NXT 229 7/3/14 Review

1. Colin Cassady vs. Sylvester Lefort

Ugh. Enzo's same rehearsed, already ear poison mic spiel goes about 4x as long as the match itself. Lefort has been looking killer lately on TNA, glad someone is giving him some time (yuck, feels weird to say "good for him for going to TNA!"). And really what can you say about a 30 second match? I hate them? Lefort brings about as much as you can in the time, throwing a couple stiff right hands to Cassady's jaw. If you gotta go down, land a few while on the way. Cassady hits his big leaping elbow, and at least all his arm flailing made the elbow look more impactful. Still, bleh.

2. Sasha Banks & Charlotte vs. Bayley & Becky Lynch

I wasn't expecting tons from this but ended up liking it and wanting more. Sasha and Charlotte are a really satisfying tag team, real good at cutting off the ring, and Bayley is an excellent babyface. Lynch dropped all that terrible Irish dancing and was fine as Bayley's hot tag. But the money was in watching Sasha and Charlotte be total bitches to Bayley. This was one of Charlotte's best performances so far, just really showing tons of confidence and coming off like a real jock bully. Sasha is great as her lackey, and it's so good when she does a bunch of her non-offense cheats, stuff like clawing and just slapping someone on the back. Her facials are always great when doing this and Charlotte is always waiting right there for the tag when Sasha gets in over her head. If this was maybe twice as long it would have been something that wouldn't have felt out of place on one of the 80s sets, and it kind of made me hate the WWE Network start time/end time "bullet points" as while it is convenient to know what time a match starts on the timeline, it is a bummer to be getting into a match while seeing "oh this ends in like 30 seconds".

Tyson Kidd is really good at playing bitter veteran and I liked him raining on Justin Gabriel's parade. Gabriel was all excited to be in NXT and Kidd explained to him that it was another rung lower on the ladder, which was lower than his previous spot, and so on. I try not to look ahead at what happens in NXT so I'm going into each episode mostly blind, so I have no idea how long Kidd (or anybody) sticks around in NXT, but I'm hoping he's around for awhile.

3. CJ Parker vs. Steve Cutler

Not much to this one, the debuting Z'Dar-jawed Cutler got zero offense, but bumped around in fine "quick back bump off punches" WWE training style. It was entirely punches from Parker, leading to his standing spin kick finish. Parker is a guy I like, but the announce crew really backed themselves into an awkward corner with his gimmick. He's a dirty hippie who's a self-proclaimed eco terrorist. Regal is the face announcer, who understandably hates hippies. But Regal makes a poor decision in deciding - because Parker is a heel, and a hippie heel no less, that he is going to be opposed to everything about him. The problem is, Regal now comes off like an asshole climate change denier who empties entire bottles of his Aqua Net hairspray into the air while having a Styrofoam bonfire. Like, I get CJ's a dick about it, but it doesn't mean you also have to hate recycling just because somebody shitty does it. Regal easily could have taken a "agree with the message, strongly disagree with the delivery" route which would have actually pointed out the whole nuance of the Parker character. His broad dislike is a rare commentary misstep for Regal, but it's a misstep he should recognize, as I don't want to have to side with Byron Saxton of all people as he points out what good points Parker is making.

4. Sami Zayn vs. Justin Gabriel

Really liked Gabriel in this one, and I really like he and Kidd as dickhead demoted meatheads. I thought Zayn's two comebacks were fairly unimaginative and shoehorned in, or else the match could have been great. Zayn's first offense run just kind of came out of nowhere, and the second was set up by Gabriel climbing to the top while easily seeing Zayn standing up to catch him. It was just kind of lazy. But Gabriel looked awesome throughout, right up there with the most I've ever enjoyed him. The first couple minutes of this were fun as I liked their scrambly wristlock reversals and armdrags, and eventually Gabriel starts bringing some stiff strikes including a nasty spinkick right to Zayn's jaw. Both guys were doing real nice rope running sequences, cutting fast on drop downs, doing fast leapfrog spots. It felt like those Finlay matches in WCW where he would test a guy early in a match by doing super fast sequences and letting them decide their fate. Gabriel hits a great springboard moonsault and plants Zayn with a sick air raid crash on his knee. I kept expecting Kidd to factor into the finish so was pleased that he didn't (other than shouting advice), but the ending was just flat with the silly fighting on the turnbuckles and then Zayn just kind deciding to lock on the koji clutch. It wouldn't have taken much to come up with a better way to transition to Zayn's offense, and that held things back a bit. But overall this was good and I liked Gabriel fully turning postmatch and stomping down Zayn with Kidd. The tag match (Neville/Zayn vs. Kidd/Gabriel that I assume they're building to) should be really good.


