NXT 230 7/10/14 Review

1. Bayley vs. Summer Rae

This is just about the most natural of personality match-ups, as Bayley is inherently likeable, whereas Summer Rae has a face of someone who should never be booked as likeable. It's pretty basic, and both are good at what they do. Bayley is good at frustrating Summer with her kind of playful sloppiness when doing amateur rolls on the mat (with Summer hilariously kicking her legs in a tantrum), and Summer does mean unnecessary things like palm Bayley's face during pinfalls. Neither thing would make a victory more likely, but they were perfect character moments that illustrated why this was a nice match-up. Albert is back on commentary and as awful as ever, unable to make satisfying points from a logic or kayfabe perspective. "She didn't get all of that kick!" he was quick to blurt over everybody, after a Summer kick that mostly hit fine and was sold as such. After saying Summer earned a title shot because she was in a movie, he then compares her to Trish Stratus. None of his points make sense within a storyline or any other sense, his allegiances switch mid match, he's just really really bad at his job. Sometimes he goes for comedy, other times he supports a heel, none of it lands. But Bayley/Summer is a fun match and Albert is NOT going to ruin it for me! Summer is someone who really wasn't utilized much on the main roster as a wrestler, which is a shame as she's really not bad, and has more personality than most. Her role on Total Divas has made me laugh more than most on that show. And here I liked the struggle over the finish, with Summer blocking the Bayley to Belly a couple times before planting her with her axe leg drop. So far all the people coming back to NXT after a "demotion" have been really fun and nicely integrated into the existing NXT roster.

2. Sin Cara vs. Wesley Blake

I think I may be the biggest Wesley Blake fan. I like keeping mostly out of the present day NXT loop, so it's fun watching and enjoying a guy like Blake and not knowing what is going to happen to him. Maybe he's released before 2014, maybe he's repackaged and super popular now. My only real insight into NXT beyond the stuff I've watched so far, is the guys who show up on WWE TV. I obviously know guys like Aiden English, sadly Big Cass, sadly Mojo Rawley, etc. will continue to be in these reports because they eventually made the main roster. But a guy like Blake? I have no clue, and that's fun for me. Blake is really good at constructing 3 minute matches, with him on the losing end. Cara is in to hit all his shit, and it can't be a coincidence that this was the best I've seen some of Cara's spots look. Blake got into position for runs of Cara offense better than anybody I've seen on the main roster, ate those springboard crossbodys, took a huge bump over the top and then sprawled big into the entrance ramp catching a dive. For his part he made his brief moments count, blasting Cara with a great uppercut and surprising him (and me) with an even greater right hand. His single arm DDT was swank and lead to him stomping the arm and yanking on it, and Cara was kind enough to sell it for him. Super fun match, did tons with the time. I think with 90 more seconds this would land on my "Recommended NXT" list.

They're kind of bonering up this Tyson Kidd bitter vet angle with the inclusion of Nattie. Kidd as the dickhead falling from grace relegated to developmental vet? Awesome. Nattie asking him about his moral compass? Death. Unless it's building to a Nattie heel swerve, her presence is just muddying waters. We already see them on Total Divas and know they're essentially a normal married couple, her inclusion tries to bring too much real life into a great wrestling angle, and it's coming out worse on the other side. They're overthinking this thing.

CJ Parker comes out to offer a somewhat loaded apology to Xavier Woods, and "I'm offering you peace. I suggest you accept it," is a quote that perfectly nails the annoying heel nuance of Parker's character. The manipulative dirt fuck hippy is a great heel character, and Parker gets the finer points correct. A guy who makes good points but has a smug and self righteous way of delivering those points is the kind of character who works great on a show like this, and something that would get immediately clipped to hell on the main brand. On Smackdown he would just be a hippy heel, and the crowd would just be expected to boo him because he's a hippy. His apology to Xavier is somewhat sincere and that's what makes him jumping Xavier even better.

