Previously on the vintage Best and Worst of WWE NXT: The game show era of NXT ended and the Full Sail era began with the debut of Bo Dallas, the original version of the Ascension and the baby versions of CJ Parker and Tyler Breeze. This week, The Future — technically The Present, in the past — debuts.
If you’d like to continue following along from the beginning of the beginning, you can read about episode one here and watch episode two here. If you’d like to read our older columns about the current weekly show, click over here. With Spandex is on Twitter, so follow it, and like us on Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter.
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And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WWE NXT for June 27, 2012.
Best: Seth Debutin’ Rollins
Long before he was Freakin’, The Man, The Architect or Held Harmless, Seth Rollins was a post-hardcore Metalcore mosh gymnast from Davenport, Iowa, who just wanted to live his dreams, dance like nobody’s watching, and sometimes hang dudes upside down from the ceiling and stand under them so their blood would fall on him and his friends. This is Rollins’ NXT debut, from way back when it was still weird to call Tyler Black “Seth Rollins.”
His opponent is Kaitentai Dojo’s Taishi Takizawa, wrestling under the name “Jiro” because it’s 2012, Hideo Itami hasn’t yet made the promotion safe for Asian stars to have something other than I’M FROM THE MYSTERIOUS ORIENT gimmicks, and because the movie Jiro Dreams Of Sushi came out in 2011. It was a simpler time, in all definitions of the word “simple.” If they’d signed Nakamura in 2013 instead of 2016 his name would’ve been “Gangnam Styles.”
Rollins wins with the weirdest looking Pedigree I’ve ever seen:
He calls it the “Blackout,” which is actually a better way to describe the move now than in 2012.
After the match, he delivers another one of his classic “go to Pinterest and read the first five inspirational graphics you see” promos. Verbatim:
“I came here to NXT to do what I do best; rip the roots out of the ground, the clouds out of the sky, turn the place upside down and CHANGE THE WORLD, one heart at a time!”
Best: That’s Sister Abigail, Right
Bray Wyatt’s not here yet, but this week’s pre-debut vignette features the first appearance of what vaguely constitutes the NXT version of the Wyatt Family. That’s Luke Harper in there, of course, and Jody Ray Kristofferson, aka “Garrett Dylan.” When you wonder why they got average guy names like “Bray Wyatt” and “Luke Harper,” remember this is from an era when every NXT star got a brand, trademark-friendly handle like “Garrett Dylan” that sounded like an actor trying not to reveal his ethnic last name. Or like, a child model. Here’s beautiful GARRETT DYLAN for Osh Kosh B’Gosh!
Two notes:
- Bray doesn’t show up in NXT until episode four, but he’d been doing the character in FCW for a couple of months with NXT season two reject Eli Cottonwood as his original Luke Harper.
- The lady on the left who may or definitely may not be Sister Abigail (because she’s a dead nun, right? Whose corpse can scream if you set it on fire? I don’t know what’s going on on Smackdown these days) is Audrey Marie, who you’ll be seeing more of. Women didn’t escape the Garrett Dylan naming matrix. Here she is beating Sasha Banks. She’s no longer wrestling, but fun fact, she’s married to Tyler Breeze.
Best: Let’s Go Krugering
Up next is the NXT debut of Leo Kruger, the artist eventually known as Adam Rose. You might remember the character as a sort of pro wrestling Kraven the Hunter, but before that he was just an Arrogant Young Man From Somewhere Else. WWE was big on those in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Nondescript, nearly hairless muscular guys in trunks, usually with a ponytail or a Caesar, who love throwing big clotheslines and DDTs. Sometimes REVERSE DDTs! Those guys love to roll the dice.
O.G. Kruger is just a guy who is a little too honest about his God-given talents, pointing out that his name means “Lion” and that he’s the king of the WWE Jungle. Kruger means, “occupational name for a maker or seller of stoneware mugs and jugs,” which is less impressive. It’s also the last name of several famous South Africans, including a cricketer (Garnett), a golfer (Jbe’), a discus thrower (Frantz) and a child molesting janitor who murders teens in their sleep (Frederick). Can’t verify that that last one is South African.
