Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: NXT continued their three-week content blitz opposite Ultima Lucha Dos with Bayley tearing it up with Nia Jax in the main, American Alpha and The Authors of Pain going at it and Samoa Joe vs. Rhyno. Also, Hideo Itami is coming back soon. ALSO, Patrick Clark has USA pants with his face airbrushed on the leg. All important stuff.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for July 27, 2016.
Best: Nobody Wants Your Kisses, Wesley Blake
I spent most of the morning trying to figure out what the f*ck is up with Wesley Blake. Bill Hanstock described the look as, “trying to win Murphy back through jealousy.” I felt it was more like a show pony cosplaying as Captain America in a Marvel-themed equestrian event. Either way, dude shows up in a pony and tassels to something off the Pure Moods CD and spends the early part of the match unsuccessfully blowing kisses at Shinsuke Nakamura. It’s gonna be a long hour.
If you need an example of how great Nakamura is at non-verbally communicating with wrestling audiences — and his ability to make the corniest sh*t in the world cool — watch that kiss sequence. Blake blows him a kiss, so he catches it. That alone gets the crowd chanting, and then he starts sniffing it and making yuck faces. Blake tries another kiss, but Nakamura catches that as well. The crowd starts chanting THROW THEM BACK. Nak drops them on the ground and stamps them out with his foot. The crowd goes, OOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. To stamped-out blown kisses. There’s “over,” and then there’s the supernatural ability to hold hundreds (or thousands) of people in the palm of your hand for absolutely anything.
Note: I was hoping he was going to throw them back, just to see if Blake would sell them. You know he would’ve.
The match itself is your standard Nakamura NXT affair, with him taking a little bit of offense before flipping a switch, hitting all his signature moves and winning strong. Of the BAMF matches of the night, it wasn’t the best. Still, Nakamura is a cultural event, and Blake’s got a pretty good clothesline.
After the match, William Regal shows up and announces Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Samoa Joe for the NXT Championship at NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn II, which is both an inevitability and a great way to piss off Joe. Is it too late to give Cryme Tyme an NXT run and change the name of that show to TakeOver: Brooklyn Brooklyn?
Worst: And Now, A Word From The Band
We’d like to thank California-Oregon Line for their hit song, “FIGHT YOU IN REAL LIFE,” it’s one of like five official theme songs for NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn!
Best: Billie Kay
Shout-out to whichever Full Sail student watched Carmen: A Hip-Hopera and decided Billie Kay should have a hip-hop version of ‘Habanera’ from Carmen as her entrance theme. Billie showing up with all that drama and All Blue Everything makes her play like a mirror universe Eva Marie. Petition that we change her name to EVA MARIE DARK.
Her opponent is Santana Garrett, wrestling in what appears to be a sexy Rainbow Brite Halloween costume. Santana’s probably the best NXT enhancement talent ever, if we’re being honest. She always works overtime to make her opponent look great, and she’s got enough street cred that you always think she might win, even if she never does. Also, +1 to NXT for finally trying to give Billie a character other than “I’M BILLIE, THE OTHER ONE IS CASSIE” or whatever. For a while, the biggest character development she had was, “I bought a belt with my name on it and I’m wearing it across my stomach, because I don’t know how belts work.” Her getting on Smackdown once and letting it make her ego spiral out of control isn’t the most original storyline ever, but it’s something, and with all the roster call-ups now’s the time to start doing things.
Kay wins with a big boot, because they’re into making her a giant even though she’s like two inches taller than everybody else. I’d consider this the start of big things for Kay, but I feel like she’s just getting a few wins before TakeOver so she can eat an O-Face.
Speaking of that …
Best: She Is The One Called Ember Moon
I’ll ramble on about this more later in case I’m somehow wrong and this is a debut vignette for Baron Corbin’s little brother Bernsen, but Athena/Ember Moon is f*cking rad and I’m happy that she’s (1) going to be on TV soon and (2) gets fancy, melodramatic Halloweeny moon videos. They should get someone to narrate them in Vincent Price voice.
Worst: Adrian Nails’ Gear
Up next is TM61 versus our personal favorite NXT jobber, the spider-themed Final Fight baddie ROB RYZIN, and a guy named “Adrian Nails.” Nails is wrestling in ripped-up jeans with kneepads over them, and, perhaps most egregiously, a brown belt with black shoes. Bruh. What Tennessee indie promotion’s street fight did they find Adrian Nails in?
