NXT Takeover 5/29/14 Review

NXT 223 was just a hype special getting us all jazzed for this show, the first NXT Takeover, which on paper doesn't sound like a good sounding show. It seems like a normal episode of NXT, just much longer. But pleasant surprises are always welcome in life.

1. Adam Rose vs. Camacho

I really liked Camacho in this, he feels like a guy who got the short end of the stick during his time in WWE. But we all knew this was going to be all about announcers fake laughing about how uproarious Rose is. It makes me sad when Regal does it too. It makes me feel like Sideshow Bob howling "TV's bottomless chum bucket has claimed Vanessa Redgrave!" At least Camacho controlled most of this, even if it was structured like an 80s WWF babyface showcase (babyface sells for 3 minutes and then just hits signature offense for last minute). To his credit Rose has an awesome spinebuster, and Camacho really leaped into that thing. So you had Camacho flying into it, Rose planting it, and really that was enough to make this work for me. A lot of Rose's actual work is acceptable, but that personality and facials are just immediate hard passes for me. The announcers working overtime to tell me how fun he is only adds to it.

2. The Ascension vs. El Local & Kalisto

We got some hastily built contenders in the couple weeks leading up to Takeover, contenders that nobody could rightfully believe would be going over the Ascension. Kalisto worked fine as FIP Mysterio throughout most of this, which was all good as he's a guy who can make Ascension look devastating. He had an awesome comeback spot where he was tangled in the ropes facing the outside, with his legs dangling towards the floor, and he managed to catch Viktor in a headscissors and drive him face first into the ring apron. Never seen that before, and it worked great. It would be silly as a regular spot, but loved it here. Things fell apart when Local flubbed his hot tag. He came in throwing some okay back elbows, but then slipped and fell short on a springboard whatever and then hitting an ugly and overly cautious moonsault. Kalisto took a super fast bump to the floor down the stretch, but it should have been Local doing that as Kalisto could have made the Fall of Man look better. Overall match was decent, but Local stunk.

3. Sami Zayn vs. Tyler Breeze

This was the one on paper match that I was interested in, and it delivered. It got tons of time (only 5 announced matches on a 2 hour show, so I imagine the next two matches will be going broadway) and Breeze is really good at pacing these NXT matches. Zayn has some fairly implausible offense and Breeze always makes it look good. Look at how he whips himself into the floor on Zayn's moonsault and flip dive. Breeze is really smart about setting up his spots that hit and more importantly his spots that miss, and really smart about setting up Zayn's misses so that they actually looked like moves Zayn thought he would hit but just naturally missed. Watch Breeze drop down in the corner at the last minute so Zayn crotches himself on a yakuza kick. He timed it so last minute that the announcers got tricked into thinking the kick just landed and Breeze bumped it early. They were selling the impact of the kick and then had to backpedal and go "Oh wait a minute...". Zayn's comeback spots always land big, and I dug their silly convoluted Blue Thunder Bomb set up. It didn't quite work but I appreciated the "big show" ambition. This was a real smart 15 minutes, no bloat, smartly laid out, and both guys came out looking strong. Zayn keeps up the role of lovable hard-working loser, a guy who is right on the cusp but keeps falling short.

Rusev and Lana come out and do their thing, and they're interrupted by total zero Mojo Rawley, who says he's going to stick Rusev's flag straight up his "Putin". He then sprints to the ring and gets flat out leveled by a Rusev superkick, which was totally awesome and unexpected. Rawley gets totally steamrolled here while Lana laughs in his face, and it was such a treat to see this low rent Jim Duggan get flattened. It actually made me excited for a Rawley/Rusev match. I think Rawley will be more interesting against a guy his size rather than in a squash match.