Kruger’s opponent is another familiar face, especially if you’re a wrestling fan born in the 1910s.
It’s future Drama King (miss you, bro) and Vaudevillain Aiden English. He’s got the comedy and tragedy masks on his butt, but his gimmick here appears to be, “nobody will notice I’m balding if I wet my hair.”
Kruger wins with the Coquina Clutch, which is a much better finisher (obviously) than that clothesline he eventually does where he builds momentum by slow trotting.
Best: Leo Kruger’s Mom Is Adorable
I’ll be honest with you. I don’t know if this is actually Leo Kruger/Adam Rose’s mom, but there’s a lady on YouTube who recorded Kruger’s NXT debut off of her television in her living room and made sure to also get the TV itself and part of her wedding photos in the shot. These are the only three comments on the video:
She’s also got a Twitter account dedicated exclusively to retweeting every mildly positive Leo Kruger/Adam Rose/Aldo Rose/Krugar tweet. I don’t know if they’re actually related or what, but I wish anyone in my family was this interested in my success. I think my dad thinks I still work at the Olive Garden.
Best/Worst: Richie Steamboat
Speaking of awesome parents, up next we get the NXT debut of Richie Steamboat, son of WWE Hall of Fame legend, former WCW Heavyweight Champion and legitimately one of the very greatest pro wrestlers ever, Ricky ‘The Dragon’ Steamboat. You might remember Richie as the baby The Dragon occasionally brought to the ring dressed like him, or from Ricky calling him out as a future WWE superstar during his Hall of Fame induction speech.
Richie is Ricky like Ted DiBiase Jr. is the Million Dollar Man, but that’s not necessarily an insult, and he’s clearly got Ricky Steamboat’s blood in him somewhere. He’s got the arm drags, and he’s got some believable high-flying. He’s very much a product of early 2010s WWE, though, with the little trunks and the wet hair and the constant playing to the crowd. Really surprised they didn’t Michael McGillicutty him and call him “Kona Kawai.” But yeah, Richie gets his first NXT match against RICKTOR, which he wins with a Slingblade. Well, sort of.
Pretty sure you could fit an entire Hiroshi Tanahashi in that gap. Victor could not withstand the power of Richie’s fingertips grazing his neck and was knocked out. The Dragon is happy, though, and that’s what matters. Also, this picture of a happy dad Ricky Steamboat with a random Kane fan behind him for some reason:
I’m sure I’ll write about him a lot, and not to jump the gun on his career too much, but Richie Steamboat ends up being an incredibly sad story. The poor guy just kinda disappeared from TV for a while, amidst rumors that he’d been released, and a couple of years later his dad announces that Richie’d suffered a career-ending back injury and wouldn’t even get to wrestle again. So Ricky ‘The Dragon’ Steamboat’s ambitious, talented kid who’d been in the business and in the ring since birth, basically, had to hang up his boots at 27.
At least we’ve still got Viktor!
Best: Two Minutes Of Cesaro!
Between indie darling Claudio Castagnoli and brutally underutilized “good hand” Cesaro, we had ANTONIO Cesaro, a former rugby player who was kicked out of the league for unsportsmanlike conduct. He also spoke five languages, which he would regularly use to tell us we were all stupid. He’s still Cesaro, but WWE hadn’t really given him any opportunities to convince casual fans to say, “wow, Cesaro’s actually REALLY STRONG AND PERFECT AND GREAT.” It’s arguable that they still haven’t, or that the fans just weren’t paying that close of attention when they did. The last 15 years of WWE are the only time when a guy can win a dozen championships and still have half the crowd not know who he is.
Anyway, Cesaro is really great, an opinion you agree with from every person on the Internet. He was managed by AKSANA around this time, so she also makes an appearance. From the Best and Worst of NXT season 3 primer:
Aksana is from Lithuania and a former Miss Fitness International. She was so bad at everything pro wrestling-related that she became a cult favorite. Let me put it to you this way: her signature move was crawling around on all fours before going for a pin, and the legitimate high point of her career was dancing while trapped under a net in a backstage comedy segment.