A supplemental Best to the match itself, though, because it’s what it should be: a strong, showcase win for TM61 as we keep them strong and build them up during the Revival/Ciampa and Gargano beef. American Alpha being spirited away to Smackdown leaves a big spot open in the NXT tag team division, and nobody’s more qualified to kinda-sorta fill it than Shane Hastega and New Girl‘s Nick Miller.
Best: NO REMORSE JOSE
Steve Cutler is the next person to get the Billie Kay “this is almost a character, shut up, we just started trying” remake. Now he’s got Wolverine sideburns and a denim vest, and Tom Phillips goes full tattletale talking about how the Performance Center trainers think Cutler has a “horrible attitude.” It’s almost a character! Shut up, we just started trying!
He faces No Way Jose, who is suddenly f*cking SMAUG due to Austin Aries’ dance betrayal. Jose gets crazy eyes and beats both the salsa and merengue out of Cutler. Seriously, Jose is only like 6-foot-3 (6-foot-6 with hair), but in the increasingly tiny world of NXT stars he comes across as a giant. Him going angry-faced and trying to put his fist through your skull is pretty great. After the match, he cuts a very good (despite obviously being very scripted) promo about how you shouldn’t take him lightly just because he tries to have a good time.
Y’all, Jose might be the dude.
Best: Buddy Murphy, Meet Kota Ibushi
Blake and Murphy continue their incredibly realistic depiction of a loving but doomed same-sex relationship by ending up wrestling parallel matches against former New Japan Pro Wrestling superstars. Murphy actually tops Blake’s trouncing at the hands of Shinsuke Nakamura by getting kicked in the face repeatedly by KOTA IBUSHI, appearing courtesy of the Cruiserweight Classic. Watching the people in the crowd respond to his name on the screen by putting their hands on their heads and excitingly standing up is pretty great, even if the CWC is happening in the same building.
But yeah, Ibushi is as dope as advertised, and probably the most constructively dangerous wrestler I’ve ever seen. He’s like a panther somebody let out of a cage. It’s beautiful and graceful and it’s doing all this crazy stuff but it’s also actually killing you. He’s always finding fun new ways to kick you in the face as hard as possible and drop you on your head, and real talk, Buddy Murphy earned a LOT of respect and admiration from me for this match. I liked Murphy/Ibushi a lot more than Blake/Nak, from the pacing to the heel offense to the finishing sequence, which is a strike exchange without going overboard and asking us to pretend Murphy can stand there throwing hands with the Hard Hit Prince.
I’d say “I hope Ibushi sticks around and wrestles on NXT more often,” but that’s a foregone conclusion, isn’t it? Even if he’s not a regular right away, he seems like an important cog in the continuing acceptance of/love affair with Japanese talent in NXT. You can’t ask for a better core group of Japanese stars than Nakamura, Asuka, Hideo Itami, Ibushi and Akira Tozawa, can you? Unless you go back in time 30 years and raid All Japan’s Young Boys, I don’t think you can.
Best: Joe Vs. Regal
I love everything about this interaction. I love that Joe has a cogent point about how he was made to jump through a bunch of hoops despite proving himself in the Dusty Classic, and how Nakamura hadn’t had to. I love that while that’s a cogent point, it’s also totally reasonable to give Nak a title shot after he beat Austin Aries and two former NXT Champions. I love that Regal stands his ground and tells Joe that he runs the show, not Joe, and that if Joe doesn’t want to wrestle he’ll just strip him of the title and let Nak wrestle someone else for it. I love that that’s the right business move, but also makes Regal kinda look like a dick for threatening to strip a dominant champion who pissed him off for not wanting to feel disrespected. Heel and face are so clearly defined, yet there’s enough of a gray shade in there that you can argue from either side.
Also, you know, this ends with Samoa Joe vs. Shinsuke Nakamura for the NXT Championship in Brooklyn. I really hope Joe eats his lunch and beats him, and Regal has to keep throwing bigger and tougher things at Joe to get the belt off of him. Dude beat Demon Finn, you know? He should be able to beat ANYBODY right now. I mean, I don’t know what’s bigger than Demon Finn and Nakamura, but we’ve got time.
Plus, if you keep it going, you can turn Joe face again by letting him be a badass that takes on all challenges, even if he acts like an asshole about it. Or he stays heel and I just keep rooting for him to murk all the overpowered babyfaces. I’m good with that.