4. Charlotte vs. Natalya

Natalya's promo work for this was probably the best she's ever done. As the most insufferable person on Total Divas, a show rife with insufferable people, her sounding interesting really stood out. She does more to establish Charlotte's credentials than any of Charlotte's dead eye promos did. And this match was not at all what I was expecting. It was really, really good. I mean really good. Better than any match I have seen involving either Charlotte or Natalya. I was fully expecting the entire focus to be on Bret and Flair at ringside, and the bulk of the match be taken up by each person laughably aping the signature offense of their respective cornermen. Instead, they somehow filled an engaging 17 (!) minutes of time that never felt like it was dragging, felt like either woman could win, and left me totally impressed. Charlotte working a tribute act to her corpse father on Raw has been really bad this past year, and seeing her here doing none of that was eye opening. The match felt different right away, with tons of simple but really great matwork. It all felt really snug and felt like they both had to fight over holds. It all looked exhausting. Natalya pulls out a tricky single leg and every tight headlock or waistlock or kneebar or body vice felt like it meant something, and pretty soon Charlotte has Nattie in a nasty figure 4 choke, just squeezing those legs around her neck, and she stands up with it, doing a forward roll that sends Nattie flipping over and slamming onto her tailbone, and I am now totally in love with this grind. Natalya was making all sorts of great faces during the mat portions, grinding in elbows, laughing over her shoulder at Charlotte. We build to a figure 4 spot that could have felt derivative but I don't think did. It felt like a logical peak of the match, with both reaching out to slap and scratch at the other, both stubbornly refusing to back off, apparent it was never going to end the match but was merely taking them through to a struggle none of their prior matches have shown. Then rolling to the floor off it was a cool bit of desperation and being out of strategic ideas. It felt like when a fighter abandons his gameplan and just starts following the mood of the fight, often a poor choice. Natalya takes a big bump into the steps and back in Charlotte starts going for the figure 4 again, but then throws side eye at Bret before locking on a Sharpshooter. Natalya does a realistic looking counter but gets kicked in the face trying to get too cute and lock in a Sharpshooter of her own, and this leads to Charlotte hitting her rolling blockbuster. This match shot so far past my expectations, just totally unexpected. This really felt like it elevated the Divas title, which is a funny thought in the history of WWE. But this felt like two people who wanted nothing more than to win that belt. Lovely to see no involvement from Ric and Bret, outside of encouragement. They even had a showing of respect afterwards which was nice.

I really liked the quick moment backstage where an exhausted Natalya still found fit to give Tyson a quick, familiar but loving kiss and a quick "I love you" before his match. Felt really unforced and spur of the moment.

5. Tyson Kidd vs. Adrian Neville
Another match I wasn't excited for that exceeded expectations. I especially liked Kidd here as he displayed a grumpiness I haven't ever really seen from him. This also continued the trend of simple but effective and tightly worked matwork to start a match on this show. Kidd grounding Neville with a wristlock was one of the nastier moments of the show, and when guys are willing to do matwork with no light showing it can only help to have Regal on commentary. He really gets over the fine points of why a side headlock takeover is painful, and it was a treat hearing him put over Kidd grounding Neville with a headlock (and it was a wrenched in headlock indeed), pointing out how it looks like Neville is just lying on the mat but he is in fact completely debilitated, in plenty of pain AND having his air supply cut off. We get a silly kip-up dropkick mirror sequence that was unnecessary and very out of place for the mood they had established, but Kidd makes me instantly not care by feinting going into the ropes, and instead smashing Neville with a forearm. All the forearm strikes in this were nasty, from both guys, but I especially loved that first one Kidd threw. He then starts amping up the dick behavior by hanging Neville in a tree of woe and kicking at his back (Neville gets to return that favor later in a nice callback). We hit some nice big spots as well, with Kidd hitting a fast flip dive, Neville catching him with a sitout powerbomb that Kidd took at a wild level, a crazy vertical suplex to the floor with both guys going over, and more nice strikes. I lost a bit of interest when they went through any of the fighting on the top rope portions, but it still felt like a real good main event title match. Kidd especially really impressed me and was one of his finer performances I've seen from him. Not only ringwork, but the added character depth (even after when he left in a huff after being the one early in the match to show respect). A real pleasant surprise.

Well, this show looked like a real snoozer on paper. And then the last three matches really delivered and made this show an easy one to recommend. Tough to say whether this or Arrival was the better show, as the Zayn/Cesaro match is still the best NXT match I've reviewed, but I thought Charlotte/Natalya was stronger than the ladder match on that show, which was on par with the Neville and Breeze matches on this show. Either way, so far NXT is 2 for 2 on their specials.


