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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for July 29, 2015.
Best: Every Move Gets A Name This Week, And They’re All Metal
I don’t know if Rich Brennan made a conscious decision to name moves like they’re Nine Inch Nails songs or what, but it’s so good. Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder have a flapjack codebreaker Rich is calling the SHATTER MACHINE. Jason Jordan and Chad Gable’s throwing suplex is called the GRAND AMPLITUDE. I want Angelo Dawkins and Sawyer Fulton to get a double dropkick called CAME BACK HAUNTED. I also want Rich to start calling matches in a Megadeth t-shirt.
(In all seriousness I’m aware that a shatter machine is a tool and “grand amplitude” is an amateur wrestling term that does not necessarily describe a guy throwing his opponent at another guy, but I still love that Rich did his homework, then drew band logos all over it. I also for-serious want Enzo and Big Cass to start calling their finish the Capital G.)
Worst: So I Guess We Aren’t Doing That Enzo And Cass Match In Brooklyn, Huh
You’d think NXT’d capitalize on TakeOver being in a big arena in Brooklyn by having the team that is both New York/New Jersey-based and like 70% crowd participation involved in something important. Instead — and I don’t read spoilers for NXT so maybe I’m wrong — they’ve got them losing to the goddamn Mechanics in a weekly show-opener. They aren’t even the Mechanics anymore, they’re “Dawson and Wilder.” They sound like a ’90s sitcom. One of them could be Thomas Haden Church.
The match was pretty good, but man, I don’t get it. If you’re giving that spot to The Hype Bros, you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how over Zack Ryder still is. Crowds don’t go “woo woo woo” with him because they like him now, they do it because it’s an understood cue. The same reason they yell “what’s up” when R-Truth yells “what’s up” and points a mic at them. They aren’t frothing at the mouth to see R-Truth.
Worst: Creepy Carmella Guy
Did you notice this guy? He’s in the front row with a HOTTEST CHICK IN THE RING sign, and he keeps trying to clandestinely take photos of Carmella’s ass. This happens a lot at wrestling shows, sure, but the camera caught him blatantly doing it a couple of times and I wanted to point it out.
The best part is him occasionally hiding the camera behind his sign. Maybe he’s going on a long voyage and needs something to keep him warm on those cold, lonely nights out at sea.
BTW, Baron Corbin Pinned Another Guy
I’m not screencapping this anymore. Corbin pinned a guy. Jesus wept.
Best: Tyler Breeze And William Regal
For the second week in a row, Prince Pretty barges into Regal’s office without an appointment and demands an opponent for NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn. Regal says he’s found someone, and that he’s gone to the ends of the earth to make Breeze happy. As you may have heard from their spoiler announcement of it all over social media or my happy screaming from Texas, but it’s gonna be great.
Then we can figure out a way to connect all the dots and make that Tyler Breeze vs. Dalton Castle dream match happen.
Best: Uh
So I guess that Chad Gable/Jason Jordan homoeroticism isn’t implied anymore. Dude is telling his partner say my name, say it. In context, it’s about his hand towel. Out of context, there is no context because these guys make Blake & Murphy look like Dan Severn.
Independent from how hard they’re kayfabe f*cking each other, I really like the team. Chad Gable is basically the dopest wrestler right now, and I want him vs. a healthy Daniel Bryan like, yesterday. It’s been a while since we had a guy who could just wrestle his opponents to pieces, not counting that glass-eyed Draugr version of Kurt Angle TNA’s employed for the past decade. Those guys were my favorite when I was a teenager … guys like Dean Malenko, who’d just drag you to the ground by your arm and destroy it for 20 minutes.
One pretty goofy complaint, though: NXT’s really into having characters who’ve had one or two matches start boasting about their accomplishments and demanding opportunities. I don’t know if they’re doing it to make the characters look arrogant or deluded or what, but they’re just making up struggles that never happened. Dana Brooke’s complaining about how she’s “never been given opportunities” like Charlotte despite having what, 3 TV matches? It’s not just a heel thing, though, because Gable and Jordan are talking about how they’ve found this perfect combination and how they want the tag titles and how nobody can stand up to them because they won exactly one (1) jobber squash on NXT’s lowest difficulty setting.
I’ll live with it, though, if we ever get The Demon Bálor crawling and preening around the ring and Chad Gable just shooting a takedown and chancery’ing him to death.