3. Bull Dempsey vs. Angelo Dawkins
At first all three announcers were laying it on real thick about Dempsey's body, really putting over that he's unique because he doesn't have abs. Just within this match it was already making me want to dislike Dempsey, and that's crazy if any of you know how much I love fat wrestlers. And yeah having a guy who looks like Dempsey on your roster is much more rare these days, but announcers didn't have to point out just how fat Blackwell or One Man Gang or Tenta were, because they were clearly big awesome fat dudes. And maybe that's part of the problem with Dempsey, is that they're spending so much time talking about how unique his round physique is, but truthfully he's not that far away from being in fine cosmetic shape. Those other guys either died fat or - in the case of OMG - spent the last 20 years slowly slimming down so that he now suddenly looks like Richard Moll. Dempsey looks like a guy who can go on a 6 month crossfit binge and look like a hairier version of every other physique in NXT. So it comes off like them trying hard to point out just how unique he is, because the thing that they say is unique isn't really special. He comes off more as an out of shape guy than a wild fat guy. The guy needs to pack on another 50 lb. to actually look wrestler fat. BUT. But. Eventually everybody shuts up, and I can just enjoy Dempsey beating up Dawkins, and that is very enjoyable. While he might not totally live up to how they're billing him, he comes off very well in the ring. Loved him turning a Dawkins' armdrag into a slick side headlock, his body shots are great, his elbows are great, really carries himself like a tank throughout the whole thing. He's a guy I would have liked anyway, without all of the spoon feeding from the announce crew. This match was basically a Dempsey showcase, but also gave us by far our longest look at Angelo Dawkins. We've seen him get zero offense against Big Cass, zero offense against Tyler Breeze, and not even get tagged in against the Vaudevillains. We know he's tall. That's about what we know. But this match filled things in a bit! He took a nice beating from Bull, threw an insanely high dropkick, seemed like a guy you wouldn't mind seeing more from; another guy like Wesley Blake who for all I know was never used again after this taping. I'm excited to see where he and Bull go, and I liked all of what I saw here from both.


4. Sami Zayn & Adrian Neville vs. Justin Gabriel & Tyson Kidd
I was really liking this, even through a couple of clunky Kidd cross-ups, but Natalya's involvement in the veteran dickhead Tyson Kidd story is just the pits. She's a lousy actress, and there were too many moments where she acted all over the place. She's too over the top when she's supposed to be subtle, and I just really wish the storyline had not included her. Unless it leads to a Natalya NXT heel turn, which it probably won't. But I enjoy heel Natalya far more. But I really this was just a straight up tag with two demoted assholes up against a couple top NXT guys. That's all that this needed, the simpler approach. Is there anybody watching out there that would see that tag, and then go "I liked it, but I wish the tag could have furthered some sort of collapsing marriage storyline." It's always a bummer when a person not in the match takes a match you would recommend, and makes it less recommendable. That's Natalya's tombstone right there : "Made Things Less Recommendable". Zayn and Neville are a fun babyface tag team, wouldn't mind seeing both utilized currently this way. It's not like they do tons of double teams (outside of a nutty sky twister press that Neville did off a kneeling Zayn), they just complement each other nicely; just as, Gabriel and Kidd complement each other nicely. Kidd has been a standout as a heel, though he had a couple stumbles in this one. Gabriel turned in one of his better performances though, he's also a guy who makes a better heel than face. And so this was a real nice 10 minute tag, something I easily could have added to the recommended NXT list. But Natalya man. Natalya as TJ's moral compass is just awful.


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NXT 228 6/26/14 Review

1. The Vaudevillains vs. Matt Sugarman & T-Perkins

Fun but very brief Vaudevillains showcase. This was the best I've seen Gotch look, not only with his forearms and a great knee he dropped to Perkins' (not TJ Perkins) temple, but he broke out such a wonderful spot that I really didn't care what happened the rest of the match: While grounding Perkins with a headscissors, he then rolled through and started doing clapping pushups while still holding the headscissors around Perkins' neck. Stupendous. No idea who Sugarman/Perkins were, but I liked how Perkins faceplanted a drop toehold.

2. Xavier Woods vs. Bull Dempsey

This is Dempsey's "debut" (he worked a Mojo squash a few months back) and I liked him. They push the "fat old timey strength" thing way too hard on commentary, acting like he's Da Crusher running with beer kegs instead of just a fat guy who is fat. But he has a great side headlock and was doing some interesting little things with it, and then I was sad when they stood up and rope ran because I was still interested in the headlock. But then Woods threw an armdrag and Bull awesomely grabbed a side headlock mid armdrag so that when they landed he was back to holding the headlock. Sold. I am sold. He threw a nice elbowdrop, ran face first right into a Woods kick (Woods really scrambled him right across the eyeballs with that one), and yeah, I'm a fan. Nice debut, and a nice job by Woods setting him up.