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NXT Episode 221 5/15/14 Review

1. The Ascension vs. Buddy Murphy & Elias Sampson

Quick squash with Sampson not getting in the ring, and Murphy getting steamrolled. Konnor throws several really great stomps to Murphy's chest, and then leveled him with the Fall of Man, which Murphy takes great, really folds himself up.

2. Alexa Bliss vs. Charlotte

Oh yay back to back weeks of Bliss. And it was mostly an extended Charlotte squash, which is for the best as Bliss looks better sitting in a submission than trying to struggle through offense. She still did her overly complicated and clunky roll up (which beat Fox last week) and almost drops herself on her head while bumping a knee to the stomach. Charlotte has a really great abdominal stretch, where she wrenches it in and violently cranks the person's neck. So that was nice. But this wasn't much.

3. Mojo Rawley vs. Aiden English

Bummed that English had to get fed to Rawley, but English made him look good and actually had a real (albeit only 3-4 minute) match with him. Mojo can't do much so the whole match was English doing his thing until we get the go home sign and Mojo does his shoulderblocks, rear view and bombs away, in order, as always. Really wish they were giving Mojo his ring time off TV, as I'd much rather see English in a real match.

4. Angelo Dawkins vs. Colin Cassady

Man now we get a Big Cass extended squash. What the hell is with this episode? Cass is a guy with some cool short strikes: I really like his body shots and knees. But all of his impact offense looks bad. He's like a guy who grew up idolizing Test. And SAWFT was amusing for like two matches, but I have a feeling I'm going to be seeing him use it for a couple years.

5. Tyson Kidd vs. Tyler Breeze vs. Sami Zayn

This is for the opportunity to face Adrian Neville at the upcoming TakeOver show, but damn I just wish they had done a singles. Any three of these guys would match up nicely in a singles. But I suppose it's not crazy for the winner to face Neville for the title, and the two losers of this match fight at TakeOver, with the winner of that maybe getting a shot down the line. If that's what they plan to do. And this match just never clicked. We had some classic triple threat disappearances, and couple silly trainwreck spots, and guys selling like they had been through the war of their lives after 7 minutes. This whole thing is mostly flat, but it didn't get truly bad until the premature WARTIME selling. The type of shit where a guy breaks up a pinfall and all three lie on the mat selling and breathing heavy, like they just got done with a Godspell performance. All three men, lying there selling as if they've never been more tired, even though all one man did was pull another man off of another man.

This was a bad show right here, filled with squash matches of a couple of my least favorite guys, and topped with a lousy main event.


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NXT Episode 218 4/24/14 Review

JBL (who apparently is going to be all over this show now, and just wasn't mentioned as being affiliated with NXT at all for many months) tells Paige she's going to need to vacate the NXT Women's Title, since she's now Divas Champion. There's going to be a women's tournament which could at least serve as a way to introduce a couple of lesser seen faces, or debut someone. We'll see. Tournaments can be pretty lazy, and Paige herself is still there so why not just put her in regular title matches until she loses the belt? It's not as satisfying as building to an actual title match, but I think it would be far more interesting than a tournament. Have JBL say that Paige will be too busy defending the Divas title, and we need to keep the NXT title in NXT, have her face a series of challengers, and if she loses then you get your new champ, and if she keeps winning then maybe the women of NXT need to work harder before they get their title back full time in the fed.

1. Alexander Rusev vs. Travis Tyler

Pretty mechanical squash, with Tyler at least rushing him at the bell with a dropkick. Rusev's knees to the body looked good, his 12-6 elbows down into Tyler's traps looked mean, he had a couple nice slams and a great rushing Vader bear attack, really wrenched in the Accolade. Crowd chanting is getting more and more annoying each show, here they tried sloppily to sing Adam Rose's song. Too cool to watch a 90 second long squash and react to actual violence.

