Previously on the Best and Worst of vintage Full Sail NXT: Main roster star turned future NXT signee Drew McIntyre defeated NXT signee and future main roster star Seth Rollins in the show’s first truly good match. Also on the episode, Jim Ross talked at length about how Cesaro’s been “cutting the cheese,” and Natalya wrestled, but cheese cuttage was somehow not discussed.
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And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WWE NXT for August 1, 2012.
This Week’s Historical Significance
Oh, this is a big one.
At the top of the show, Interim (for a very long time) General Manager Dusty Rhodes announces that the show will be holding a “Gold Rush Tournament” to name the first-ever NXT Champion. If that name sounds familiar, you probably remember it from that time Shawn Michaels brutally murdered Shelton Benjamin. And that tournament starts tonight, featuring — get this — people who have won matches on the previous episodes of NXT. So that batch includes:
Spoiler alert on that Richie Steamboat/Leo Kruger match you’d been waiting the past five years to watch.
On top of it including people who’ve won so far, retroactively justifying the results of the previous five episodes, the Gold Rush Tournament also features two rematches between people who’ve faced off before, but have also independently won matches to be here: Seth Rollins vs. Drew McIntyre, and Richie/Kruger. And that tournament starts right here, right now.
How great is that? The major downside to the first batch of NXT episodes is that they seemed like wrestling for the sake of wrestling, and we’re not really building to anything. Now suddenly we’re in a tournament for what’ll go on to be one of the most prestigious championships in WWE, built by a GM who appears to sincerely give a fuck about the people watching, featuring people who have succeeded at the “sports” half of sports-entertainment.
The other interesting thing is that both rematches have the results reversed.
On the July 18 edition of NXT, Leo Kruger took advantage of Richie Steamboat only knowing like two moves (and the approximation of a Sling Blade) to get his feet on the ropes and steal a pin.
In the rematch, Kruger has a submission locked in on Steamboat, but Steamboat manages to fall into the ropes for the break. HOW THE TABLES HAVE TURNED. This pisses Kruger off, and he loses focus long enough for Richie to hit a (much, much better) Sling Blade for the win. Solid win for the one guy in the tournament who never made it to the main roster.
Rematch number two is Rollins vs. McIntyre, which (I believe) improves upon the first match while continuing to establish Rollins as an incredible natural babyface. In fact, it’s crazy going back and watching these matches and seeing this dorky scene kid instantly connecting, somehow, and know they spent several years pushing his voice up through his nose and making him the least likable person in the world. I think he’s got great body language, is the thing. He’s got more charisma and excitement in his body than he does in his mouth.
What’s great about these two working together (as I illustrated in GIF form the last time they faced off) is that we aren’t really intimately familiar with Rollins’ moveset yet, so what he does can still be a surprise. And between those surprises, you’ve got PLEASE NOTICE ME AGAIN-ass Drew McIntyre just laying the hell into him. Drew Mac was (and I guess is again, as soon as he’s a regular part of the show) one of the best in the company and looking like he was legitimately beating your ass, especially if you’re smaller than him.
Like the previous match, the finish is built around Rollins going for a Phoenix Splash off the second rope. Like last week, McIntyre rolls out of the way, and Rollins lands on his feet. This time, though, Rollins is able to not get absolutely eaten alive by a big boot and counters with the [Pedigree] for the win. Rollins advances over the strongest opponent in the tournament in round one, moves on to a round two match where no matter who wins, he’ll be up against a main roster talent. Great stuff, and great planning.
Best/Worst: Audrey Marie Vs. Raquel Diaz
One of the most interesting things about the early days of NXT is that the crowd doesn’t understand the gravity of the quest they’re about to take, so they aren’t automatically conditioned to, say, appreciate women’s wrestling. And it’s not their fault, because WWE isn’t there yet, either. That doesn’t really kick in until Paige and Emma start tearing it up, and people have to notice.
Here, everything’s still a “deeee-vas match” and goes maybe three or four minutes, and it’s fine, but it’s not ambitious. At best, you’re gonna get some talented ladies doing weird stuff to see what works. For example, Raquel Diaz, Pokemon gym leader on an “exfoliating ugliness tour.” But even that’s not too far from what, like, Candice Michelle would be doing on Raw.
What I’m getting at is that this match ends with a “you can’t wrestle” chant for Raquel Diaz (and/or both women) because a couple of spots aren’t super smooth, and that’s not a very NXT Full Sail thing for them to do. Even a year later they’d be more forgiving, because they knew WWE was finally attempting a thing. I mean, until Eva Marie shows up, and then it’s batshit.
This week we meet Audrey Marie — the lady in the tree from the Wyatt Family videos, although those are totally unrelated — and in my opinion she’s one of the most conventionally beautiful women ever in NXT. She’s so beautiful she ended up marrying Tyler Breeze, which is like, the bar for conventional beauty. That guy thinks sunsets are ugly. Despite being a former FCW Florida Divas Champion, Audrey spends most of her time on NXT as enhancement talent, losing matches and getting the letter “L” written on her forehead in lipstick.
Before she gets released in the middle of 2013, the surprisingly Forrest Gump-like NXT career of Audrey Marie includes her:
- turning heel and accidentally getting Emma over huge as a babyface
- being Sasha Banks’ first real feud and giving us our earliest examples of, “hey, Sasha Banks is pretty good”
- teaming with Summer Rae in what’s more or less the original version of the Beautiful Fierce Females
Really hoping her heel turn involved a mirror and I just forgot about it.
Best: Speaking Of Tyler
This is the closest Tyler Breeze ever got to the NXT Championship.
(Shut up, I’m not the one who booked him to lose to every new signee for a year.)
NXT Redemption regulars Hunico and Camacho (or as I like to call him, “David O-Tonga”) get a jobber squash against Mike Dalton and Jason Jordan and … lose it, amazingly. Dalton gets almost zero offense until the finish, in which he gets catapulted into Camacho and rolls him up for three. Because, LOL Camacho.
Best: Three Ain’t Enough, Man
This week’s remaining moment of historical significance is the NXT debut of Big E, before he lost his last name — Langston! Never forget! — and way before he abandoned weight-lifting metaphors and in-ring intensity for forcing people to eat butthole-themed cereal and uncomfortable humping. Here, Big E is a MONSTER. The original version of Big E was like a compact Braun Strowman, a quicker Ryback, a guy who’d just hit you with five of the same move in a row super quick because he could. Simple stuff was effective. He’d just knee you to death, slam you to death and then drop you on your face.
He hasn’t developed the “five” gimmick yet — we’ll get to that when it picks up — but he’s already practicing repetition, and turning generic pre-set create-a-wrestler Adam Mercer into a mid-ring stain.
To recap, this week we got:
- an NXT Championship tournament …
- featuring two future NXT Champions
- the debut of a third future NXT Champion
- a win for a future NXT Tag Team Champion (and a guy who also should’ve been NXT Champion)
- a Divas match ending with an “I should get serious about this” promo from the future first NXT Women’s Champion
Pretty good checklist for six episodes in, huh?
