Not sure if there is enough interest for a thread, but thought I'd give it a go.

Billy Corgan has revived the NWA and tonight launched the premiere on YouTube. This is a throwback to old-school studio wrestling with basic promos, stories, and matches, but in the current context I found it pretty cool. There aren't any flip piledrivers, the matches don't have a million false finishes, the promos get you invested in the characters, the champions feel like stars, the titles matter, etc etc. Obviously we're at wrestling overload right now, but I think this first show did a lot of stuff we wish they would do on WWE or AEW, so I recommend checking it out.

I knew Billy Corgan owned and was building NWA up but had no idea about this show so thanks for posting.

I clicked the video not expecting much and definitely not expecting to watch the whole thing and once the opening video started my expectations lowered... Then the actual show started and man was I wrong. There are a lot of rough patches for sure but I kind of loved this. Seeing and hearing Cornette and the other guy's commentary style at the start warmed me up pretty quickly but I was instantly sold once I saw the Aldis promo with the old school set and everything. I know a lot of people are going to say it's corny but I don't know, I really like where this is heading.

For those that haven't clicked, the show may as well be set in the 70s/80s. Everything from the set to the video graphics to the commentary, interviewers, promos, wrestling style etc is all straight out of the 80s and by design. Not all the talent is interesting and I'm not a fan of a couple camera angles but overall I really enjoyed it and recommend at least giving it a shot.

I skipped through it, my issue is that it seems like it's trying to be the 70s/80s. Is it not possible to do this but with modern characters for 2019?

Yeah, that is the most obvious criticism of the show. My hope is that they wanted to start off with the nostalgia vibes to hook people in, then will actually develop characters who feel more contemporary. Right now the production and style is the bigger draw than the talent (though it seems like they at least have some good mic workers). Given how much they nailed what they were going for here, I'm optimistic about the future and their ability to find more talent.

Good stuff. I miss that kind of wrestling.

I thoroughly enjoyed this hour of NWA. I hope the quality of this show continues as I do not particularly like watching AEW or WWE at the moment.

Alright I'm firing this up now. Happy to see Jim Cornette on the call. Unhappy to hear a crowd chanting the damn company initials. Pretty sure the whole industry just needs to ban live crowds until we can figure out what the hell is going on.

Not a bad idea.

**** yeah, dude in the crowd with a shirt that says "Maple Leaf Wrestling." I want to party with that guy.

Early on I was a little skeptical that this was some cheap pandering to my kind, but man...the Aldis-Storm stuff was tremendous. I was a complete stranger to both guys at the start of the show, and by the end I was really invested in their match and by their story. I didn't necessarily know what to make of other things on the show, but I appreciated that they built around that main event and did it really effectively. The result went as I expected, but they also did a good enough job with their storytelling that I had moments of doubt.

They need to cut down on the "actually we're the best wrestling going today" stuff. They're obviously a niche company with essentially no potential to make a run at the top dog. But I'm definitely tuning in to the next episode.

Glad you liked it!

On further thought, this is probably wrong. Niche companies carve out niches by convincing their little subset of the fan population that their company is actually the best one and that their fans are smarter/superior by being the ones who can see that they're better than the mainstream big boys. Heyman leaned hard into this crap with ECW.

I mean, I still don't care for this aspect, but I'm probably off-base by saying they need to cut down on it.

Forgot to put this in the OP, but new episodes air Tuesdays at 6:05 p.m. eastern. Here's episode two, which I'm watching now:

Enjoyed the majority of the episode and looking forward to next week.

Like:

They're slowly establishing rivalries and stories well.

Sandow, Ricky Starks, James Storm and Drake all had great promos.

Aldis stuff was all really good as well. Loved the different ways the commentator set up the interview all show.

Weird seeing Trevor Murdoch but he kind of fits the brand I guess.

I enjoy Eddie Kingston's mic work despite him being terrible in the ring but Homicide and the whole promotion's style should carry him a bit. I feel like they've done a great job with picking their talent, guys that are great on the mic but don't really wrestle the indie style that's in fashion right now. Someone like Bobby Roode would be perfect.

Dislike:

They need more top faces. Tim Storm is old, the angle seems done and nearly everyone else seemed to be heels. Sandow, Starks and Storm were all heels. Aldis is a heel. Eli Drake seems like the only top face atm which leads me to - Colt Cabana and Ken Anderson both suck and are terrible and shouldn't be near any titles.

Allysin Kay also nothing for me and the women's division seems to be clearly overlooked. Understandable since they have so little time and they're still establishing the whole brand.

I don't like the fake commercials, they're not funny and a waste of time that could be used on talent.

Also I noticed the Rock n Roll Express in the intro, not looking forward to seeing them.

RE: babyfaces, I think Starks was meant to be a cocky face ala The Rock, and I think he has potential to be good challenger to the heels.

I like the understated heelness of Aldis -- like you can sort of tell he's a piece of ****, but there isn't actually much real evidence for it. It's a nice refresh from some of the really over-the-top, comically hypocritical heels you see a lot.

The women's division seems like a challenge in this format. Even WWE has a hard time finding women who can really hold their own on the mic so I'm curious who they can find.

Still really liking the show and the format. I could do with a little less of the "this is where real men do men things" stuff but I guess it's a way of contrasting themselves from AEW and the like.

Thought that was a lot weaker than last week. I enjoyed Starks v Murdoch but hated Starks’s promo. Aldis is pretty great in my two weeks of exposure to him, but that interview - while good on its merits - did not justify building the episode around it. Really liked the Stevens promo. Marked for Anderson and then was completely done with him really quickly. Women’s match was dull as ****.

Definitely still in for next week even though I saw this as a step back.

