Previously on the Best and Worst of NXT: NXT TakeOver: Respect happened. If you haven’t watched it, go do that. What’s wrong with you? The NXT Women’s Championship was decided in a 30-minute Iron Man Match that made children (and me) cry, the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic concluded and Asuka put the fear of God into Emma. A good time was had by all.
To watch this week’s episode, click here. Please enjoy the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for October 14, 2015.
Best: Good Morning, Miss Bliss
Over the past two years, we’ve seen Bayley level up to stand up to the bullies above her. Charlotte was a super athlete and daughter of a famous WWE guy — a Bayley weakness — who used Bayley’s naiveté against her and threw her in the garbage. Natalya showed up and took away her chance at redemption in the form of “standing up for her,” even though every interaction between the two was Bayley being excited and Nattie rolling her eyes. Becky Lynch was a world-traveled veteran and submission expert who, again, used Bayley’s naïveté against her and threw in with her enemies to rise to the top. Sasha Banks has been her blood rival from the start, but she’s also an extremely special kind of performer who embodies everything Bayley embodies, plus “massive star power.” Throughout it all, Bayley’s rivals and contemporaries have been above her. She’s always been on the bottom. When the Divas Revolution happened, they all went off to Raw to be Main Roster Pals without her.
Now that Bayley’s the NXT Women’s Champion and has proven herself as the top dog in two of the biggest and best WWE matches of the year, the dynamic changes: BAYLEY is the top dog, and the women rising up to challenge her aren’t her superiors. I think that’s a really interesting change of pace.
Alexa Bliss is a great choice for her first challenger. Bliss is great at what she does, especially as an actress, and although she’s been relegated to managing Blake & Murphy on TV, she’s still got a spark in the ring. We haven’t seen everything she can do, you know? Giving her a feud with the Gatekeeper of Quality WWE Women’s Wrestling should help her (and her public perspective) tremendously, and give Bayley someone she can murk in a compelling but not-necessarily-so-high-stakes-we’re-all-bursting-into-tears-when-it’s-over beef.
I like Blake and Murphy being there, too, because it allows Bayley to look vulnerable against someone half her size without any of her street cred. Blake and Murphy don’t have to do much, they just have to linger and make it clear to the audience that Bliss is full of sh*t about everything she says. I love it. Excited to see where this goes, especially if the feud works in some callbacks and lets Alexa use a glitter sneeze like it’s Asian Mist.
Best: William Regal Does His Damn Job
Backstage (last week), we find Finn Bálor and Samoa Joe celebrating their Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic Cup win. Two wonderful things happen:
1. Joe challenges Bálor for the NXT Championship, nothing that there were “a lot of ways” he could’ve gone about doing it. I can’t even say how much I love this. NXT’s the only WWE-produced show that rewards fans for watching and addresses the actions and attitudes that actually exist on the show and in the fanbase. The entire Bálor/Joe pairing was built around the assumption that one would turn on the other to set up a title feud, and it didn’t happen. They even had Finn blow out his knee in the semi-finals to give us a reason. We assumed it, Joe acknowledged it, and now both he and Finn get to look like rational f*cking human beings you’d want to admire and cheer for.
2. Finn says he’s Joe’s friend and a fighting champion, and accepts the challenge. Cue William Regal, who explains that you can’t just say “I’m in a title match” and have it be so, you have to earn it through the proper channels. He gives Joe credit for being undefeated and winning the cup, but points out that everybody on the show deserves a shot, because wrestling makes a hell of a lot more sense when you pretend you’re in a real sports organization. There’s nothing “heel” or “evil GM character” about it, it’s just the way things happen in NXT.
What’s even better is that now Joe can “go about” getting the title shot he wants in an underhanded way, since being an upstanding, on-the-level dude didn’t work. Five stars.
Best/Worst: Angelo Dawkins’ New Gimmick Is Headbands
Angelo Dawkins is one of my favorite recurring NXT characters, because every time he shows up, he makes less sense. Remember when he was suddenly a backpacking Ninja Turtle?
Dawkins and Sawyer Fulton get a match against the Vaudevillains this week, and they’re rocking new looks: Fulton has a mohawk that looks like a skunk got ran over by a car on his scalp, and Dawkins is wearing MULTIPLE HEADBANDS. One of them falls off just before he gets hit with the Whirling Dervish, causing one of my favorite announcer exchanges of the year:
“There goes one of those headbands!”
“He’s still got one left, there’s still hope.”
If you watch the WWE Fan Nation video above, they follow up the match clip with a backstage segment where Dawkins and Fulton tease a breakup. OH NO, NOT FULTON AND DAWKINS! Angelo’s got the charisma of an unplugged vacuum cleaner in that clip, but I hope he can find something that works. Maybe he could wear three headbands? He really missed his calling as Sasha Banks’ inept henchman.
WORST: The Devin Taylor Farewell Tour Begins
In case you missed it, the world got a little darker last week when NXT released backstage interviewer Devin Taylor before we could get any closure on that Dana Brooke head-patting gag. Every remaining Devin segment will be accompanied in my brain by Fuel’s ‘Leave the Memories Alone.’
She was released after this set of tapings, so she shows up in a bit with Dash Wilder and Scott Dawson and busts out her signature move, “someone put their hands on me in a condescending way and I can’t believe nobody’s stepping in to stop it.” I’m holding out hope that she stuck around long enough to film another scene with Dana, and that she got released because Dana tried to pat her again and got wrecked.