3. Summer Rae vs. Becky Lynch

This is Lynch's debut and my oh my was there some Irish flavored cringing to be had. She doesn't much resemble the orange haired steam punk you're used to seeing; instead she's got subtle reddish brown hair, and garish irish green flared chrome pants with matching bralette. But she does this ghastly Irish riverdance jig all through her entrance, all through the match, just all over the place. And it's not just the goofy as all hell jig, but she actually sings along to it. She doesn't sing words, but she approximates the sounds of an Irish fiddle jig, so she does this embarrassing jig while awkwardly blurting out "dee-da-dee da-diddly diddly-dee", over and over again, like she was verbalizing Finlay's theme song. I felt so bad for her. Match itself was short, but fine. Summer is a great heel, and Lynch looked good whenever she wasn't doing her jig. She ran into a spinning Summer kick and rolled around holding her jaw, dropped a nice leg, big exploder. I'm actually surprised she got the win as there was a great nearfall (Summer kicked out as late as possible) and I thought that signaled that Summer was definitely going over. But, no. NXT is full of surprises. Now no more dancing. Or sing-dancing.

4. Colin Cassady vs. Sawyer Fulton

Fulton is back with his ridiculous dance pants and Capezios, but I liked his brief little run here. He threw a great front kick and awesome shoulders to Cassady's stomach in the corner. Not a lot of guys really jam their shoulder into the ribs in the corner. Fulton runs nicely into Cassady's big boot. Cass has good intentions with his leaping elbow, but lands a little sawftly on it.

Enzo Amore comes out post-match, returning from his broken leg, and proceeds to do the same routine that he is currently doing 2 years later on TV. This....has already gotten old. Sylvester Lefort and Marcus Louis looked awesome in their shitty ultra tight white lifting shirts though (with embroidered French flags!).

5. Adrian Neville vs. Rob Van Dam

So, I actually liked this. This was not something I was expecting to like. But I liked this. That sounds really undercutting, "hey! I thought this would be totally terrible and it wasn't!" but I'm not intending it that way. I just don't tend to get excited for 2014 Rob Van Dam matches, for SOME reason. That's a bold limb to stand on. This match is smack dab in the middle of his 2013/2014 WWE comeback that you don't remember a single thing about. And the match totally works, with RVD working subtle heel with dated offense against the new him. The match still had typical RVD faults, but there was something almost captivating watching an older, slower but still athletic RVD work old indy spots that were novel 15 years before but slow and clunky now. They do an early mirror exchange straight out of his Jerry Lynn matches and it seems so out of place in a modern setting that it's like a switch flips during the post flippy standoff and he just pops Neville in the mouth. Neville did a great job selling RVD's stuff, taking a mean spill on the preposterous "balance on these ropes while I dropkick you" and getting laid out by a stiff rolling thunder. 

When it's RVD's turn to sell he does a surprisingly adequate and at moments genuinely impressive job. At one point Neville hit a mule kick that staggered RVD, and it was meant to get him in position for a sliding dropkick. RVD staggered back from the kick, dropped to a knee, shifted his gaze down as he held his stomach and then made it appear as if he got naturally blindsided by the kick. It couldn't have been timed better and he couldn't have occupied himself better waiting for the kick. This was a far cry from an opponent bending over at the waist while waiting to take a Booker T axe kick. RVD keeps things interesting from a vet vs. upstart standpoint, and vet vs. upstart is an all time favorite story of mine. The little cheap shot punches, the abandoning of his traditional cocky finger pointing when he realized he might be in over his head, it was somehow a generous performance, while also one where he took 70% of the match. I wasn't expecting to enjoy this, but it was really good and easily my favorite match involving RVD in at least the last decade. What a pleasant find.