By the way, it was pretty cool that NWA Powerr got a Twitter shoutout from The Rock for the first episode.

I thought I had washed my hands of new wrestling a long time ago, but this has me lured in. One of the things I really like about the show is that it's one hour long. It's hard to get into/back into a promotion when you know you have to commit a whole night just to watching the show.

Episode 3 is up. I didn't like this one quite as much as the first two (the main problem is the audio production), but it's still my favorite wrestling show right now. Eddie Kingston stole the show for the 2nd time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d8vGx0fYmY

Ep 1 >> Ep 3 > Ep 2 for me. I thought this week's show was solid. The women's match was a snooze, but I was into basically everything else.

*The Colt Cabana thing would work better for me if he was supposed to just be a trollish heel, but I'm somehow supposed to accept him as a face? He's super ****ing annoying.
*"Look at us" crowd chant to Aron Stevens was pretty funny. Stevens continues to be good on the stick.
*Granted that I'm only three weeks into watching this company, but I was thinking the main event was setting up for a heel turn of some sort. Seems like that was just a bad guess based on limited exposure to the characters involved. All the same, I approve of having the established tag team overcoming a makeshift pair of singles, and I'm interested in whatever this continued involvement of Aldis and Tim Storm is.
*I do wish the show at least had the structure of an announced main event. There can be room for improv in the undercard, but it's an annoyance with the current WWE product that we're supposed to accept in kayfabe that the companies just show up and then a show magically comes together when there was no apparent main event planned until the cameras started rolling. I'd really rather see at least the pretense of a kayfabe sports show that has at least some of its stuff pre-booked and pre-announced.

Tim Storm is fantastic. I didn't really know anything about him prior to this but he just has a believability and authenticity that gets me invested. And it's such a unique story, since he's an older wrestler but not really a legend, plus he can actually still work so it's not like watching Kurt Angle's last storyline where you kind of want him to retire for his own sake.

Colt Cabana is definitely not great. Sandow's was a comedy promo that was actually funny.

Eddie Kingston is money on the mic. I assume he's just too punk rock to be in one of the bigger companies or something but he seems great for this.

I don't really know what this Aldis/Kamille storyline is actually leading to. Joe Galli (pbp guy) is excellent in this role, though it's a little hard to tell if we're supposed to sympathize with him or be annoyed at him for being a prying fake news journalist (the show does a little bit of right-wing dog whistling imo which is adding slightly to my confusion here).

Agree fully about Tim Storm. I feel invested in the exact same way.

I also share your confusion about the Galli stuff, particularly as Aldi is working tweener. It feels like Galli is not supposed to be sympathetic - he seems like he's being obnoxious by design on this "hunt for the truth" - but at the same time the Aldis/Kamille stuff seems like it's meant to be a straightforwardly heelish part of Aldis's character.

To me Storm is like a poor man's late-career Bruno Sammartino...

...both classy older former champions, in great shape, with a limited offensive repertoire delivered with believability and timing. With slight accents both give/gave white meat promos that are highly relatable to the fans despite them not really being like us.

I'd love to see Eli Drake betray him and have an an Storm get revenge for the sake of his pride.

As far as Aldis/Galli, I blame the fans in the studio for this. Galli is like a good-guy intrepid reporter and Aldis is an old-school heel whose actions are justified in his own mind. As a fan I'm on Galli's side, but the fans in the studio are going against the grain for reasons I don't understand.

...just my opinion.

I liked some things this week, but it also might have been my least favorite episode of the four so far.

The promo that led to the six-man main event was a lot more compelling than the actual main event was. I'm very confused as to Nick Aldis's affiliation now. It's one thing for him to play tweener and have a babyface side to his character, but aligning him with a ****ing goofball like Colt Cabana? It's up to him to recruit two people to his side, and Anderson and Cabana are what he's able to get? They seemed to clearly be the face side of this match, but how was anyone to do anything but root for Storm's team given the match stipulations?

Aron Stevens vs. Ricky Starks seemed problematic to have as Stevens's first match at all, but I especially don't like Stevens losing his first outing. Doesn't help that I don't like Starks as a character so far.

Dawsons vs. Kingston/Homicide was certainly the best part of the episode to me. Enjoyed the match quite a bit. I'm willing to be forgiving on the nonsensical nature of the finish because it was self-aware and I was left feeling like there's an explanation coming for it. Incidentally: a no DQ tag match should definitely always be tornado rules. It's silly for it not to be. I'm still willing to look the other way on that given how much I enjoyed the match overall.

Women's match was not good, but Thunder Rosa intrigues me.

I'm curious what Into the Fire will cost on PPV. If I remain this interested in the product and the price is reasonable, I may pony up.

Yeah this was the first show that kind of dragged for me. It's still not bad or anything. The format is still the biggest sell for me and I'm left wondering what it would look like if they had some really top-tier people on this show. As usual, WWE has a bunch of people languishing on the roster who would be great here (Bobby Roode, EC3, and even someone like Mojo Rawley come to mind).

One thing I liked about the brawl is that it was chaos and the guys were trying to kill each other non-stop. It wasn't like those matches in other promotions where people roll out of the ring and hide for five minutes, they laboriously set up spots, etc. It felt like an actual fight. The cameras were having a hard time catching everything as a result but I think it was worth it.

Hopefully Thunder Rosa is good since Belle and Vox are solid but unexciting to me. Kay carries herself like a champ well.

I didn't mind Stevens losing since it already felt like his character would be the annoying heel who gets heat on the mic and then loses most of his matches, sort of like The Miz has been on WWE forever. Starks' promo felt more like a gimmicky performance than the others on NWA so far which was bad.