The Best And Worst Of WWE NXT 9/9/15: Beautiful Sexy Fierce

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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for September 9, 2015.

Worst: Oh No, These Entrance Themes

This week, we confront that sneaking feeling that NXT losing 3 of its top 4 female competitors will be detrimental to the product HEAD ON with two women’s matches. Carmella faces Peyton Royce (formerly KC Cassidy, or “Cassie”), and Dana Brooke takes on Billie Kay (formerly Jessie McKay, or “Jessie”). Neither match is bad, really — we’ll get to that in a second — but it definitely feels like we’re starting over. Carmella — Carmella — is the veteran here, the woman with the most in-ring experience in WWE and one of two with a defined character. Dana Brooke’s starting to put it together and isn’t the hopeless void of stressful conversations that Eva Marie’s become, but she’s closer to that than Sasha Banks. Cassidy and McKay are both experienced performers, but they’re WWE rookies, and they aren’t gonna do anything to get noticed until someone tells them to. So the women’s division doesn’t feel bad, it just feels like walking into a busted-up house, taking a deep breath and saying, “okay, what do we do first?”

What we do first is get Royce and Kay as far away from their entrance themes as possible.

At some point in the early 2000s, WWE commissioned at 40,000 breathy, confident R&B tracks about how a woman — even THIS woman, perhaps — is strong, sexy, powerful, independent and aware that you want to have sex with her, but she’s probably not gonna let you, unless you try hard. 40,000 of them. ♫ “I’m so hot, but I’m also good at stuff, and I want you, and I know you want me, but you can’t have me, unless you get with me, ooooh” ♫

Sometimes a performer’s good enough to break through these themes and become their own thing. Remember that Bayley’s first entrance theme was the generic Divas classic ‘Feelin’ Me,’ and even her first character-appropriate theme was called ‘Boyfriend.’ All we know about Royce and Kay so far is that they’re Australian (and Kay has “long legs”), so here’s what we get:

Peyton Royce’s theme is called ‘HOLLA BACK,’ which is about a desperate girl who will kill herself if senpai doesn’t notice her.

“Boy you lookin’ so good, I really wish you would, make me number one in your life! So don’t you say no to me, got me going crazy, I just cain’t live without your love!”

Billie Kay’s theme is almost the same song — try singing the lyrics to one over the other, and it works — and is called “Beautiful Sexy Fierce.” It might be the worst Divas theme I’ve ever heard, and yes, that includes ‘Brie Mode.’

“Hey! You wanna play! You wanna rock me up and up and down, spin my body round and round! So! Let’s start a game! I’ll be the queen up on this chess board, see, and your king can come up to me.”

The singer might be saying “B” there, but who knows? She also says “my name is Ashley” in the middle of the song, so I’m not sure anyone actually listened to this beyond the opening lines. Regardless, Billie Kay’s entrance theme is about propositioning a guy with really weak chess entendres. ♫ “Oh! Come on my face! Like in chess!” ♫

Thank God Blue Pants got a dumb karaoke cover of the Price is Right music and not somebody talking about how they want to get blown in pants.

Best: NXT Final Battle

Up next, we get our first first-round Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic match of the week and the NXT in-ring debuts of Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa. Graves is predictably complimentary of Gargano — how many times did I have to watch Sterling James Keenan wrestle in Cleveland, I mean, come on — and is like, “also, Tommaso Ciampa.”

The story of the match is that Tyler Breeze had requested an “important” tag team partner for the Dusty Classic, and Regal gave him Bull Dempsey. We’re not sure yet if Regal had faith in Dempsey’s upswing of momentum coming out of TakeOver or if he just hates Breeze’s guts and wants him to fail, but it is what it is. Breeze is either so disappointed in having to tag with Dempsey that he refuses to try, or he’s constantly in his own head about his future and subconsciously sabotaging the opportunities he’s getting. That’s why he lost to Liger, right? Because he was so frustrated about going nowhere that when he got a legitimate chance to make an international name for himself, he assumed the worst going in and tanked it. Now he’s got a first-round match against two guys smaller than him who aren’t even WWE employees, and he loses.

I hope Gargano and Ciampa can pull off an upset in the second round and move past Corbin and Rhyno, because these two versus Jason Jordan and Chad Gable could be the sleeper match of the entire tournament. Also, because I want to see Jordan and Gable f*ck up their Christmas.

Best: Dana Brooke’s Face

I’m starting to figure out Dana Brooke. We’ve always thought the hook was that she was ridiculously and undeservedly arrogant, but I don’t think that’s it. To me, she reads like a good-hearted person who came up with a lot of terrible expectations, and learned that she had to be cold-hearted and separatist and “in it for herself” to succeed. She’s someone who took the Sami Zayn/Bayley “dark road” path before she was even allowed to get started.

If you listen to what she’s been saying, she’s right. Charlotte did get a bunch of opportunities really fast because of who she’s related to, and she continues to. That’s not to say Charlotte didn’t bust her ass and get better faster than basically anyone in NXT ever, but the “Flair” thing is still her selling point. On Raw, she’s wooing and claiming everybody knows how much she loves to party, because she’s a by-proxy, modern, female Ric Flair. Dana’s just Dana, and she ain’t got sh*t. Here, she mentions that people think she’s just here because of how she looks, and that they lump her in with people like Eva Marie who are just a body and face and don’t care. That makes her feel disgusted, because she’s actively sacrificing things to be here and learn. She could’ve gone to the Arnold Classic in Spain, but she turned down an invitation to wrestle. She’s making the scrappy, underdog babyface choices we’d usually love someone for, but she’s got no way to communicate it like a human being. Instead, she’s caught in this situation where she’s a tiny, passionate, emotionally fragile, good person piloting this massive Miss Piggy Lady Marmalade mech, and if she leaves the mech, she’ll be crushed.

