Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: The tag titles changed hands, the UK championship stayed put, and Heavy Machinery remained the best part of any episode on which they appear.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for December 27, 2017. I am a slave to this, I am a masochist.
Best/Worst: Duality
Starting off the final episode of NXT for 2017 are the Street Profits. Merry Christmas, here’s Angelo Dawkins! Ugh.
I legitimately cannot get over just how good Montez Ford is compared to Dawkins. The duality of their tag team is stunning. Ford feeds off the crowd’s energy effortlessly and makes everything he does look fun. Dawkins just looks desperate for any sort of appreciation from the audience. Ford’s moves are crisp and exciting (goddamn, that frog splash!). Their body types are different, too: Dawkins can’t keep up with his partner’s footwork and moves like molasses.
Tonight, the Profits face off against Kriss Starr and Riley Apex (aka EVOLVE’s Shane Mercer). Starr is described by commentary as looking like a “young JBL,” which I presume means in a few short years, he will steal a fellow talent’s passport while on a European tour as some sort of pretty f*cked-up rib, making the victim frantically scramble to make it back to America in time for their next TV broadcast. (Sorry, I’ve been reading Justin Roberts’ book this week.)
After their victory, the Profits take to the crowd, where once again, the duality in each performer is evident. Ford delivers a solid promo about how his team came and saw in 2017, but they plan on conquering in 2018. Then Dawkins closes the segment out with a whimper by saying, “We comin’… We here.” Apparently, the Street Profits are the urban version of the Wyatt Family.
Worst: No One Understands
So let me get this straight: Ruby Riott gets into a feud with Sonya Deville in NXT, which culminates in Riott beating Deville on the TakeOver: WarGames pre-show. Both women then get called up to the main roster, with Deville being the heavy in a new faction on Raw and Riott being the leader of her own faction on Smackdown. Then both women get sent back down to NXT for a blow-off match in which the heavy from one faction chokes out the leader of another faction, thus killing Riott’s credibility as a final boss.
Then, Deville — who is now appearing weekly on Raw and looking strong against the likes of former NXT women’s champions Sasha Banks and Bayley — gets slotted into an NXT women’s championship match against Ember Moon, who finishes her in a wholly uninteresting 7-minute match. So in the past month, we’ve established that the leader of a faction on Smackdown isn’t good enough to beat a soldier in a faction on Raw, and neither main-roster talent can measure up to the NXT women’s champion, even though NXT is developmental and the main roster should bump all your stats up by at least a few points. WWE: We tell stories!
The post-match bit where Kairi Sane robotically marches out and points at Ember fell just as flat for me, but thankfully, it was briefly saved by Shayna Baszler. Her appearance was unexpected and her actions felt legitimately violent. But even that was nuked when Ember Moon just stood in the ring, watching Sane get choked out. What kind of babyface doesn’t intervene when a dastardly heel is attacking someone from behind? Yet another odd decision in Ember Moon’s character.
Best: The Walking Wounded
From Best and Worst Of NXT three weeks ago:
How weird is it that Johnny Gargano wasn’t even included in the original batch of qualifiers for the No. 1 contendership match? I mean, Trent Seven got a shot. Trent Seven. The weird thing is, based on Gargano winning here, I could see him actually taking the whole thing, ending with Gargano/Almas at TakeOver: Philadelphia, which he would lose via Tommaso Ciampa interference. Ciampa should be good to go in-ring by March, so that gives us our long-delayed Mega-Powers Explode match at TakeOver: New Orleans, while Almas drops the belt to someone, anyone.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only person to have my eggs in Jonathan Gargleman’s basket that early, but given how wrong I’ve been in my predictions recently, I’ll take any opportunity I can to bolster my confidence.
But before we get to Johnny Gargano’s surprising victory, let’s talk about the fatal four-way, because holy hell, was this match awesome. Right off the bat, we get a great zinger from Nigel when Lars Sullivan enters the arena: “He makes me glad I’m retired and makes me wish Percy was still wrestling.” Ice cold.
Sullivan was booked to perfection here, too, as a monster so superpowered, it made everyone else have to work together to subdue him. The opening sequence where Sullivan catches Aleister Black mid-moonsault and wrecks him on the outside, then catches Gargano mid-crossbody and wrecks him on the outside, then gets laid the f*ck out by Killian Dain via suicide dive was impeccably executed. When the action shifts up the ramp, I figured someone was going through the announce table, but never in a million years would I have guessed who (Sullivan) or how (via Dain straight-up diving from the top of the ramp). My notes from my initial viewing of the episode read as such: “WHAT THE F*CK KILLIAN!” This was NXT’s version of John Cena and Seth Rollins putting Brock Lesnar through the announce table at Royal Rumble 2015, and I loved every second of it.
This was as close to a star-making moment as Sullivan has had thus far, in large part to Dain — coming off his own star-making performance at WarGames — making him seem like the biggest threat in the room. The image of those two big men slugging it out in the center of the ring, each competitor visibly wounded, showing bruises, scrapes and cuts… it was really incredible.
Strangely, Black was pretty much the afterthought for much of this match until he was close to winning it, triggering a run-in from the Undisputed Era. From Best & Worst two weeks ago:
Not to get into annoying neckbeard fantasy booking, but why not have Fish and O’Reilly interfere to give their leader the win and give Black someone to have a vendetta against for the next cycle? Then, assuming TUE wins the tag titles next week, it could make Black form an unlikely tag team with Velveteen Dream to try and exact revenge (which could lead to Dream turning on him, and the feud being extended).
Folks, I swear I don’t look at spoilers!
After Adam Cole takes Black out of the match with a nasty-looking shoulderbreaker, Gargano takes Cole out of the match, then hurricanranas Dain into Sullivan, then hits a slingshot DDT on Black for the win — an absolutely dynamite finishing sequence, one which results in Gargano finally getting his big singles push, Black’s undefeated streak ending, Sullivan being validated as a legit threat and Dain holding everything together. Bravo, NXT. You went out with a bang.
The best part is the potential for all the new feuds coming out of this match. Obviously, we have Gargano/Andrade “Cien” Almas and Aleister Black/Adam Cole, and toss on top of that Dain/Sullivan, Gargano/Black (for ending his win streak), Gargano/Cole … the deck has been masterfully reshuffled for 2018. Hopefully the right cards get turned over.
Next Week: We get NXT’s 2017 year in review. But in two weeks, we get a tag title rematch between SAnitY and the Undisputed Era, so see y’all in a fortnight! I promise you we’ll be picking up right where we left off.
