NWA Alwayz Ready Review - June 11, 2022

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Pre-Show: Rodney Mack def. Magic Jake Dumas

It looked like Dumas was being pushed for a while after all the wins he picked up on NWA USA earlier this year and he even won on one of the Crockett Cup pre-shows back in March, so what happened? He's since lost two matches on NWA USA (including one to Gaagz the Gimp, which was stupid) and now to a past-his-past Rodney Mack. This was not very good at all and I'm not sure why Mack is still around at this point.

Pre-Show: Sam Shaw Attacked Sal the Pal and Rush Freeman

Shaw is the former Dexter Lumis from WWE NXT, though longtime NWA and IMPACT fans will know him as Sam Shaw from before he signed with WWE in 2019. He hasn't changed a single thing about his gimmick from NXT, which was pretty much the same character he played previously in the NWA. He didn't utter a single word while being "interviewed" by Kyle Davis, but he did lay out Freeman (who marked out over sharing the ring with him) as well as Sal before being confronted by Gimp. I hope they have something better in mind for Saw than that because that feels like a waste of whatever star power he has left.

Pre-Show: The Mortons def. The Ill Begotten (Alex Taylor and Jeremiah Plunkett) and The Country Gentlemen in a Three-Way Tag Team Match

The Fixers were originally scheduled to take part in this match but were replaced by The Ill Begotten. Country Gentlemen consisted of AJ Cazana and Anthony Andrews, who I believe are legitimately cousins. This was a well-worked three-way tag team match with The Mortons were the stars here and were the right team to go over. It's been cool seeing Ricky team with his son Kerry and Kerry is definitely benefiting from it.

Trevor Murdoch def. Aron Stevens

Stevens said coming into this show that this would be his in-ring farewell. Thus, it made sense for him to lose, but I didn't expect the match to be so short. What we got was fine, but they didn't have a chance to do much in the time they were allotted. We'll see if Stevens actually sticks to this retirement or if it's just for a storyline and he'll be back before long because I could see it going either way.

Pretty Empowered def. The Hex to Win the NWA World Women's Tag Team Championship

Pretty Empowered are the team of Kenzie Paige and Ella Envy and I believe they've contended for the championship before. Then again, The Hex were bound to have repeat challengers during their reign since they were champions for about 10 months and it's not like the NWA has an insanely deep women's tag team division. This wasn't the smoothest encounter (Marti Belle in particular is subpar in the ring), but the crowd was into it and they reacted to the title change. It felt like the right time for new champions to be crowned. We'll see if Pretty Empowered defend the titles are regularly as The Hex seemed to.

NWA Junior Heavyweight Champion Homicide def. PJ Hawx; NWA Junior Heavyweight Champion Homicide def. Colby Corino

I love how Homicide has been a fighting champion and has defended his title on a near-weekly basis against a variety of opponents. The young Hawx gave it a hell of an effort against the seasoned Homicide and they had a terrific match. I completely forgot Corino was still in possession of his Champions Series title shot and it would have been perfect for him to cash it in here opportunistically and become champion, but Homicide ended up winning clean. That was certainly surprising and I wasn't a fan of Corino losing like that, even though the match had excellent drama.

Natalia Markova def. Taya Valkyrie

It's been cool to see Valkyrie making the rounds since being released from WWE NXT late last year. She's appeared for IMPACT, returned to the AAA, and will be competing for MLW's first-ever Featherweight Championship next week on Fusion. She'll be a strong addition to the NWA's women's division if she sticks around, but now I'm not positive this was more than a one-off considering she lost. If they're going to build up Markova for an eventual shot at Kamille's title, her push should be more consistent. This fell below my expectations and was hindered by the interference from Tayn Terrell at ringside.

NWA National Champion Jax Dane def. Chris Adonis

Adonis is a two-time National champ and was looking to regain the gold here. The problem is that he's a heel along with Dane, so who was the crowd supposed to cheer for? There hasn't been much bad blood between them up to this point, so this felt like a cold match. It was mostly good, but I don't blame the crowd for not caring. By the way, whatever happened to Anthony Mayweather after Dane took the title from him?

