Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: TakeOver: Orlando happened! We now have completely dominant tag team champions, a women’s champion who is really embracing the idea of being a jerk and a men’s champion who is the unholy union of Triple H and Donald Trump. Break out the sledgehammer.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for April 5, 2017.
Best/Worst: Spring Cleaning
Well, we knew this day would come: It’s post-WrestleMania call-up season, and NXT once again lost some of its best and brightest stars to WWE’s main roster. Raw called up The Revival; Smackdown Live called up Shinsuke Nakamura and Tye Dillinger; even Oney Lorcan showed up on 205 Live (but I’m guessing that was more of a one-shot thing). I’m thrilled for all of them, but man, it makes me dread the next set of tapings, and just who NXT creative is going to try and elevate in the place of these guys. But hey, at least we got Drew McIntyre back, I guess?
Worst: Pretend To Be Nice
The first match of the NXT TakeOver: Orlando pre-show post-show is between Peyton Royce and Aliyah, who once again has a new theme and even more confusing pants. (Speaking of pants, Royce has switched from pants to shorts for her in-ring attire and moved green from her base color to an accent color, and decisions as simple as those make her pop in the ring way more.)
So Aliyah shows up dressed like a member of Josie And The Pussycats, and once the match starts, she wrestles like she’s present-day Tara Reid. I legitimately thought I was watching this match in one of those slow-motion recap videos WWE posts to Facebook from time to time. The crowd responds in kind, completely sitting on their hands, until Peyton mercifully ends it with a fisherman’s suplex. Sorry, Aliyah, but this was not your best showing. Dust yourself off and try again.
Best: Heavy Lifting
In case you doubted where NXT falls on the WWE brand hierarchy, just remember: Raw gets the Hardy Boyz while NXT gets the Bollywood Boyz. But the plus side is Harv and Gurj are trotted out to be the latest lunchmeat in a Heavy Machinery sandwich. Heavy Machinery’s second outing goes just as splendidly as the first — I will always mark out for belly-based offense — and the crowd rightfully got behind these goliaths. There may come a day where I am not entertained by Heavy Machinery squash matches, but that day is certainly not today.
Best: Thank You, Shinsuke
The video tribute to Shinsuke Nakamura’s NXT career felt like whoever put the package together is really, really worried that Smackdown’s creative team will botch the transition, because the whole thing played out closer to an in memoriam clip than anything else. I feel you, anonymous video editor. We all feel you.
Worst: Alajarse, Orlando
Okay. Maybe this is partially my fault. As I pointed out in last week’s B&W, Kassius Ohno really had no reason to break Elias Samson’s guitar, no matter how annoying the character had been. But either Ohno accidentally turned Samson face or this is one of those “alternate” WWE crowds where they cheer the guys they’re supposed to boo Maggle, because Samson — under a mask, calling himself El Vagabundo — was by far the most over character the entire episode.
(It probably didn’t help that Oney Lorcan’s pre-match promo was garbage. “I’m in NXT to compete, to do my job, and to win” — holy shit, I’ve heard less stilted dialogue in WWE video games before.)
So even though Vagabundo is literally singing a song that is telling the crowd to shut up, the Amway Center is going nuts for him, cheering him like he’s the second coming of Sami Zayn or something, which totally kills the flow of the match. Lorcan ends up hitting Vagabundo with something like eight straight corner-to-corner knee strikes, and instead of cheering and counting him on a la Cesaro, they boo. Lorcan pulls Vagabundo’s mask off, they boo. Lorcan pins him, they boo.
An NXT security guard rightfully ejects Samson out after he mouths off to her, they boo. Between this crowd, the dead-ass UCF audience the past month and the overall tire fire that is the Full Sail Arena, I think I speak for just about everyone when I say Orlando, you need to be future-endeavored immediately.
Next week: A fresh set of NXT tapings, without some of the brand’s most popular stars. Hope you like Angelo Dawkins and HoHo Lun!