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NXT 226 6/12/14 Review

1. The BFFs vs. Bayley, Emma & Paige

I liked the BFFs here, but this got a lot of time relative to what got accomplished. Sasha and Charlotte worked over Emma for most of the 9 minutes, Summer mugged with fans, there was dissension, etc. Sasha is good at this type of stuff, letting Charlotte do the grunt work for the team while she sneaks in to choke Emma with her boot and land other cheap shots, as well as show off her strong apron shit talk game. Emma was a decent FIP, but there really wasn't enough of a comeback or any real hot tag teases, just an eventual tag in to Bayley. It's weird to do a 9 minute match with six people, and have two people never get in the match, so really this was just a longish match to further a Summer Rae angle.

2. Colin Cassady vs. Sylvester Lefort

I have a bad habit of liking a lot of the NXT guys who are clearly being positioned as cannon fodder. It always leaves me in the position of griping about my favorite guys not getting enough match time. The announce crew drops the "deceptively big" line about Cass. "You just don't realize how big he is." That kind of thing never in history had to be said about a large person who actually understands wrestling. You're really big. Act big. If announcers have to remind people that you're physically large, it means you are royally fucking up. Holy shit as I was typing that they said it again. He is 7 feet tall! Lefort is maaaaaybe 5'8". If people are not realizing that Cassady is THAT much fucking bigger than his opponent, it means he is really really bad. "He's the same size as Patrick Ewing!" THEY ACTUALLY SAID THAT! Holy shit I am dying. Did you ever see Patrick Ewing play and somehow not realize that he was a really large, sweaty dude? Cassady is literally on his knees fighting back against Lefort, desperately swinging away while Lefort clubs him, punching at Lefort's stomach and fighting back as if he was modeling himself after Kalisto comebacks. I die laughing during Cass matches. I cannot stop. He's so bad! Oh my god right after he won one of the announcers literally just said "7 feet tall!" I can't fucking even. It's amazing.

3. Sami Zayn vs. Mr. NXT

The video of Bo Dallas leaving after his Loser Leaves NXT match is one of my absolute favorite NXT moments. "I'm calling the cops, for reals...........okay the cops aren't actually coming. But I'm going to call campus security." Match was short and obviously built to Bo getting unmasked and then yakuza kicked while covering up his face. He was really funny playing up his new identity, joyfully yelling "I'm not Bo Dallas!!" throughout the match, not as a response to an accusation, but as a triumphant declaration. He then hilariously evades 4 security guards postmatch, running around and juking them. It's amazing how much I love NXT Bo. The way WWE threw him onto TV gave him zero chance. They took away 80% of his character and all nuance, and left him with a catchphrase which only worked because of the 80% they took away. But man he's good on NXT. "Okay. Just let me go quietly." as he then breaks free from the guards and starts running again. So good.

4. Adrian Neville vs. Tyson Kidd

"A marquee match anywhere in the world!" I mean, it's a match that should be good, and I've really enjoyed Kidd's NXT run so far, but that may be one of the most hilariously overused phrases in pro wrestling. It's arguably not even a marquee match within the context that it's happening. But it's also not even close to silliest match that statement has been made about. And this was a well executed, technically good match, that got completely bogged down by the story they were jamming down our throats. Kidd is frustrated, this is the biggest match of his career (for reasons) and he needs this win or else he'll be the biggest loser in the history of competitive sports. Got it. Except the announcers wanted to make sure we got it, so it's all they talked about all match, and the Kidd loss seemed inevitable from before the bell even rang. What's surprising is that Kidd controlled the entire match, and looked good doing so. This made the finish come off even more lame as Kidd dominated the match but at some point got frustrated that Neville still hadn't given up, so Kidd grabbed a chair and Nattie was like "TJ ermigersh NO! Not like this!!" And TJ was like "But I've tried like THREE OTHER THINGS and he kicked out!!!!" and then Neville hits a superkick which is now apparently tantamount to death, and then hit a (really great) Red Arrow and we are done. Kidd looked good all throughout this, working real stiff, controlling Neville nicely, and Neville was a good FIP, but the whole story was so heavy handed and obvious, and the inevitability of the ending made it tough to give a damn about the match proper.


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NXT Episode 209 2/20/14 Review

So last year I started and quickly stopped reviewing NXT, and I stopped for no real reason. I mean I stopped after literally two episodes, and they were two episodes that I really liked, so it made no sense. I just started watching other things, and now I'm a year further behind. But I loved the episodic nature of the television so much that I didn't want to do a massive time jump to catch up. Truthfully I don't really care much about catching up. I'd rather just watch the product. If I ever get close to present day, then that's terrific, it means I'm obviously enjoying it and also being ridiculously fruitful writing about it. So let's hop right back in where I left off, and see how far we get!!