Worst: Dana Brooke As A Submission Specialist

Dana Brooke wrestles Sexy Chesswoman in the second Divas match of the night, and it’s probably the best Dana Brooke singles match we’ve seen. She’s starting to figure out the basics, and knows that she has to be unique and utilize her strengths if she’s going to succeed. She doesn’t have Bayley’s connection to the crowd, Sasha’s innate understanding of being her character walking or Charlotte’s absurd, gymnastic athleticism. Integrating the head-pat into a corner taunt when she’s breaking a hold is inspired, and for the most part she’s getting it.

That said, Dana should not be attempting submission holds. Here she is trying to wrap her legs around Billie Kay’s head. Think in your head about how easy it is to put your legs around someone’s head, and then look at this:

1. Sit down next to your opponent and put your legs on their chest, like you’re doing a cross armbreaker without the arm or the breaking
2. Lift one of your legs completely, while poor Drake has to crouch there asking “DO YOU GIVE UP” to someone with the Christmas Story lamp on their chest
3. Put your foot against the elbow on their opposite arm
4. headscissors (?)

Rich Brennan should’ve called it a “figure-four headlock” and claimed The Miz taught it to her in Cleveland.

While we’re on the subject, you know what my least favorite move in all of wrestling is? When female wrestlers go for dropkicks but don’t get both feet up. It drives me nuts. Sometimes they don’t even get ONE foot up, and end up flying karate kicking their opponents in the sternum. If you can’t do a dropkick, man, don’t do a dropkick. Fire Pro taught us that there are like 400 running strikes, and the Billie Kay big boot is at least 100 times better than the kung fu moves I was pulling as a fat kid in middle school.

Best: Tye By God Dillinger

I have no idea why I love Perfect 10 Tye Dillinger as much as I do. The gimmick is based on almost nothing. He thinks he’s a 10. That’s it. The hype video for him is just his instrumental music playing while he stands around a bunch of signs that say “10.” It’s nothing, and if Xavier Woods wasn’t playing Final Fantasy fanfare on a trombone and Big E wasn’t eating kazoos on Raw, he’d be my favorite thing in wrestling. WHY? WHAT IS THE MAGIC OF THE PERFECT 10?

Best: Izzy Gets Her Day

The only disappointing thing about Bayley winning the NXT Women’s Championship at TakeOver: Brooklyn is that it had to happen in Brooklyn, and that Izzy, her #1 Full Sail superfan, couldn’t be there. Izzy’s family posted videos of her reaction to the match and they’re the most adorable, reaffirming things in the world. Izzy’s our first public example of a young fan raised on NXT and allowed to have a female, pro wrestling role model that exists in the WWE Universe and actually has a character kids could (and should) admire. Bayley got bullied and kept her chin up and kept trying, and she won. At the end, all the people who’d bullied her realized they’d been jerks, and they all hugged and held hands in the ring. What’s the normal Divas story on TV, that nobody has an identity and everybody’s jealous?

Izzy gets to welcome back the champ, toast her (in an especially adorable moment) and get a tour of the Performance Center. It ends with this:

Wrestling is pretty great sometimes.

Best: Finn On The Big Stage

Speaking of wrestling being great, PRINCE DEVITT GOT HIS JACKET BACK. All we need to do now is bedazzle it with some LED lights and have him ride Samoa Joe to the ring.

If you were worried that Finn Bálor’s entrance and act wouldn’t translate to mainstream WWE audiences, especially when he isn’t painted up as The Demon, check out how f*cking amazing it looks on this episode. It actually works better here than at Full Sail, I think, because the theatricality seems like the kind of thing you assume you’ll see at a wrestling show. So many people just walk to the ring adjusting their wrists and trying to look like a bad-ass … Finn’s out here prancing around, snaking his body along with his music and getting over his entrance gestures to 10,000 people without an explanation. That works. Plus, giving it a bigger space helps let it breathe. Can you imagine The Undertaker trying to have a fancy entrance at Full Sail? You need a stadium for that. How great is it gonna be when Finn Bálor gets a stadium?

The main event was taped during … uh, Main Event, so the Finn Bálor and Samoa Joe vs. Lucha Dragons match gets Tom Phillips and Jimmy Uso on commentary. That’s not great, mostly because Tom Phillips voice just sounds like a guy saying NOT RICH BRENNAN over and over. The match itself is very good, though, and I continue to love Samoa Joe as the bigger guy who fights juniors instead of the big guy who fights bigger guys. Joe’s spent most of his career wrestling guys smaller than him, and his better matches against bigger opponents (like Kenta Kobashi) weren’t with “monsters.” Wasting him with Corbin, as surprisingly good as that match turned out to be, isn’t the way to go. Run him against Kalisto and he looks like himself again. Run him against Bálor — which their teaming in the tournament still seems to exist to set up — and you’ll get the kind of marquee main events you wanted when you brought him in and said he’d revolutionize things.

One small complaint: The Dragons, Blake & Murphy and The Ascension all going out like chumps in the first round doesn’t say a lot for the NXT Tag Team Championships. Neville went out in round one, too, and even if neither of the guys he held the belts with are still wrestling, that’s interesting. Are we blatantly using the tournament as a reinvention of the division? Are the Vaudevillains gonna get jobbed to the Mechanics in round two?