2. Charlotte & Sasha Banks vs. Emma & Paige

Nothing offensive, but nothing that stood out about this match either. In a short match they "built" to two different moments where the legal team members were slowwwwly crawling to make the hot tag, each looking over their shoulders to make sure they time it right. Ugh. I liked Paige's rolling short arm clotheslines, with her not letting go of Sasha's arm. Sasha had a couple nice moments as well, like stomping on Emma's fingers and selling her neck nicely on a tag. Emma looked lost a few times, and again her gimmick may be a smart way to cover up these kind of moments. Paige also sold Charlotte's neck snap finish nicely, holding her jaw as her lights went out. Eh.

3. Tyson Kidd vs. Mason Ryan

Fun little match with a dumb little finish. I thought they were going for the same thing they did last week with the returning Oliver Grey getting run over by Camacho. Here Tyson Kidd returned and Mason Ryan steamrolled him for much of the match, which makes sense with the size difference. Kidd was good making openings for himself, trying leg kicks, trying to scramble, but I really liked Ryan's power offense here. He caught a leg and did a cool double leg rushing slam into the corner, dropped a nice leg, grabbed Kidd on a springboard and dropped him with a press slam dropped into a pancake. I was into Ryan beating him down and Kidd fighting back. And then Ryan missed a charge and Kidd hit a so-so Blockbuster and that ended it. Woof. What a flat finish, with no build, and won by a move that looked like one of the weaker things hit in the whole match.

4. Angelo Dawkins vs. Tyler Breeze

Man Breeze needs a better finisher than the Beauty Shot. His squash matches always see him wrenching on necks and doing other nice ground stuff, but then end with him doing a standing floaty spinning heel kick. It usually looks like one of the weakest moves of the match. His side headlock looks way nastier than that kick. I'd never seen Dawkins before, but this didn't really have anything to judge him by.

5. Corey Graves & The Ascension vs. Sami Zayn & The Usos

Give a trios with capable workers some time and it's tough to have a bad match. It's pretty easy to have a solid trios with only 3/6 of the workers being capable. And this is a fine, workmanlike six man tag that gets 13 minutes and has plenty of fun moments. It felt like it could have gone much higher, as oddly enough I got a real house show match vibe out of the Usos. And don't get me wrong, I LOVE house shows. I'd go to a house show 10 times out of 10 over a TV taping. You get three types of matches on house shows: Guys getting the opportunity to work longer matches than they normally get, veterans working matches playing to the crowd instead of playing to the hard camera, and guys going through the motions and saving themselves for the cameras. The first two types are great. The third type is what the Usos were doing here. Except it was on camera. I get it, you gotta know when to dial it back. It was just disappointing as nobody else in the match was dialing it back. SO I LEAD WITH THE NEGATIVE...but I liked the match quite a bit. Corey Graves has probably been the most pleasant NXT surprise so far. The guy is good and knows how to carry himself. Too bad about them injuries. Early on he does a fist drop off the ropes and I'm like I FUCKING GET IT YOU'RE AWESOME. Viktor was also a stand out and did some cool things you don't see, like kicking Zayn's planted leg while Graves was holding his other one. It should also be mentioned that Albert was terrible on commentary. This guy is the worst. Not only does he do that super phony fake overly excited "Look how much fun this is!!" thing that most WWE commentators are taught to do, but he does countless annoying things during matches. Here he loudly chanted along with the U-SOS chants, says lame ass stuff like "Daddy would be proud" after the Usos do a running hip attack (even though that was Umaga who did that, not Rikishi), and built up narratives within the match that had zero chance of going anywhere ("Who is Jey going to tag, his brother or Zayn!?" Who fucking cares? Certainly not the wrestlers in the actual match.). But no matter. Graves was a slimy shithead, Ascension are better in NXT than you'd think, Zayn is a really good babyface, Usos dogged it but slotted into the formula just fine, and this was a perfectly fine 6 man. Shame Graves had to lose clean, but I get it.