1. The Ascension vs. Casey Marion & Mike Leboska (??)

Okay NXT, you're really making me look like an asshole jumping back in from the beginning, gifting me with an Ascension match to start things off. Naturally it was just a short squash, and it was perfectly fine for that. I'm going to weirdly try and look at things without the benefit of hindsight. Leboska never made it in the ring, Marion got torpedoed into him, and then Marion gamely took a couple double teams. The hip toss double powerbomb looked good and they timed the leg sweep/flying back elbow nicely.

2. Summer Rae vs. Emma

This wasn't bad, but Summer Rae doesn't have very great heel control offense, and this match needed a lot of that. With her bird bones body and natural bitch face Summer should only be a heel, but she needs to learn more condescending control offense, like cocky kicks to the back of the head or dickish stomps. She has nice roll-ups and gets real good bridging leverage with them, but that's more of a babyface thing so there's some conflict. I fully don't "get" Emma. I presume she's supposed to be quirky and awkward, and she's certainly awkward. It could just be a real smart booking strategy to book someone who's awkward in the ring as a "look how quirky and awkward she is!" type, but it doesn't always lead to satisfying action. It often leads to her just taking longer than normal to lock in moves or set up offense. Summer was working with Fandango on the main roster, so she does some fun cocky dancing to set up moves, and it satisfyingly leads to her taking a kick to the face when she gloats for too long. Summer tries some new things and not all of them work, but I felt she looked much better than Emma here. Sasha Banks was money at ringside, talking constant trash, slapping Emma to set up a nearfall, and then getting bumped off the apron when Summer accidentally gets run into her (which then sees her take a mean spill to the floor when Charlotte blows catching her). They got a bunch of time, but didn't totally justify it. Tensai was wayyyyyy to desperate to show how over Emma was.

I liked the Renee Young sitdown interview with Cesaro and Zayn. Cesaro was really good at getting under Zayn's skin and Zayn handled himself well by snapping but maintaining babyface sportsmanship. Should be a good match. Renee also had a super cool dress, so bonus.

3. Adrian Neville vs. Tyler Breeze

Really fun match, both guys looked really good. Neville looks far better here than I've seen him look on the main roster, and Breeze was already super polished two years ago. Breeze gamely took all of Neville's flying stuff, but also cuts him off really nicely when he gets showy. I though Breeze's opening overhand rights looked real good, and when Neville does a couple of fast handsprings to set up a corner charge I loved Breeze staying on him and surprising him with a nice running dropkick. Neville looked real smooth (which is kind of his thing), but Breeze kept impressing me at every turn. Breeze takes a MAMMOTH flapjack where it looked like he dangerously considered turning it into a backdrop bump but instead just does a brutal bellyflop. Neville also does a sick sitout powerbomb and Breeze just crashes hard into the mat off of it. Breeze bumps big all through this, also really taking Neville's dropkicks like cannonballs to the chest, leans face first into his flippy kicks. There was an awesome sucker spot where Neville was going for a springboard move, and Breeze horribly mistimed a dropkick and whiffed by going for it far too early. Neville bails on the move and gives a weird look at Breeze flopping so early, but then gets blasted with a Breeze superkick. Real fun sucker move. Neville's finished gets hit flawlessly, and yeh this was good.

Show ending promo with Bo Dallas calmly getting in Neville's face, with Neville daring him/desperate for him to punch him. Tons of close-ups on Dallas' face, which is one of the last faces I want to see in close-up, just an epically punchable face. Dallas does a great job acting like he's going to sock Neville, slowwwwwly taking off his sports coat, draping it over his arm, and then just walking out of the ring. Good stuff.

Fun episode. Emma does nothing for me, but there was more than enough good stuff here.