Thom Latimer def. Cyon

I'm not really sure what the reasoning behind this bout was, and on a show that already had plenty of matches, this one certainly wasn't necessary. Latimer has been teasing a babyface turn for a while and Cyon has been beyond boring for the better part of his NWA run. There wasn't anything out of the ordinary about this outing, but it was technically fine. Latimer has teased challenging for gold recently and this victory gets him one step closer to championship contention.

NWA Television Champion Tyrus def. Mims

I've ranted many times in the past about how terrible Tyrus is at this point, so I'll attempt to keep it to a minimum, but I can't believe he's still champion after almost a year. I was really hoping Mims would be the one to end his needlessly-lengthy reign, but no such luck. To Mims' credit, though, he made this work to the best of his ability and sold nicely for Tyrus' offense. They told a story with Mims having to fight from underneath and ultimately coming up short. This wasn't as bad as it could have been given Tyrus' limitations, but I'm desperately awaiting the moment Tyrus drops the title because it's not benefiting anyone.

The Commonwealth Connection def. La Rebelion to Win the NWA World Tag Team Championship

La Rebelion have been booked dominantly since capturing the tag titles last summer at NWA 73. Their only loss in that time was to Doug Williams and Harry Smith as The Commonwealth Connection back at the Crockett Cup. I'm glad they revisited this because that first match was great and this was equally enjoyable. The crowd was behind Commonwealth Connection throughout and there was a big reaction when they won. Props to La Rebelion for a successful reign, but Commonwealth Connection were absolutely the correct choice to dethrone them as champs.

NWA Women's World Champion Kamille def. KiLynn King

I was looking forward to seeing what these two could do since King is competent in the ring (despite being bland in every other respect) and Kamille has had some solid title defenses throughout her title reign, but this was disappointing. There were sloppy spots and they didn't have strong chemistry. The best part of the whole thing was Kamille's Spear on King in the end for the win. King certainly took Kamille to the limit, but the commentators treated this like an instant classic. Maybe I'm in the minority who thought it was a mess. Oh well. Kamille retaining was the right call, though. Max The Impaler showed up afterward, so they appear to be next in line for a title shot.

Matt Cardona Relinquished the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship: Trevor Murdoch def. Nick Aldis, Thom Latimer and Sam Shaw in a Four-Way Match to Win the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship

This whole thing literally took up the final hour of the show as a lot of time was wasted prior to the four-way. Cardona spoke about suffering a bicep tear a few weeks ago at an indy event, which led to Billy Corgan coming out and forcing him to relinquish the title (thankfully we didn't hear from Corgan on the mic at all). Aldis, Murdoch and Shaw all emerged as well to stake their claim at the title and an impromptu four-way for the vacant title was made official. We don't see multi-man matches for the title often in the NWA, so it was refreshing in that respect, but the crowd wasn't as hot as they likely would have been otherwise coming off a marathon of matches. They woke up down the stretch and there were some suspenseful nearfalls, so I was entertained for the most part. Murdoch has been mildly interesting as a tweener lately, but he was just champion earlier this year, so I honestly would have rather see any of the other three capture the championship instead. That said, the crowd popped when he won, so they were happy with the outcome.

Overall Show

Dr. Tom Prichard made an appearance prior to the main event and he addressed the audience, but it was so short and basic that I didn't bother to write up a paragraph on it. Man, what a long show. The main card ran almost four hours and that's in addition to the hour-long pre-show. I assume they wanted to get as many people on the show as possible, but there were a handful of matches that did not need to happen and the crowd was clearly exhausted by the end. The three title changes made this an eventful pay-per-view, but it was definitely one of the weaker events the NWA has done in the last year from an in-ring standpoint. From what I understand, their next pay-per-view, NWA 74, will be a two-night event in late August. Breaking this show up into two nights would have helped, but cutting down on the filler would have been a better move.

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