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NXT Episode 215 4/3/14 Review

1. Emma vs. Sasha Banks

Good match but I don't like their trend of squeezing 5 matches into a show, as they would be much better off doing 4 matches and allotting more time. Sasha was really good here, kind of a one woman show. I liked all of the little things she did like sell her butt cheek and shake out her leg after a missed leg drop, and especially loved when she actually tried to trip Emma on a drop down. YES! More tripping on drop downs please. She really flew right at Emma's ankles. Her smack talking is always great as well, and she really flew into Charlotte on a (purposely) miscommunicated drop toehold. It was set up the way Rey sets up a 619, and Sasha really committed right into the ropes/Charlotte. Emma didn't really have much of a hand in the good parts of this, but they keep telling me that everybody likes her, so....

They make Mojo Rawley look really good in an exciting 30 second video. Now I'm curious to see what other wrestlers they can work 30 second highlight video magic with. What can they do with the Godfather? Or Scott Putski?

2. The Ascension vs. Jack Hurley & John Vandal

It's surprising to me just how much I like the Ascension as a squash tag team. My introduction to them was their WWE debut and I don't think many people would disagree when I say their WWE run has been extremely underwhelming. And seeing as how they're so good at working squashes - and keep in mind I don't think that's a backhanded compliment. It takes certain skill to do cool stuff in a concise way. There's a little art to it. But seeing how good they are at working squashes, it's like they got brought up to WWE and were told "So all of that cool stuff you did in NXT? Don't do any of that." One of those classic things where they took away the one thing that might have set them apart. So seeing them in NXT is surprising. They still look like cosplay goofs going to a Venture Bros. Con as part of the Guild of Calamitous Intent, but they know how to beat up jobbers. And in this case, jobbers who seemingly got their names chosen out of 1994 Thrasher magazines. Kelly Ripper! Street Slasher Tracy Slater! Hurley and Vandal (their buddies Burton and Quicksilver were waiting in the car outside) take a nice beating, but Ascension are like Faces of Fear nasty, peaking with Hurley getting bodyslammed twice into the ropes. The first time he gets body slammed into the top and middle rope, so he ends up bouncing to the mat on the back of his head, and it's like Konnor heard that old jazz adage of "If you hit a bad note, hit it again so the crowd thinks it was on purpose", so he picks up Hurley and dangerously does the same thing. Their legsweep/flying back elbow finish looks really great, and yeah, I look forward to Ascension squash matches. This is a development I was not expecting.

3. Xavier Woods vs. Brodus Clay

This is odd as Woods comes out using Brodus Clay's Funkasaurus music, and Clay just comes out to some drum beats and shouting sounds while wearing jogging pants. There haven't really been many guys who've fallen off the WWE map faster than Clay. This is not even two years ago, and he was being advertised as being part of the WWE Scooby Doo movie, which means as that movie was made he seemed like a guy who should be in it, and the ad for the movie runs right before a match where he's been demoted to NXT. The match is plenty fun as Woods jumps him with a bunch of nice kicks and keeps outrunning him, and once Clay catches him the match never turns back. Clay does a couple nice bombs away variations, hits a nice shoulder tackle, big powerbomb, nasty little scoop brainbuster; It was constructed nicely, with Woods not getting any comebacks, but there being moments where you *thought* he might get one, like Clay going up for a splash and taking a bit too long, making you think Woods will move. But it would have been silly for him to do so after what he had taken. Brodus cuts a nice short promo after about how WWE took his dignity, took his girls, took his music, took his pride, so now he's just left with Brodus, and he wants the NXT belt.

And I really liked Neville's promo about how guys from Raw and Smackdown couldn't just come down and be big fish anymore, saying Brodus must have been living in a cave the last couple years, how NXT guys are as good as any of the Raw/Smackdown guys, and he'd need to do more to prove himself worthy of a shot. Nice stuff.

4. Yoshi Tatsu vs. Tyler Breeze

Poor little Yoshi. He's so good at making offense look nice, which can be a kiss of death. He doesn't get one move in during this short not-even-two-minute match. Breeze is a guy I like though, I notice him doing new things I like in almost every match. Here I noticed his great side headlock, just a perfect grounded headlock, with Tatsu on his side and Breeze on his back, pushing up with his legs for leverage while squeezing hard on Tatsu's neck. Tatsu sold it great but it also looked like he was being choked out. Breeze has a nice enough side headlock that it looked better than his spin kick finisher.