Worst: Dana Brooke Shows Why Nobody Makes Eye Contact With The Camera Anymore
It’s like she’s looking into my soul. Up and to the left, Dana. Up and to the left.
Best: Charlotte Skunks Dana
Dana Brooke has the moveset of a Nasty Boy. It’s all clubbering forearms to set up basic-ass mat wrestling. The Nasties would throw a headlock takeover every now and then or like, drop an elbow on your knee, but they mostly shoved you and little-brother-punched you in the back. Charlotte is panther style from Fire Pro Wrestling.
This was exactly what it should’ve been. They built it up with a video package like Dana is this huge heel with some major grudge against Charlotte, but that’s not what it is. She’s just a dumb lady saying dumb stuff. Charlotte’s a former NXT Women’s Champion currently competing on Raw, and also she’s a f*cking FLAIR. A GOOD one. Dana shows up in her squat shoes and accomplishes squat. Charlotte just shrugs her off, punches Emma off the apron and Naturally Selects her for the easy-ish win. As we suspected, Dana Brooke’s arms are too short to box with God.
Best: The Bull Dempsey Eating Disorder Angle Is A Long Con To Make A ‘Bullsh*t’ Pun
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED
I thought I was on drugs when I watched this the first time, but apparently it really happened. Bull Dempsey has a fitness plan called “Bull-Fit,” in which he can magically make workout gear appear on his body and everything he does has a Saved By The Bell dream filter on it. He runs the stairs and collapses at the top, gets yelled at while admiring hunky guys at the gym (seriously) and gets help from a trainer to climb the rope. It’s … perfect, in its own way.
Also, am I the only one who thinks Bull-Fit Bull Dempsey looks like Kevin Smith? They should team him with Brian Kendrick and give them a Jay & Silent Bob gimmick. You know that Full Sail crowd wants to chant “snootchie bootchies.”
Worst: Oh No, Did The Main Roster Already Ruin My Enthusiasm For Kevin Owens?
A returning Danny Burch gets his NXT Gut Check against Kevin Owens and eats a powerbomb on the ring apron, which in NXT probably means we’ll never see him again. The problem I have is that I don’t care that this happened, which is insane, because I love NXT Kevin Owens and no amount of him taking purposeful count-out losses and tapping to John Cena on pay-per-views can ruin it. Right? I just don’t care because this show had a lot of jobber squashes on it, right? I’m not jaded already, am I?
I’ll feel better about this if next week’s sit-down interview with Finn Bálor has him staring at a framed photo of Burch while sewing “WE LOVE YOU DANNY” on an embroidery hoop.
Best: Simon Gotch
Man, forget Gable vs. Daniel Bryan, I want Gable vs. Simon Gotch. Gotch might secretly be the best wrestler on the show, and we’ll never know it because he’s stuck being an old-timey strongman. I could watch him throw people into armbars all day. ALL DAY.
This week’s main event is an NXT Tag Team Championship match between the champs, Blake & Murphy, and the #1 contenders, The Vaudevillains. As a reminder, we’re living in a bizarre world where NXT’s indie darlings are either injured or preoccupied and the women’s division’s being strip-mined, so the tag division is the best and most hopeful thing they’ve got. Weird, right? The match is a ton of fun, though, and Blake & Murphy only pull out a win because 1) Alexa Bliss grabbed Aiden English’s foot, and 2) English went all goofy-foot with the Whirling Dervish and added an extraneous rope bounce.
The best part is the post-match, though. Gotch and English have been screwed out of the match, so they beat up Blake & Murphy. Alexa ends up stuck in the ring with them, surrounded. She’s the one that cost them the match, so if anything she’s the one who deserves comeuppance. They circle her, and my brain starts going to disappointing places. Then, like magic:
THEY BEGRUDGINGLY HOLD OPEN THE ROPES FOR HER TO LEAVE. Alexa is a dirty heel, though, so she takes the opportunity to call them pathetic and slap them in their faces. She bails, and they don’t beat her up. They don’t spank her, or anything dumb that normally happens in wrestling. They’re simply the good guys because they did the right thing and didn’t punch some lady because of some awful WWE Character Code of Conduct. Alexa is the bad guy because they showed mercy on her, and she rubbed it in their faces. ALIGNMENTS. HUMAN DECENCY. CATS AND DOGS LIVING TOGETHER, MASS HYSTERIA.
Great, great stuff. Let’s try not to rub her face in a headless fish at any point between now and SummerSlam.
