Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: Tye Dillinger said farewell to NXT with a baller steel cage match, Hideo Itami told Bobby Roode in no uncertain terms to go to sleep, and Aliyah continued to cosplay as a cat.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for April 26, 2017.
Best: Come Out And Play
This week’s show opens with Nikki Cross slithering out to the ring, sans music, and demanding an audience with Ruby Riot, who obliges — and then, of course, they start punching each other. Pro wrestling 101 stuff right here, simple and effective. Cross’ weird spider jump off the steel steps was cringeworthy the first time, but the second time it looked great, and eventually the Full Sail crowd wakes up and rightfully chants, “Let them fight!”
William Regal makes the match for later in the evening, and Riot get a nice backstage promo where she spells out her character’s motivations — she’s here for the Women’s Championship but she knows she needs to vanquish the force of nature that is Nikki Cross before she will ever get a clean look at Asuka.
Riot comes back out for her scheduled match but Cross doesn’t even let her get to the ring before jumping her from behind. While the match itself might be off, the fight is most definitely on. I thought this brawl was really cool — it felt like two wrestlers, not two female wrestlers. So many of the “women’s revolution” matches from the past two years are built around feats of superior athleticism and spectacular maneuvers, but what really moves women forward in pro wrestling is just letting them slug each other as hard as possible, like real fighters do — not “female fighters,” just fighters.
It’s why the UFC women’s division caught fire so quickly: Ronda Rousey wasn’t trying to do a corkscrew moonsault off the top of the octagon; she was just trying to cave her opponent’s skull in as quickly as possible. Riot and Cross knocked this whole thing out of the park (and in the process knocked over their fair share of refs, which made it even more awesome).
Best: Chopped And Screwed
Drew McIntyre’s second match back in NXT took everything that made his first match good — Oney Lorcan getting the piss slapped out of him — and added in a solid dose of arrogance, thanks to Andrade “Cien” Almas. McIntyre’s massive boot to Almas’ face as he posed in the ropes was simply awesome, and the dueling chops throughout the entire contest were so brutal, you could hear Bret Hart complaining all the way up in Calgary.
McIntyre’s decision to tune up the band before executing his finishing move made me legitimately think we were getting a superkick, but the running knee strike looked good enough too.
As for Almas’ losing streak: You know what? If I got to party with a half-dozen women after each match, I’d take the losses with pleasure, too. WWE has done such a crappy job of making wins and losses mean anything (at least on the main roster) that Almas’ willingness to cost himself a match for the sake of enjoying himself after dark makes plenty of sense from a kayfabe standpoint. Eventually this will have to pay off, though, right? Either he learns his lesson and re-commits to wrestling or he loses so much, Regal cuts him loose (just in time for the next WWE main roster draft this summer).
Best: King Of Strong Style
I immediately groaned at the “Who is Roderick Strong?” video package title, with my initial predictions before watching it being the same ol’ sh*t: He’s struggled, he’s had to fight from underneath, he’s scraped and clawed, etc. etc. etc. Even as the package progressed, Roddy was talking in broad terms about how he had to “overcome” but never said exactly what needed overcoming. I was ready to fast-forward to the rest of the video because I couldn’t take the vague verbiage anymore.
Then, it happened: “I had an untraditional childhood.” A minute later, the bomb drops: Oh holy f*ck, his mom tried to murder his dad. Yeah, that’s definitely on the untraditional side. The remainder of the package was incredible, with the newspaper clippings featuring details of the shooting and his father saying “I don’t want to be with her, but I forgive her” ratcheting up the emotional intensity even more. And all the backyard wrestling footage of a 12-year-old Roddy and his dad grappling with one another, followed by Roddy saying, “[Wrestling] taught me how to love, and it taught me how to deal with not everything being okay but still loving it”? That has to have warmed even Brandon Stroud’s heart.
Pro wrestling is never more compelling than when real life seeps in and humanizes its combatants, and this video package accomplished that in spades. And just like that, I now care about Roderick Strong — something I never thought I’d ever say. Damn you, WWE video department.
Best: Kona, Black
Congratulations to Kona Reeves for actually getting a few strikes in before getting your spinal column detached by Aleister Black. His roundhouse kick into the meditation pose is downright eerie, and I still love the execution-style raising of his opponent’s head before knocking it off with Black Mass.
I’m down for one more of these squashes before Black finally gets a storyline, though, because as cool as this is now, it can only last for so long.
Best/Worst: You Don’t Know Jack
Up until now, the WWE Universe has known Jack Gallagher as the goofy, pale wrestler who ties wrestlers into knots and kicks them in the butt, uses a prop umbrella for dainty dives to the outside and plays into every possible British stereotype imaginable. This match, however, showcased a much different, much more serious side of the Extraordinary Gentleman, and it was clear the audience didn’t know how to respond.
Full Sail sat on their hands for most of the contest, having no idea how to react to a 15-minute match that was extremely light on comedy and extremely heavy on joint manipulation. If Zack Sabre Jr. matches are your cup of tea, you probably flipped your lid for this thing, as it was expertly put together — it was just in front of an audience unable to appreciate it.
I enjoyed the match for what it was, too, but I was probably among many disappointed in the version of Gallagher we got here. He’s been my favorite part of WWE’s cruiserweight division thus far specifically because of his ability to fuse comedy with athleticism, so to have a match so heavily weighted one way was a letdown.
Furthermore, even though there were some nice moments (the double bridge spot was cool, Tyler Bate’s deadlift German suplex was gorgeous, and Gallagher’s headbutt from the outside through the ropes, while not looking perfect on-camera, was a clever use of one of his signature moves), the ending really didn’t work for me.
So, after spending nearly the entire match being outwrestled, Bate just decides to stop selling entirely, hulk up and hit the Tyler Driver ’97 out of nowhere, completely negating all the joint and nerve work Gallagher had spent the past 10 minutes doing. It felt less like the ending to a wrestling match and more like Player 1 pressed the right sequence of buttons on his Xbox 360 controller to override the AI. However, Bate did at least sell his left shoulder in his post-match celebration, so points for that.
Next Week: A battle royal to determine just who Asuka will murder at NXT TakeOver: Chicago next month. Place your bets now! (Unless you’ve already read the spoilers, then zip it.)