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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 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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NXT Episode 216 4/10/14 Review

1. Adam Rose vs. Danny Burch

Burch is UK wrestler Martin Stone who I have seen before and really liked in Evolve. There are many guys in NXT I would rather see him go up against. Shame Regal wasn't on commentary here as I'd love to hear his thoughts on Burch. The match itself wasn't really given a chance to be interesting as it was mostly a heatless Rose showcase. Rose hits some nice shoulderblocks and a nice Bret Hart elbow drop (with elbow pad removal!) but the schtick wastes too much time and got old immediately. Hopefully Burch pops up more in the future though.

2. Bayley vs. Sasha Banks

Short match but go go go and they made the short time work for them. Sasha knows she doesn't have much offense but makes up for it in other ways, and clearly has tons of body charisma and knows how to bitch it up in the ring. She also knows how to let her opponent transition to offense by letting her own bitchiness distract her. Bayley fit a bunch of cool things into her shine, throwing a few flying back elbows and hitting a great high lift belly to belly (The Bayley to Belly is an amusing name). Sasha really bumped hard for those elbows and especially took that BtB really high up on her shoulders. I'm actually pretty shocked Sasha loses as much as she does - in my brief time spent with NXT. She comes off like a pretty big deal but maybe I'm misreading her character and part of it is that she thinks she's a big deal but always loses? Legend in her own mind? The announce crew doesn't play things that way (although I wouldn't trust Riley and Albert to be able to get anything over properly).

3. Sylvester Lefort vs. Mojo Rawley

Albert is to "Oh man this guy gets me pumped" during Rawley's entrance, as Tazz is to "Well...here comes the pain!" during old Lesnar entrances. If Mojo has to be on TV every week at least this match was just a minute long. Though I always really really hate when a match is shorter than the combined ring entrance time. Lefort seems kinda fun and he makes Mojo look good enough in his short time in the ring. This kind of Mojo in ring training seems like stuff that can be happening off camera though.

We get a fun look at the NXT events during the 2014 Wrestlemania weekend. I will say that when WM was in San Jose last year we tried to get NXT tickets and that thing sold out QUICK. We didn't starve for wrestling as we got to see a couple of killer Evolve shows. We get some fun moments like a nice seeming dad congratulating Zayn on his accomplishments, and telling him he's phenomenal. Also get Lefort pretending to take a nap behind Rawley while Rawley goes on about how hyped he always is.

4. Bo Dallas vs. Justin Gabriel

We get a longish segment with Bo having a breakdown in the ring, wanting the fans support while they turn their backs, then "Commissioner" JBL comes out and lets Bo know that he'll be facing Justin Gabriel. JBL is the NXT Commissioner? This is literally the first time I've heard that even mentioned, and this is the 10th episode of NXT I've watched. Albert and Riley go on about all the great choices JBL has made as Commissioner but I swear this is the only time I've ever heard JBL's name even mentioned here. WTF? Match didn't do a lot for me. Crowd was really chant-y the whole show, which I get when you're there every week and see all these guys in a small venue, but this was the first time I felt it was getting into a "Let's be the show!" type of thing. This match was just Albert yelling OOOOOOHHHHHHH whenever Gabriel did literally any move. He was so constantly amazed at every light-landing Gabriel crossbody. Albert was like an immigrant seeing the Statue of Libery for the first time, just eyes wide in amazement when Gabriel would do a standard dropkick. Bo Dallas shows so much more polish in NXT than he's shown on the main roster. It's odd as it's obviously why Ascension look worse on the main roster: Their bodies deflated a bit and they weren't allowed to be super violent with people the way they were to jobbers, kinda like the old Mike Awesome dilemma. But Bo might just be one of those guys who translates to 400 people and not 4000 people. But he knows how to react to this crowd, knows how to work heel, and looks good in the ring. I've not seen him do any one of those things in WWE. But yeah, this got a lot of time and didn't do much for me.

Pretty throwaway episode right here. But hey next week we get Great Khali (no clue that Khali was still employed in 2014)!