Paige cuts an unfortunate promo saying she "expected people to want her title, expected people to come in her face." I would say that's worse than getting your leg kicked out of your leg.

5. Corey Graves vs. Sami Zayn

Not quite the match I was expecting, but interesting for what they tried to do and overall well executed by Zayn. Graves ended up controlling most of this match, and the match got about 13 minutes. I like Graves a lot but his stuff wasn't looking as violent here as it was supposed to look, part of that being that it's hard to make mounted punches look good while still making it look realistic that Zayn wouldn't be unconscious. But anyway, Graves controls for a long time, and amusingly does that same nice side headlock that I praised Breeze for. Like the same exact one. Somebody at NXT is teaching everybody a real nice headlock. Graves also does another nice one where he lies on his stomach and wrenches it in. Regal on commentary is just about the best at putting over why a headlock like this is so damaging. Zayn's comeback is nice with some flash roll ups, but then they end up bumping heads and Zayn starts selling concussion symptoms. It was weird as the back of Graves' head bumped Zayn's forehead, but Graves didn't sell a bunch and the announce crew immediately acted like something was seriously wrong with Zayn. Zayn manages to fight off Graves a bit, hits a nice back elbow, a good punch, but then tries to go up top for something and starts wobbling on the ropes, losing his balance, trying again. His acting is really good throughout, but once you start doing the concussion stuff you're walking kind of a fine line of taste within a worked wrestling context. So the announcers are going into Owen voice and asking for the match to be stopped, then Graves locks on his submission for the win. So yeah, I get what they were going for, and Zayn honestly could not have done a better job, but portraying concussions in a match is a real slippery slope and it would have definitely been better if they had just worked an actual match with a finish.


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NXT Episode 212 3/13/14 Review

1. Paige vs. Sasha Banks

Albert calls Paige "the closest you can get to a total package in wrestling" which...seems a wee bit hyperbolic. I mean, you can't just go saying that about everybody, and the person you choose to say that about is...Paige? Match itself was short and not bad, though the ending was kind of abrupt and didn't make Sasha look very strong. Paige was working the match as seasoned vet, and Banks was kind of more Stevie Richards as she doesn't really seem to have tons of offense, so she gets by on body charisma and stuff like back rakes and hair pulling. It works, as she comes off like a gal who would give zero fucks about ripping out a chunk of some girl's extensions. Sasha locks on a nice arms-crossed camel clutch, even if it doesn't ever feel like it could end the match. They must have gotten the sudden call to go home though as Sasha lets get back up, then Paige just kinda knocks Sasha down and immediately works to lock on the Paige Tapout. I mean, Sasha was good at fighting to keep out of it and avoid getting her arms locked in, but it was a really weird sequence with Paige sitting in a sub, then getting up and just locking on her own sub for the win.

2. The Ascension vs. Travis Tyler & Cal Bishop

You'll never believe it, but according to our announce crew, The Ascension are also "The Total Package". Five stars for everybody! Everybody gets a Trophy Day! Travis Tyler draws the short straw here and takes the brunt of the 3.5 minute beating. And to their credit Ascension know how to work squash matches. It helps having a guy like Tyler who was really great at being blitzed and blindsided by shoulderblocks and double teams. I've never seen Tyler before but he's at minimum a guy who makes offense look really great, and he was real good at naturally stumbling into position, conveying that his bell was rung early and he wasn't sure where the next shot was coming from. Viktor hits a real nice boma ye off the middle buckle, with Konnor Irish whipping him into it. Nice, satisfying extended squash.

