, buyrates, or any semblance of relevance.

I had no interest in this show, but the aforementioned friend loaned his DVD-R copy – because he has a set-up that lets him record shows on DVD-R even though that’s a thing of the past; don’t ask because I honestly don’t know – and really wanted me to do this favor and watch the show to get my reactions. I told him fine, but on a special condition that we shall keep to ourselves… and no, it’s not THAT kind of special condition, you sick bastards.

Anyway, digression over. On with the show.

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NWA Hard Times 2022

Yeah, I didn’t watch the AEW PPV this past weekend. And to be honest, I don’t think I’ll be doing so anytime soon.

I did, however, watch the NWA Hard Times PPV from a couple weeks ago… I don’t know if that’s a fair trade off, however.

So I hadn’t originally planned on watching the show, as I have not been following the NWA in recent years despite its grand return to the Youtubes. However, a week or so before the show was to take place, former NWA World Champion Nick Aldis announces his intentions to leave the NWA in January and offered some damning critiques of the company. NWA Owner and Smasher Of Pumpkins Billy Corgan suspends Nick Aldis while offering his own take on the situation. As a result, whatever build to this big NWA show (which is actually called Hard Times 3, but I go by year for this one) has been negated by the big Aldis/Corgan divorce making waves.

As a result of this, along with NWA announcer Joe Galli’s impressive sales pitch of the show on WOL – gotta wonder what that guy is feeling doing the hard sell for this show, only for that to be forgotten because Brutus Magnus and the Zero Star guy couldn’t get along – I figured I’d give the NWA another shot on PPV. It’s been a while and I’d like to see how they’re doing and also who do they have for their World title picture?

Trevor Murdoch – reigning NWA champion – defending against the former Zack Ryder and the former Brodus Clay.

Well, then… that’s quite a shift. Still, let’s give this a shot. I’m sure it’ll turn out fine.

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NWA Starrcade 1985

So Starrcade ’84 was a bust. Starrcade ’85, on the other hand… not so much. And only because it is the show that features perhaps the most famous and single greatest match in the history of Starrcade and certainly one of the all-time greatest wrestling matches ever conceived.

Tully Blanchard. Magnum TA. Steel Cage. I Quit Match. Nuff said.

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NWA Starrcade 1984

If I could find a Cornette Face circa 1984, I would… because it’s the only thing that could justly depict my reaction to this show.

So once upon a time, there was a thing called Wrestlemania and it was touted as a big deal. The following year, they had a thing called Wrestlemania 2 and the only thing people remember about that one was that it was held in three arenas on the same night and the card was largely bad.

Going a bit further back, there was a thing called Starrcade and it was touted as a big deal… and it was, seeing Ric Flair defeated NWA World Champion Harley Race to win his seond world title. The following year, there was another Starrcade event… and the only good thing to come out of that show was a pretty good match between reigning TV champion Tully Blanchard and Ricky Steamboat.

Other than that, the show was complete and utter trash.

Rarely do I watch an old show from the WWE Network that I had to STRUGGLE with in order to keep going. There were multiple points where I just wanted to stop outright because the show was so BORING. A whole bunch of short, shitty matches with a lot of downer endings because it’s mostly heels winning. This isn’t a case of different times; Starrcade 83 had some downer stuff, but it also had some really good shit and there were a couple other shows from the early days that I thought were pretty good for the most part… if only because there was one or two matches that made the rest of the show worth sitting through.

Starrcade 84 is not one of those shows.

There’s a bunch of titles being defended; Junior Heavyweight, Florida Heavyweight, Brass Knuckles Heavyweight, Mid-Atlantic title, TV title, US title, World title… I think if you look hard enough, there might be a Coal Miner championship being defended somehwere on the card. Outside of the aforementioned TV title match, none of these are any good. Yes, the main event is Dusty Rhodes challenging Ric Flair for the World title, with the winner getting an additional one million dollars to sweeten the pot, but even that match sucks, with Flair punching Dusty a whole bunch of times before guest ref Joe Frazer stops the match. For fuck’s sake, the main event to your biggest event of the year – the Thanksgiving Day tradition at the time – and THAT’s the fucking finish you give the people?!

I could just find the results on some random Wikipedia page somwhere and copy-paste the bastard here to save some time… and I ended up doing just that. What the fuck can I say about each one other than some variation of “This was a thing that happened” or “This match sucked.” This is as bad as sitting through one of those AWA shows from the 80s, except those have slightly better production values – probably the only time I would say such a thing in regards to those PPVs.