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NXT Episode 207 Workrate Report 2/5/14

So I am almost 100% unfamiliar with the NXT goings on. 207 episodes!? How the hell is that even possible?? Have I literally missed 4 years of NXT? Or does it work like weird TV season numbers and this is just the 7th episode of season 2. But yeah, I have haven't seen much of NXT, is what I'm getting at. I've seen the occasional Hero or Ambrose match and that's about it. Never watched a full episode, but I like the fact that exists in its own little bubble, in the same way that Saturday Night or WorldWide used to exist. So in a way this is like WWE B-Sides. I still wish there was a show like Velocity, but this is probably the next best version of that. So, what the hell, let's start reviewing NXT weekly shows!

1. Sin Cara vs. Alexander Rusev

First time seeing Rusev here. I dig the guy's old school powerlifter build. He....doesn't seem that good. But I'm not shocked that he's getting brought up to the main roster. He's not very good at hitting his marks. Cara had to shove him into position at one point when he was taking too long, and he backed too far away from a Cara moonsault press so it ended up hitting him like a backflip dropkick instead. His offense is pretty dry, with mostly power stuff and some random kicks peppered in. He did do a running dropkick at one point that looked really great, really felt like a John Tenta style dropkick. He works this match too evenly, and at one point holds Cara in an armlock for far too long. I get that most short WWE matches need to have that pointless moment where the heel holds a face in some sort of a rest hold to build for the comeback, but it felt more pointless than usual here. Needs more impressive power spots. Plus his average height will be exposed when on the main roster.

2. Alicia Fox vs. Emma

Fox has been the best Diva for some time now, does all "between moves" stuff a lot better than most Divas (and plenty of male workers). Nice stomach kicks, actually makes restholds look like she's working a hold, really nasty wristlocks that looks like she's manipulating joints, cool reckless forearms from the mount. Emma does not seem very good, and I'm already starting to turn on her as she's getting mostly tepid responses but announcers on the main brand and now NXT are putting her over as somebody the crowd just goes batty for and pretending more than 30 people in the crowd are doing her dance. Here she takes a year to do a reverse rolling cradle and just as long to try and set up the Tarantula. I do like her doing the Emma dance into her finisher submission, but most everything else she does doesn't look good.

3. Sylvester Lefort vs. Mason Ryan

Oh hey it's Mason Ryan. Forgot about him. This goes about 45 seconds but is done the way a squash match should be done. Dug Ryan's hotshot into a running big boot. Good follow through on the boot. Would have liked to see some more from Lefort as I dug his hiked-high tights and beard. His strikes didn't look very good though.

4. Aiden English vs. Tyson Kidd

English looks like tall muscular Screech, and when he's wearing that beret he looks like Screech from that Saved By the Bell episode where Screech was in a chess tournament, and Zack and Slater make a bunch of money by running a gambling ring to capitalize on Bayside's sudden and never-again-mentioned chess fever!! Kidd looks really good in this, missing a crossbody in the ropes, throwing nice kicks and doing a cool rana that sends English face first into the turnbuckles. Kidd gets the Blockbuster for the win after English is distracted by some guy named Big Cass who threatens to steal Screech's lucky beret. Couldn't get a great read on English but he threw some great Bret Hart style falling elbows.

5. Adrian Neville vs. Corey Graves

Neville used to be PAC (they still use his moniker The Man Gravity That Gravity Forgot) and Graves is the former Sterling James Keenan. Boy WWE developmental names leave a lot to be desired. Graves has a real good look, like an indie rock Chris Isaak. PAC's flying is always impressively effortless.  I cannot imagine having that much knowing control of my body. I mean I have alright balance and don't trip over my own legs when I go running, but seeing PAC hitting a running tope/moonsault press (picture what starts as a dive over the ropes but adds a twist in the middle to land like a moonsault press) is pretty stunning Most of this match is Graves working over Neville's leg, which he does well. I always like the DDT done to the leg, and he gets a real high cradle on roll ups. The guy looks like he has to actually kick out of pins, not just get let out. Neville is really great at selling the leg, too, which makes the leg work better. Crowd doesn't seem to give much of a shit though. Neville is still good at selling while doing his moves, which is not something you see often. He eventually makes his comeback and hits his killer twisting shooting star off the rope. I liked what happened in the match fine, everything looked solid. It wasn't terribly compelling, and it should have been. The story of "guy gets weapon taken away by wily opponent" usually gets people into it, but they certainly were not here. Now I know nothing of the history, or how the crowd normally responds to these two, but I would have expected them to be a little more receptive to this.


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