3. Mason Ryan vs. Wesley Blake

Damn I actually really really liked this. It was two green guys, but having a fun "Power Plant green guys getting a little time on Pro" and they're trying new things and some of them don't totally work, but they look game in trying these new things, and they kind of surprise you a bit. Here the green sloppiness added to the match for me, as it made things come off with a cool confused struggle. The headlock stuff in the beginning was really good because of that, as instead of a clean headlock push into the ropes, we get some nasty struggle over a sloppy choke with guys getting their ears pinched and forearms going across noses. So we get a couple of sloppy struggles, but they looked better in their sloppiness. Blake takes a punch well and we also get some nice ground punches which feel more like an MMA guy sensing his opponent was finished so dives in excitedly with some sloppy ground strikes. Ryan plays around with some headlock takedowns and fireman's carry takedowns, and those benefit from sloppiness as well. They came off more as uncooperative throws. Nice segment with Ryan missing a corner charge and hitting his shoulder, and the match actually including some nice callback spots to a potential shoulder injury. Blake later hits a single arm DDT and a nice stomp to the shoulder, and there's some fun fighting over an arm wringer. Eventually we get the kind of abrupt Power Plant guy GO HOME call where someone just hits their finisher. But this surprised me and I really dug it, in the same way I was surprised and really dug Sick Boy vs. Renegade.

4. Xavier Woods vs. Alexander Rusev

Tyler Breeze comes out and begs Woods for the shot against Rusev, sounds genuine, wants the chance to fight Rusev for hitting his face. Woods refuses and as Rusev comes out, Breeze jumps Woods.

And damn this match was good too, although needed like...30 more seconds to make it substantial. But it was good. Woods is reeling from getting jumped and taking shots to the back of his head, so Rusev bullies him into the corner and laces in with low shin kicks and nice knees to the ribs. He's working like a bulky RINGS Russian, like Bitsadze Tariel, with shin kicks and rolled shoulder throws. Woods gets a really great comeback too, as Rusev bullies him into a corner but Woods knows the shin kick is coming this time. So Woods catches it and starts throwing all the strikes at him, nice low kicks, elbows to the jaw, a really great chop, just peppering them in off time, staggering Rusev. But it is fleeting, as Rusev grabs hold of him and tosses him into a pancake. With one more twist or turn, this could have been a perfect little short match.

5. Colin Cassady vs. Bo Dallas

Colin Cassady is hilarious to me. As in, I giggled through this whole match. Cassady is a giant. He is clearly a tall guy, even though he just kind of looks like Edge slightly stretched out. So he's this giant guy, who loses ALL of his height once there's any kind of lock-up. He and Dallas lock up, and suddenly Dallas looks bigger. He starts wrestling like Spike Dudley the second they lock-up. Even his comebacks are like Spike Dudley, or any blowjob babyface tag team ever. BUT, when he makes his comebacks, his offense is sold like he is a GIANT. So he's wrestling like Bobby Fulton but then makes a comeback and Dallas is taking flip bumps like he's being tossed around by Andre. So I'm dying laughing as Dallas easily grounds Cassady with a headlock, and then Cassady starts elbowing Dallas' stomach to get out of it, but Dallas is jumping while taking these shots like he's comically  taking the offense of a giant man, but Cassady is facially acting like he's a tiny babyface desperately fighting for control. It's fucking hilarious. He works like fucking Tommy Rogers except he's 7 feet tall!! I can't stand it. It's too good. He'll always be desperately struggling to fight back, but then he'll hit a big boot like a giant and Dallas will go flying like he took a bat to the face. HOLY SHIT Cassady just threw himself down to the mat while whipping Dallas into the corner. Holy shit. He did it in the way tiny juniors throw themselves down, as if they're using ALL of their strength, every possible muscle in their little body, to whip this man into the buckles, like Mitch Williams falling off the mound after pitches because he was throwing so hard. I can't take it. That's like something Kalisto would do when wrestling Rusev. So, aside from breaking out in tears every time GIANT Colin Cassady worked as if he were Rey Misterio wrestling Kevin Nash on Nitro, I really liked Dallas in this. He worked a smarmy slow style, really rubbing it in that he was being methodical. And the crowd was booing and chanting boring, and that makes Dallas make a BO-lieve joke out of BO-ring. Dallas throws awesome back elbows and at one point plowed through Cassady with an awesome running back elbow variation. But Colin Cassady man. I can't deal. I love it.

Fun episode, sometimes for the reasons they weren't totally going for. HOWEVER, fun is fun is fun.


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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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