Best: OH MY GOD EVIE
I am not going to be hyperbolic about Evie showing up. Nope!
Just kidding, this is the best thing that has happened ever in my life and now my children are gonna be born with EVIE GOT AN NXT MATCH imprinted on the frontal lobes of their brains. Also kidding. I’m never having kids!
But yeah, no, one of my favorite wrestlers in the entire world happened to be in Florida for Shine and the following Shimmer weekend, and got a jobber spot on NXT. I am so happy. If you aren’t familiar with her work and assumed she was a low-level Gen-1 Pokemon, Evie is a New Zealand native and for real the dopest wrestler. That Australia/New Zealand scene (which gave us current Shimmer champion Madison Eagles, as well as NXT newbies Billie Kay and Peyton Royce) is this incredible, relatively-undiscovered fountain of beautiful women who are great at wrestling, and if WWE just said f*ck it and signed all of them, they’d be doing themselves a service. Plus, if you’re building a new version of the NXT Women’s Division around people like Asuka and Athena, Evie’s your best-possible fit.
Best: Nia Jax
Her gear kinda made her look like the flying carpet from Aladdin, but I’m liking Nia Jax a lot after week one. The women’s division — the NXT version, at least — needs women of different sizes, shapes and backgrounds so it can be as inclusive and dynamic as possible. She didn’t do much besides a bear hug, some hip attacks and David Otunga’s finisher — I really thought she was gonna go for a Rock Bottom at the end, there — but it all looked good.
Lets Ask The WWE Universe What They Thought Of Nia Jax’s Debut
Let’s not.
Let’s Ask Them
I don’t want to do this. It’s not gonna be good. Let’s just enjoy the wrestling matches and-
Lets Ask The WWE Universe What They Thought Of Nia Jax’s Debut
Really?
Yes
*sigh*
Hey, maybe the back of her first t-shirt will say, “The vignettes made her look hot but whatever you’d still smash.”
Note: Keep in mind that while calling somebody fat isn’t nice, I get it. It’s observational and judgmental, which we are as human animals, and it happens. I’ve done it. I think of myself as a fat guy. The problem that happens when you call a woman fat, especially one who is an entertainer, is that it always comes with a “would I or wouldn’t I f*ck her” notation that brings it back around to gross, misogynistic place where women are only here to win your sexual approval. It’s not an observation, it’s a dismissal. “You can’t be good at ___ because you aren’t also a possible mate, in my imagination, on first glance.” If you say El Local or Bull Dempsey or whoever looks fat, you’re not gonna follow it with “eh, I’d still smash it,” you know? Don’t say sh*t about a woman you wouldn’t also say about a comparable dude, or anyone in-between. If you make that mistake (as I have in my life, admittedly, way too many times), allow yourself to grow and learn and get a little perspective, and say, “hey, I’m gonna try not to do that anymore.” It’s not about being infallible and never f*cking up, it’s about getting as close to good as you can, even if it takes you a while.
Besides, wrestling needs fat people. Wrestling was BUILT on fat people. We just had a tag team tournament in honor of a fat guy who was one of the best wrestlers ever. Let’s let NXT (and Lucha Underground, and anywhere else decent) be a place where we can avoid these bullsh*t conversations.
Best: Building The Next Cycle With One Match
This week’s main event combines two Brandon’s Preferences Lay-ups: “NXT” and “a battle royal.”
What’s great about it is that it touches on a ton of stories at once, makes use of almost everyone in the ring and sets up several new stories for the latest cycle. Tyler Breeze is over HUGE as a face here, getting cheered every time he staves off elimination. Samoa Joe finally tosses him, which draws massive boos. Breeze yanks him off the apron and unfairly eliminates him a few minutes later, which gets CHEERS and a “thank you Tyler” chant. Now you’ve given Joe a reason to be distracted for a month while Finn takes on a different challenger, and you give Breeze and Joe a program that (if their match in Austin is any indicator) will be spectacular.
They also moved the weirdness between Rhyno and Baron Corbin forward, with Rhyno bailing him out on multiple occasions, only for Corbin to eliminate him. I also loved that they used Bull Dempsey for one of the elimination attempts, touching back on the feud that turned Dempsey into an undercard comedy act.
The winner was Apollo Crews, which was surprising. Crews and Corbin had some outstanding stuff at the very end, and Crews’ win moves us in a fresh direction. That’s what I loved the most about this episode: everything feels new. Bayley’s feuding with someone who hasn’t had a singles push or marquee feud before, the Dusty Classic swerve assumptions got addressed in post, a new star in the women’s division debuted and a flashy new babyface went over to get a shot at the flashiest, babiest-faced guy around. Will we get a straight-up Crews/Finn match? Will it be hero vs. hero, or is Finn gonna lean into the heel persona we all loved before he became an NXT star? Is Joe gonna get involved? Are we gonna tie Crews/Finn into Joe/Breeze? There are so many directions they can go with it, and I continue to be thankful that NXT gives me a show I can’t just roll my eyes and assume the worst about.
Great stuff. Is it next week yet?
As A Reminder:
If you dig the NXT column and want to keep up on it and the wrestling news relating to it, click over onto our WWE NXT tag page.
With Spandex is on Twitter, so follow it. Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter.
As always, your shares and likes are appreciated. We’ve been writing about the show since it was hidden in a corner on Hulu, so spreading the column around — especially for the episodes between the live specials, when fewer people are watching — is important. Thanks for doing that.