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NXT Episode 209 Workrate Report 2/18/14

1. The Ascension (Konnor & Viktor) vs. Casey Marion & Mike Laboska

Apparently the Ascension are the longest reigning tag team champs in NXT history. They also have matching soul patches, but I'm unsure if their title reign also synced up to their twin soul patch reign. Laboska takes a big bump off the apron from a shoulder to the stomach. The announcers inform me that Ckonar and Vyktur refer to their style as "telepathic carnage" which is not quite as dumb as "controlled frenzy". They do a couple moves to Marion and call it a day with a Total Elimination type leg sweep/flying back elbow combo. Hard to judge any of these guys in a one minute match. I like squash matches, but NXT isn't really impressing me with their 60 second squashes. I'd like to see a little more. Give me 6 moves instead of three. If a match takes less time than the ring entrances, you've almost always wasted my time.

2. Summer Rae vs. Emma

Boy this was not very good. I appreciate that they gave them time (7 minutes) to have a good match, but these two do not have 7 minutes worth of material. They've done a strange job with Emma as all her wins have happened after being dominated for the large part of her matches, then winning on almost flukes. Her Rae controlled the first 6 minutes, then botched interference from the BFFs led to Emma getting the Emma Lock. Summer Rae has some decent offense as her pointy features make her knees, elbows and hip bumps a lot more credible. I can imagine her boniness cutting somebody open. But she doesn't have 6 minutes of offense, and Emma isn't very good at taking or selling offense. After 6 minutes of control Emma just kinda starts acting like nothing has been done to her, takes over after a missed charge and starts dancing. I'm pretty shocked she got called up to the main card already as she has not shown me a whole lot. It should also be noted how completely horrible and lost Charlotte is at ringside. She is a complete wasteland of personality. She has no idea what she's feeling out there, no idea what her motivation is. She kept peeking over at Sasha Banks during the match and copying her reactions. It's one of the more painful things I've seen in wrestling. If she was working a "girl trying to fit into the In Crowd" gimmick it would be one of the finest examples of a subtly brilliant wrestling character, but she's clearly just completely clueless as to what the hell she's supposed to be doing out there. What's funny, is that her clueless positioning and complete lack of body chemistry immediately reminded me of David Flair, who I still think is the worst wrestler to be in a major fed for 2+ years. Even if I had no clue they were related, her vacant eyes, phony movements and complete lack of stage presence just immediately reminded me of David Flair.

Tyler Breeze does a quick interview running down Adrian Neville's looks, saying that an uggo shouldn't be the face of WWE. Neville seems to be playing some sort of model but I don't think he's really done much research into how male models usually act. They're usually vacant and aloof. He's going for more of a preening intellectual thing. Plus his jaw is too strong for modeling, his cheekbones are too weak, nose isn't good enough, and he needs to trim the sides of his hair. Get your act together Breeze.

Then we get a backstage sit down interview with Zayn and Cesaro building to their big match. Cesaro is incredible in this, spending most of the time texting on his phone. Great moment when Cesaro asked Zayn about his knee and Zayn said his need was cleared for competition. Cesaro says that being cleared and being 100% are two very different things. Zayn is wearing an Operation Ivy shirt this week, so with his Me First shirt last week I assume he hasn't actively tried to discover new bands since high school. I'm going to predict Less Than Jake or a Mad Caddies shirt for next week.

3. Adrian Neville vs. Tyler Breeze

This was a real fun match. It was mostly a Neville squash, but with a great almost turning point thrown in towards the end. Neville has a bunch of cool offense with his spinkicks and flying and nice elbows and nice hanging powerbomb. Breeze was good at bumping and posturing, like a not-as-good John Tatum. Wrestling doesn't really have a John Tatum right now so it's a welcome thing. The turning point was really weird and I'm not sure if it was just a cool blown spot recovery or a unique plan. Neville was on the apron waiting for Breeze to get up so he could hit a springboard move. Well Breeze gets up and throws a random dropkick before Neville is even doing anything. Just gets up and dropkicks nothing whatsoever. So Neville just walks back into the ring and then Breeze levels him with a superkick. So either within the match Breeze purposely tried to confuse Neville and suckered him into a last-chance move, or Breeze completely messed up his timing of what was supposed to be catching Neville with a dropkick, and on the fly the came up with the superkick instead. And the cool thing is, I like *both* possibilities. Either it was a really smart way to set up a possible comeback, or it was one of the smoothest blown spot recoveries I've seen. So, awesome either way. Neville ends up winning anyway with the Red Arrow which is one of the most spectacular spots in wrestling history. Most people can't pull off a normal shooting star press, let alone one with a twist that almost always hits completely flush.


