After a month and half away, Mid-Atlantic Miller happily returns to bring you some awesome CWF content! As y’all are probably aware, CWF Worldwide has had a two month hiatus. In the immortal words of Dr. Hubert J. Farnsworth, good news everyone! This past weekend, Cecil Scott announced that CWF Worldwide will return Wednesday, July 11th. You can get your weekly dosage of Worldwide via Twitch or Youtube. From what I’ve been told, episodes will be uploaded to Twitch on Wednesday night at 9:00 and those same episodes will be uploaded to YouTube the following night.
CWF has a lot of shows to catch fans up on. The first show is none other than the Kernodle Cup tag team tournament. For the past two years,CWF has paid tribute to Carolina legends Don and Rocky Kernodle through this event. Tag team wrestling has been forever associated with southern wrestling thanks to tag teams like Rock N Roll Express, The Midnight Express, The
Fantastics, The Minnesota Wrecking Crew, and many more.
The episode has a huge tag team flavor to it. I really appreciate that because I feel like it’s a good way to wet fans’ appetites for the tournament.
The episode begins with a tag team battle royal. Eliminations occur when a wrestler is thrown over the top rope and both feet hit the floor. Once someone is eliminated, his partner is also eliminated from the match. Once we’re down to 2 teams, the match becomes a standard tag match. The winning team will receive a bye in the first round of the tournament.
I enjoyed this battle royal. I particularly liked some of the stories they told. Cain Justice and Nick Richards were too focused on each other and Otto Schwanz eliminated them both for it. Lovable underdog Kool Jay eliminated the always dangerous Wrestling Machine Otto Schwanz. The smallest dog in the fight just muscled up one of the biggest dogs and chucked him over the ropes! This match also had callbacks to previous feuds such as Cain Justice vs Dirty Daddy and Nick Richards vs Donnie Dollars.
The final two teams were Aaron Biggs and Snooty Fox and outsider duo Aaron Epic and Abel. For a while, Epic and Abel did a good job isolating Snooty. However, Biggs would eventually get the hot tag and clean house for the W! Two huge, explosive, powerful men just won a huge advantage by guaranteeing they’ll go into the second round fresh as a daisy. That’s absolutely terrible for the other teams!
Up next, we have a 6 man tag. On one side, we have Chet Sterling teaming with Lucas Calhoun and The Proletariat Boar of Moldova from CHIKARA. They are fighting Arik Royal, Mace Li, and Rick Roland. Roland is one-half of the CHIKARA Tag Team Champions with Caprice Sloan. Roland and Sloan will be participating in the Kernodle Cup.
The beginning moments featured a little too much comedy wrestling for my taste. Eventually, the match became a much more standard southern tag with the bad guys manipulating their opponents in order to double team the opponent currently in the ring. The double team abdominal stretch with managers also holding on for leverage is a personal favorite of mine. I feel moves like that aren’t seen very often. Back in the day, Triple H used to use the ropes for leverage on his abdominal stretch. While this is definitely dastardly, getting the manager or a team member involved takes it to another level.
I also feel like this was a good debut for Roland. He got to show off some of his athleticism and he pinned Chet Sterling with a brutal chokebomb. Chet is one of CWF’s most decorated wrestlers. Pinning someone like that in your debut is a fantastic way to impress fans.
In our main event, The Hurricane defends his TV Title against Ethan Sharpe. Wrestling’s favorite superhero is wrestling a man someone could easily base a comic super villain off of. Unfortunately for Sharpe, he gets too aggressive and is caught with a chokeslam in 16 seconds. We all know about Austin 3:16, but tonight, we learned about Helms 0:16!
Something I forgot to mention earlier is that Cain Justice accompanied Ethan to the ring. Hurricane had backup of his own in the form of Ric Converse. Converse was looking for revenge for a couple weeks ago when Cain and Ethan cheated their way to victory. One thing led to another, and we got an impromptu tag match. Holla Holla Holla!
The match starts out with Cain and Hurricane. Cain almost eats a chokeslam early. However, unlike Ethan, he actually manages to avoid disaster early. After regaining his composure, Cain decides to call out Converse. The power of the six-time Mid Atlantic Heavyweight Champion was too much for Cain to fight. Just when it looked like the veterans would run away with an easy victory, Sharpe rocks Helms with a bareback jawbreaker after a Cain distraction. For the next few minutes, Hurricane takes a bunch of abuse. Things begin to look bad for the superhero, but then, he creates space with a Pepsi Twist style flatliner on Sharpe. Both men tag out to their partners.
Converse comes in and is a house of fire! He turns Cain inside out with a powerful lariat. He follows up with a bulldog that would make The Natural Dustin Rhodes smile. Soon after, we get a great nearfall from a mid-air sky high from Converse to Cain. Sharpe makes the save but gets planted with another chokeslam. Hurricane follows up with a submission he calls the Figure 6. It kind of reminds me of the Figure 4 variation HBK used to do back in 2007/2008. Cain tries to save his partner, but gets caught by Converse, who traps him in a Figure 4. After a few seconds of fight and anguish, we get the double tap!
I thought this was a fun episode. All of the tag matches were a nice way to prepare us for the Kernodle Cup.