NWA Championship Wrestling From Hollywood
Episode 79
Taped: April 8, 2012
So I haven’t exactly been up to par on the current NWA Hollywood scene, but this is my chance to catch up. I haven’t seen an episode since Cabana won the NWA World Heavyweight Title. Then I heard he lost it to the Sheik who refused to defend the belt thus vacating it and Adam Pearce winning it back. I thought that was stupid making the first Cabana/Pearce feud pointless. They restarted a year later and here we are. Pearce claims to be retiring at the end of this year calling it his “Last Ride” tour. He wants to retire as NWA World Heavyweight champion.
I figured this episode would be the best place to catch up since it feels like I’ve missed nothing in the last year or so of NWA Hollywood. The main event is Pearce vs. Cabana for the NWA World Title and let the show begin….
– Show Opens with Stu Stone, manager of Adam Pearce cutting a promo on Cabana in the back. Pearce joins in on the hating.
–Famous B vs. Brandon Gatson
Holy crap it’s Brandon Gatson! Where the hell has he been? He seems to have gained a few pounds but nothing major. This was very much a showcase type match for both guys but nothing spectacular. These two are very evenly matched. One highlights of the match was Gatson busting out an old school Steiner Brother’s move with the running reverse power slam in the corner sending Famous B gut first into the top turnbuckle. B comes back with a pump handle back breaker followed by a top rope senton bomb for the win at 5:18. This was okay. **1/4
-Interview with Colt Cabana. Yeah, he wants the belt.
-Eric Cross vs. Pinky
God this was freaking weird. Eric Cross is an average Joe. Pinky on the other hand is 2004 emo. Seriously. He comes out to “Mad World” from the Donnie Darko soundtrack. God I hate this character already. Donnie Darko is a good movie and the song is great, but the emo crap is annoying. This guy is going way too far with it. He’s like six foot tall and around 350. He wears a black singlet with a pink diamond in the middle, a pink head band, long hair, black lipstick and rainy black tears face paint. Wow. I hate this match already. And it was a squash match to boot. Pink just dominated with power moves the whole time and Pinky wins with a power bomb at 2:29. DUD. DUD-CITY. Just….wow. I’m officially skipping every Pinky match from this point forward.
-In the back, Shuan Ricker cuts a pretty damn good promo. I can forgive him for the fact he takes off his shirt during the interview because his charisma drew my attention the whole time. He craps on his ex-parter Brian Cage (-Taylor) and punks out Cabana and Pearce saying they’re too scared to face him for the NWA World Title. Seems like we have the next contender in line already.
-Next a promo with Joey Ryan and Johnny Goodtime!? What the Sam Hain is going on here? Goodtime talks most of the time. Apparently he and Yuma split! Say what!! Why the hell would NWA Hollywood would do that? Goodtime talks about how the RockNES Monsters were this best team in NWA Hollywood history yet Yuma some how made Goodtime look like a bad guy. Ryan joins in saying that he and Goodtime are teaming going after the NWA Heritage Tag Team champions The Tribe. Now I really have to go back and find out what the hell is going on here. It’s like the skewed tangent timeline from Back to the Future Part II.
-Next Kaos cuts a promo about how he can be just a crazy as Sinn Bodhi but who cares because Shelley Martinez is rocking the greatest purple dress ever. Like AMAZING!!!! She is doing the interview standing there and smiling and I’m just staring at her the whole time. She totally makes this purple dress. WOW!!!! She should conduct every interview in that dress or any similarly cut dress in every color like. YES!
-Promo video for Cabana/Pearce II, one year in the making.
–NWA World Heavyweight Title: Adam Pearce(c) vs. Colt Cabana
This match started out with the usual basic stuff. Then the second part of the match became a brawl into the crowd. Then it got hot down the stretch with a bunch of close near falls. Then the shenanigans ensued. Stu Stone tried to interfere but it backfired. Pearce’s girl came in and tried to interfere and that backfired. Cabana had Pearce locked in the Billy Goat’s curse for a bit, which was the move that won Cabana the title the first time, but Pearce never quit and grabbed the ropes. Stu Stone tried to interfere again and that backfired. Cabana hit a top rope moonsault, Jesus Christ. But Pearce kicked out! More back and forth action but out of nowhere Cabana wins with a roll-up to win the NWA World Heavyweight Title for a second time at 19:35 excluding commercial breaks. This is probably the best kind of match you can get out of Adam Pearce. This was an old school babyface/cheating heel match where the babyface just outsmarted the heel at every corner. This was sort of like that match with Brent Albright in ROH in 2008 but on a much smaller scale. ***1/2
-Show ends with Colt celebrating in the crowd.
*So this was interesting. I like the television studio venue rather than the crappy looking abandoned movie theater look the older episodes had. The crowd comes off much better in the studio as well. The main event players like Cabana, Pearce, Ryan, Sky, Mack,Yuma, Goodtime, Tribe, etc, are good. The random gimmicky under card is totally wack though. They seriously need to stop with those stupid gimmicks like Pinky and the Manamal, and just have good wrestlers. Hopefully the under card improves in future episodes.
You can find all NWA Hollywood episodes online here at: http://blip.tv/nwahollywood.
You can follow NWA Hollywood on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/#!/NWAhollywood.
And if you want to, but I don’t know why, you can follow me here: https://twitter.com/#!/BrianDaBrain.
Gatson needs to make his way back to PWG. He’s improved enough.