NXT Episode 220 5/8/14 Review

1. Emma vs. Charlotte

Man Jason Albert tries way too damn hard on commentary. He comes off so phony and forced. And it needs to be pointed out again just how tragic Sasha Banks' hair was during this period of NXT. It's like she had shorter hair, but got extensions, but only in the back, so she had a weird mullet that was made to look even weirder by her always parting it down the middle. It's a terrible terrible choice that has somehow lasted for a couple months. And this wasn't much of a match. Charlotte had a couple of really nice bridging pins, including the one for the win, but not enough happened in this one to make it worthwhile.

2. The Legionnaires (Sylvester Lefort & Marcus Louis) vs. El Local & Kalisto

This is the Kalisto TV debut, and El Local is Del Rio's former ring announcer Ricardo Rodriguez. I've never seen Louis before. Lefort is a guy I really like who never gets a ton of offense. But he takes offense really nicely, and here he really leaps into all of Kalisto's flip offense. Leaps into his high crossbody and springboard tornillo, leans temple first into a couple really nice Kalisto rolling kicks. Local is a little slow but did a fun sliding stop when thrown into the buckles, and turned that into a nice Pele kick. I couldn't get any sort of read on Louis. But a nice debut for Kalisto.

3. Camacho vs. Captain Comic

Comic is Jody Kristofferson, who I forgot was in WWE developmental at one point and has since come back to the Bay Area indie scene and is the present APW Champ so they can hilariously brag on Facebook that "If Kris Kristofferson shows up to your show, you've done something right". Yeah. You booked his son in the main event and gave him the title. It's not like he just showed up at a wrestling show to check out the talent. I dig Camacho so it's nice to see him get a squash win. He throws a cool pump dropkick to Comic's stomach dishes a nice over the shoulder powerslam, and admittedly wears one of the worst Converse Chuck Taylor designs: camouflage. Yuck. Just go with a plain canvas color dude. The camouflage Chucks are like barely a step above the Flame print ones.

4. Alicia Fox vs. Alexa Bliss

Another debut with Bliss likely being some sort of fitness model. She certainly doesn't know how to do wrestling offense, wherever she came from. She throws a real ugly mistimed dropkick and then hits a bad handspring standing moonsault that sees her accidentally land in an awkward kneeling position. Her elbows to get out of a headlock land nowhere near Fox. Man this girl does not look ready for TV in any way. Fox, however, looked awesome. Fox hits a real mean northern lights suplex, big tilt a whirl backbreaker, and really cranks in a side headlock. Bliss was lost as hell so Fox had to lock on a few chinlocks and headlocks to save things, but Fox made every single one of them actually look painful. Of course Bliss gets the upset, but man did she look bad.

5. #1 Contender Battle Royal

Not too many ways to determine a #1 contender for your main belt are more dumb than a battle royal, but I'm a weird sucker for royals so whatever. Tons of guys are waiting in the ring, but Mojo Rawley, Sami Zayn and Bo Dallas get entrances. We have a Curt Hawkins sighting! I mean, the sighting came when he got immediately eliminated, but Hawkins is still a guy who is around and doing things! I do like Albert putting over Yoshi Tatsu, saying he has legitimate Royal Rumble experience so he should be a favorite in this. But damn this really isn't much of a battle royal. It felt more like just filling time. Bo Dallas got a couple nice shine moments, getting to eliminate Mason Ryan and Big Cass, the two big guys in the match. But the whole match is used to set up a Breeze/Zayn/Tyson Kidd triple threat with HHH coming out to announce it and acting like a triple threat is the best possible match we can get. I would rather see a singles match between any two wrestlers in the battle royal, than the triple threat match we're going to get next week. So is HHH or JBL the Commissioner? Can anybody from WWE come in and make matches? Even Brodus Clay was able to come in and put himself immediately into a title match.

Weird episode this week as I do like seeing debuting wrestlers, but the two tournament matches fell flat, and the battle royal was uneventful and poorly filmed, and sets up an undesirable match.


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