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NXT Episode 208 Workrate Report 2/11/14

1. Natalya, Bayley & Emma vs. Alicia Fox, Sasha Banks & Summer Rae

Oh weird. I saw Bayley wrestle a few times in Bay Area wrestling promotions as Davina Rose and dug her then. She was always a heel there, though. This was a really fun trios. All of the stuff between Banks and Natalya was really good. Banks bumps around for her in that fun Diva way where they don't look totally trained and it makes the bumps look nastier. She and Summer Rae play chicken nicely, both sprinting away from Natalya while Natalya gets to throw in her comparative power offense. Most of this is Bayley getting worked over by Fox and Rae, with Fox's work being much better. Rae threw a nice butt bump after choking Bayley over the ropes (and then had a really embarrassing slow crawl to the hot tag), but Fox is really great at building to a babyface comeback, as she really yanks in chin locks and actively taunts faces (also threw a mean Northern Lights with a crazy high bridge). Emma is kept out of this until the finish which is probably best. Emma did a nice sunset flip and I do dig the Emma Lock. She just doesn't do much for me yet.

2. Aiden English vs. Colin Cassady

Cassady looks a lot like Edge and wears a gigantic goofy gold chain. He's billed as being almost 7 feet tall but I don't know how accurate that is. I'm not sure how big English is so I don't really have any context for that height. Cassady seems alright but didn't get to do much. English looked really good here, with a nasty spinning neckbreaker, nicely elbowing his way out of a fallaway slam, and running hard into Cassady's (nice looking) punches and big boot. This was a short match and I assumed the guy being billed as 7' would go over, but was pleasantly surprised to see English get the win.

Big promo setting up Sami Zayn vs. Antonio Cesaro for the NXT live show a couple weeks after this. I have not seen any of their NXT matches, but I've seen Claudio vs. Generico live and was a huge fan of that, so I'm excited to see them again. Cesaro has obviously been one of the best in the world for some time, and while I was never as high on Generico as most, it's clear that these two match up nicely. I dig how they're setting up that big live show. Although seeing Zayn wearing a t-shirt under a baggy blazer made me want to see Cesaro dismantle him. Regal on commentary puts over how incredible their last match was and how excited he was to see the rematch. Regal is so fucking stellar on commentary, and a big key is because he doesn't force talking points, doesn't sound like he's shilling anything, everything about him sounds like he's just giving his genuine thoughts. Michael Cole is the shits as he just spews constant buzzwords and shouts in soundbites. It gets fucking unbearable. Regal is calm, doesn't shout out his phony sounding cliches, and just seems like he enjoys what he enjoys. Renee Young is really great too and sounds like she knows her stuff. Her interactions with Regal are gold. Although god is the Simpsons "Choo-Choo-Choose Me" line the only one anybody in WWE knows? Feels like I've heard it three times on TV this year.

3. Tye Dillinger vs. "Moonchild" CJ Parker

1 minute match which is a real bummer. There's no real reason to do 1 minute matches these days. Especially disappointing as both guys looked good. Well, Moonchild doesn't look good, he's horrible to look at. He looks like a man who refuses to leave an Umphrey's McGee show because they may come out for another set. "I'm not leaving until I get a Trenchtown Rock cover!" Dillinger hits the mat and looks great on it, and if Regal is putting over your matwork on commentary then you're doing something well. Things pretty much end here with Parker hitting a nice senton, airplane spin and then the most awesomely ridiculous palm strike called the Third Eye, which is basically a Shoryuken.

After the match Parker gets on the stick and breaks out some insanely great hippie heel work. "You people boo me? I should be booing you for what you're doing to the polar ice caps!" Talks about how his modified Ford Fiesta gets 40 mpg and how he always practices recycle/reduce/reuse. Yes! This motherfucker joins the loop and I want more heel hippie dirtfuck. "I was the guy picking up garbage at Reggae on the River, and now I'm the ones picking up wins in NXT!"

4. Luke Harper & Erick Rowan vs. two guys

Surprised to see the Wyatts here but their appearance is just a brief kiss, as Harper blasts one guy off the apron with a beastly running elbow and this doesn't really go 30 seconds. Just a mauling.


COLLECTED NXT REVIEWS

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