Pre-show notes:
– Here’s a link to this week’s episode.
– Sharing is a fun and nice thing to do. Do that or I’ll review nothing but CJ Parker matches.
– Also, be sure you’re following our look back at NXT season 1, both because it lets you see where a lot of today’s biggest WWE stars started out, and because it will make you appreciate the crap out of modern NXT.
– Follow us on Twitter @withleather, follow me personally @MrBrandonStroud and like us on Facebook.
Please click through for the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for January 15, 2014.
Best: NXT Triple H … Pretty Great
I’m going to be really happy when Triple H stops wrestling high-profile matches where he trounces former UFC Heavyweight Champions and makes everybody look like garbage and just settles into the real “Vince McMahon” role, where he’s a cool guy who shows up and announces big things and makes our wrestling shows entertaining.
I can’t say enough about what Triple H (and company) has done to make NXT great, so if he was coming out here to announce that he’d bought Lorde’s Pure Heroine album and thought it was “really good” I’d be fine with it. Instead, he announces the live NXT show for the WWE Network on February 27 (which is gonna be awesome), puts over NXT as the future of the business (THIS business) and leaves.
I like you a lot, NXT Triple H.
Best: Tyler Breeze Actually Gets To Wrestle (And He’s Good)
The show opens with a 10-minute Adrian Neville vs. Tyler Breeze grudge match and it’s good, but the best part is getting to see Tyler Breeze actually wrestle.
See, back when he was Mike Dalton, all he ever did was lose those hilarious NXT tag matches where an established team takes on two badly-dressed nobodies with horrible names like BLAKE CRANSTON and JAYMES JASON or whatever, so we didn’t get to see if he was any good at wrestling. Then he becomes Tyler Breeze, male model and master improvisor, and he looks and acts like God on f*cking wheels but he immediately gets into a beef with CJ Parker built around photobombing and iPhone attacks, so we didn’t get to see if he was any good at wrestling.
He’s good at wrestling!
I really enjoyed the match with Neville for those glimpses of Breeze’s real athleticism — the Jericho-style springboard dropkick was especially nice — but I also liked Neville, who seemed a little “looser” than we’re used to. He seemed less uptight. Maybe getting to work with a guy with a sense of humor and not all the Olivers Grey and Cories goddamn Grave of the world is all he needed. He’s got the SUDDEN FLIPPINESS~ necessary to make him a huge attraction on Raw, and it’d be nice if he could top Evan Bourne’s natural anti-charisma before giving it a shot.
Best Best Best: No Alex Riley
The best Best of the show (deserving five total Bests) was the absence of Alex Riley, who I’m hoping was stuffed into one of those production crates and shipped back to OVW, especially now that WWE is not affiliated with OVW.
The announce team was Tensai, Byron Saxton and Tom Phillips. Guess what? It was totally fine. They made some bro-ish jokes to one another, particularly about Prince Pretty and being cool enough to say another man is attractive, but it never reached that Michael Cole corrective ignorant shoutiness Alex Riley gets. Keep your commentary team exactly like this, NXT. Let Renee go off to be Raw’s first female color commentator to replace Jerry Lawler/get horrifically harassed by the assfaced chucklemonsters at the Raw commentary desk and let William Regal knee-tremble the dog shit out of people.
Worst: CJ Parker Appeared And Yeah, It’s Still A Nope
They still have no idea how a hippie’s supposed to act.
Best: Mojo Came In Like A Wrecking Ball
My favorite thing about the Bo Dallas vs. Mojo Rawley match — besides Bo explaining that he chose his all-white gear so his fans would know he’s “as pure as the driven Bo” — was that it made perfect sense and worked overcome to hide Mojo’s weaknesses.
See, Mojo’s enthusiasm is infectious and he’s got a lot of raw physical ability, but man, he is not a fantastic wrestler right now. He’s got zero facial expressions (he doesn’t even have a default one) and the reason his offense is RUN AND JUMP AND PUT MY BUTT IN FACES is because motherf*cker probably can’t do a hiptoss without Eva Marie’ing himself.
That said, it’s easy to cover up. The match was just Mojo repeatedly running at Bo and trying to maul him, and Bo cowering and fleeing and cowering and fleeing until he could use his greatest weapon (THE CORNER) and roll Mojo’s spazzy ass up for the three. Bo selling it after the match really brought it home. He immediately rolled out of the ring, sat on the ramp with a look of dis-Bo-lief and mouthed “what was THAT?” It’s a reasonable reaction.
What it was was hype.
Best: Business Lana
‘sup, Business Lana?
::ahem::
Я не люблю свой поступок. вы посмотрите очень приятно в деловом костюме. Я не буду повторять “что” на вас, пожалуйста, болтаться со мной. Я пишу в Интернете! Любовь, Брэндон.
Worst: Match Of The Year
The main-event is a rematch between Kofi Kingston and Alexander Rusev, and HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS, FOLKS because it is not great.
I’ll skip the normal analysis and put it to you this way … midway through the match the crowd totally turns on it and starts doing the wave. The wave. They start chanting things like “match of the year” and laughing about it, then start chanting for wrestlers who aren’t there. If this was two guys you’d never heard of (a la a season 1 of NXT Heath Slater vs. Michael Tarver match) maybe you give them the benefit of the doubt, but this is a match featuring a main roster guy who CLEANLY PINNED YOUR UNDISPUTED HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION two days ago. That guy cannot reliably entertain a room full of 250 people who are DESPERATE to see WWE guys. Why? Because they expect BASIC COMPETENCE.
I don’t know who to place the blame on, honestly, nor do I enjoy placing blame on ANYBODY in NXT, so we’ll just pretend the crowd did the wave around an empty ring for … what was that, 20 minutes? Jesus. It was like, eight. This was the worst. If Alex Riley had called it, I might’ve died.
On next week’s show: NOT THIS.