I am only doing a write-up on this show to fill the gap and despite appearances, I really, REALLY wanted to give this show a fair shake… but something to consider here; anyone who says I am too harsh towards WWE in my various musings, at the very least, I’m willing to share some thoughts on the matches featured, even if it’s a quick blurb or two. I couldn’t even be bothered with this one. THAT’s how painfully dull this show was and that’s saying quite a bit.

So yeah, don’t watch this show, everyone. It sucks.

Results (courtesy of Pro Wrestling Wiki)

Denny Brown defeated NWA World Junior Heavyweight Champion Mike Davis to win the title (5:38)

Brian Adias defeated Mr. Ito (4:00)

NWA Florida Heavyweight Champion Jesse Barr defeated Mike Graham (11:43)

The Assassin and Buzz Tyler defeated The Zambuie Express (Elijah Akeem and Kareem Muhammed) (w/ Paul Jones) in a Tag Team Elimination Match (5:26)

Manny Fernandez defeated Black Bart (w/ James J. Dillon) to win the Brass Knuckles Heavyweight Championship (7:35)

Paul Jones defeated Jimmy Valiant in a Tuxedo Street Fight Loser-Leaves-Town match (4:35)

NWA Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight Champion Ron Bass (w/ James J. Dillon) defeated Dick Slater by disqualification (9:12)

Ivan Koloff and Nikita Koloff defeated Ole Anderson and Keith Larson (w/ Don Kernodle) (15:28)

NWA World Television Champion Tully Blanchard defeated Ricky Steamboat to retain the title and win $10,000 (13:17)

NWA United States Heavyweight Champion Wahoo McDaniel defeated Billy Graham (4:18)

NWA World Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair defeated Dusty Rhodes to retain the title and win $1 million (12:12)

NWA Hard Times 2020

How about that? Turns out I had one more ready to go… I guess. Took me a while, but I got around to seeing Billy Corgan’s NWA’s Hard Times PPV from January 2020, which turned out to be the last PPV event that the NWA ran before the world went to shit. I saw this some time ago and started on the musings, but never really finished it until now.

So let’s look at the last pre-prevailing circumstances-era NWA PPV called HARD TIMES.

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NWA Into The Fire (December 2019 PPV)

So… this was on the cheap and I figured why not? I enjoyed the three free PPVs that NWA provided and so might as well chip in a couple bucks to check out the rest of the shows.

Into The Fire took place at the studios where they shot their episodes of NWA Powerrrrrrr, which means a small studio set modeled after the old Mid-Atlantic techwood studios from thirty plus years ago. It’s a nice setting for a weekly studio wrestling show, but not a particularly inspired look for a paid PPV event.

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NWA Crocket Cup 2019

So NWA brought back the Crockett Cup in 2019, which was a staple of the old Jim Crockett Promotion before they got bought by Turner and they were poised to make it an annual event before Corona struck. The uptick is that this show was posted onto their Youtube page for free (until it was taken down, along with everything else), so here we are.

Better late than never, I suppose.

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NWA Pop-Up Event (January 2019)

So Billy Corgan’s revived National Wrestling Alliance – which is slowly but surely getting back on track with its weekly PPV gimmick that got TNA off the ground – ran its second event in January last year; a “pop-up” event. This featured a Nick Aldis vs. James Storm match for the NWA World Title, but it also featured former WCW World Champion David Arquette in a hair vs hair match against some guy named Joe… kinda, sorta…

Anyway, it was on the NWA Youtube channel for a short while before it was taken down, so I figured why not? This was a show that was thrown together quickly, had some marquee matches, and that’s about it. Not a major event or anything like that; more like a house show of sorts. Anyway, on with the show.

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NWA 70th Anniversary (2019 PPV)

So this coronovirus thing is a big deal. Businesses are shutting down, large gatherings and sporting events are getting cancelled left and right, and a lot of the sources of entertainment are slowly but surely going away as a result. Naturally, pro wrestling is being affected by this pandemic, with many smaller groups postponing or outright cancelling shows. One of these promotions is Billy Corgan’s revived National Wrestling Alliance, which had cancelled a PPV and further TV tapings.

As a sort of consolation for the lack of Powerrr, the NWA posted their 70th Anniversary show for free on their Youtube channel. The show, originally airing October 21, 2018, featured the main event of Cody Rhodes, defending the NWA World’s Heavyweight Championship against the man he beat for the title at All In the month prior, Nick Aldis, in a Best Of 3 Falls match. Also featured is the crowning of a new NWA National champion.

Sounds like fun… too bad I missed out the first time, but let’s take advantage of Billy’s generosity and give this a whirl, shall we?

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