Cesaro gets a quick win over Dante Dash (get it), a guy I’ve previously described as being both Prime Time Players as one guy. Imagine if Apollo Crews had less personality. He’s basically an extremely muscular house plant. He loses to the Neutralizer, back when it was called “The Neutralizer” and not the “Gotch-style Neutralizer,” as though there’s a different Neutralizer Cesaro’s choosing not to do.
Worst: Somebody Hinder Jinder
The opposite of Cesaro is Jinder Mahal, who in 2012 was an evil foreigner who did a camel clutch. In 2017, he’s an evil foreigner who doesn’t do a camel clutch because he never wins matches, but recently teamed up with the evil foreigner that does the camel clutch. Honestly the only career progression for Jinder in the past six years is that somebody bought him a Bowflex and a warehouse full of steroids.
Jinder wrestles the most throwaway 2010-style WWE match you can imagine. Like, he could host seminars on how to pose, grab a seven-minute chinlock, pose, then go for the finisher. He defeats Jason Jordan here, which clearly irritates Jim Ross, because Jason Jordan is COLLEGE SPORTS in capital letters. J.R. went home after this and wrote BLUE CHIPPER on his notebook and drew a bunch of hearts around it.
Spoiler alert: a lot of the early days of NXT involve Jinder Mahal getting illogically pushed to championship tournament finals, because he was a main roster guy who wasn’t doing anything and was enough of a veteran they figured they could send him down to developmental to teach Tyler Black how to work.
Best: The Dream Of The Smackdown Mid-Card Is Alive On NXT
Here’s the original, better version of The Ascension vs. the original, considerably worse version of the Usos. I’ll be honest; since their heel turn on Smackdown, I have erased the fun-loving Usos from my brain. They were so stagnant for so long and the turn did more for them than a turn’s done for someone in years. It was like Heath Ledger’s Joker showing up to swirlie Cesar Romero.
The match isn’t anything hot and only goes about three minutes, but one of the best parts of pre-Crisis NXT episodes is that they didn’t have pay-per-views, so they crammed as much as they could into every TV episodes. You’d get hour-long shows with like, six matches on them. That’s crazy time management. Plus, I mean, honestly, do you want more than three minutes of any version of the Ascension versus Frat Umaga’s left and right brain?
The Ascension wins with the Downcast, which is still two weak grapples back-to-back.
Note: Isn’t it weird to see Full Sail looking that small and empty? Those bleacher in the background are barren.
Best: Johnny Curtis Joins The One Percent
This week’s main event is Johnny Curtis vs. Derrick Bateman, the top stars from NXT Redemption. It’s better than anybody’s ever going to give it credit for being, but it’s only five minutes, so they don’t get as much time as they need to tell the story they’re trying to tell. Bateman’s always had a bum knee — it’s the reason he got curbed every time something resembling a push happened to him in WWE — so Curtis targets it, and Bateman sells his ass off. There’s a great dragonscrew legwhip in the middle of the match that puts Bateman down and really starts the torture, and it comes back at the end when Bateman’s able to avoid making the same mistake twice and hit a desperation Headlock Driver for the win. It’s called the “One-Percenter” now, but here’s it’s called the DBD. Like the DDT, but for Derrick Bateman.
Honestly, the only real downside to NXT going to Full Sail and changing formats is that it lost some of Game Show NXT’s direction. That’s such a weird thing to type, but game show NXT at least had a goal. You were trying to win so you could get a contract and move up. It had consequence, even if it was stupid as shit and full of worked obstacle courses. Even Redemption had a wad of stories it was trying to tell, but Full Sail NXT, at least in its early days, is just, “here’s some wrestling, folks! Hope you like some of these guys!” And to be honest again, as good as it was from time to time, NXT didn’t get around to figuring out what NXT was until Sami Zayn showed up and Paige and Emma were like, “we should do more than we’re asked.” It’ll be fun to see them figure it out along the way.
