Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: We hung out in Canada for another week following NXT TakeOver: Toronto so Tye Dillinger could get an NXT title shot in his native land, Canadian Ninja Nicole Matthews could get a shot at Asuka, and No Way Jose could continue his increasingly not-dancy rivalry with Sanity. Sorry, “SAnitY.”
If you missed this episode, you can watch it here. If you’d like to read our older columns, click over here. With Spandex is on Twitter, so follow it, and like us on Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter.
Click the share buttons and tell people (including @WWENXT) that you dig the column. We can’t keep doing these if you don’t read and recommend them! It helps more than you know, especially for the shows that aren’t Raw and don’t have hundreds of thousands of built-in casual interests.
And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for December 7, 2016.
Best: Hey, The Revival’s Still Here
This week’s episode begins with an attempted celebration speech by new NXT Tag Team Champions Hashtag Do It Yourself, which gets quickly interrupted by Paul Ellering and the Authors of Pain. Despite spending most of the year quietly making Mr. Burns hands, Ellering decides that winning the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic has given him the platform with which to be a threatening comic book villain. But whoops, he gets interrupted by the former tag champs, The Revival, who made a bunch of “see you never” tweets about leaving NXT and debuting to end the New Day’s endless title run but I guess are sticking around. Not complaining. As a fan, I want to see them stay here and matter, not go up to Smackdown and get Ascension’d into being the 5th or 6th most important tag team in a 10-team pre-show match.
This segment is necessary to build the next few weeks of matches, which is great. DIY beat the Revival for the tag titles and the Revival wants a rematch. The Authors feel like they deserve a shot for winning the Dusty Classic. The Revival points out that the Authors only advanced because of Revival interference. On the January 11 edition of NXT, The Revival get their championship rematch against Hashtag Do It Two Guys. The winner of that matches goes on to face the Authors of Pain at NXT TakeOver: San Antonio the night before the Royal Rumble. Lovely! I pretty much want to see all versions of that.
Hahaha What: Percy Watson Is Back
I don’t know if they’re just throwing a guy a bone or if Corey Graves is phasing himself out to call 35 different shows on the main roster, but SHOWTIME PERCY WATSON returns to join the commentary team. If you’ve never read our Best and Worst of NXT Season 2 — you should, it’s got Curtis Axel promos and Bray Wyatt hitting on the Undertaker’s wife — Watson was the guy who probably would’ve won the season if they hadn’t had him doing a weird hybrid Eddie Murphy in Norbit and Eddie Murphy in Bowfinger gimmick.
From season 2, episode 1:
I’m sure we’ll talk about it a lot, but Percy Watson is one of those guys who seemed absolutely made to be a WWE Superstar, and then just nothing. Let us learn a lesson before we even begin, children: the one thing you can’t come back from is a Norbit gimmick.
The funniest thing in the world to me is that they have a hype video ready to go for him, where he’s in full character going HEY BABY I’M SHOWTIME PERCY WATSON BABY, I’M THE ULTIMATE ENTERTAINER BABY, HOO WEE IT’S SHOWTIME, LOOK AT ME, I’M DANCING CRAZY! And then they cut to him at the announce table and he’s like, “hi I’m a normal person, happy to be here!”
Honestly all I want from this is one episode where a haggard hobo Alex Riley climbs out of the crowd and attacks him. Give me a time-displaced Also Nexus of Riley, Curtis Axel, Titus O’Neil and Low Ki trying to ruin the show with Percy as their mole. Tell me Triple H doesn’t want Low Ki on the show again. Come on.
Best: ‘Member Ember And Kimber?
If the Global Women’s Classic ever happens, NXT’s already stocked the entire thing with jobbers who are secretly the best wrestlers in the world. We’ve seen Santana Garrett, Evie, Shazza McKenzie, Nicole Matthews, and now we’ve got Ember Moon taking on former Chikara Grand Champion, Shimmer/Shine/WSU Tag Team Champion and Literally Everywhere Else Women’s Champion Kimber Lee. Throw Rachel “Delilah Doom” Levy in there and we got a stew goin’.
This is easily the most one-sided Athena vs. Kimber Lee match you’ll ever see, but it’s good for what it is. Kimber only gets a few clubbing forearms and a couple of kicks before Ember’s like, WEREWOLF UP and puts her away with a handspring elbow and the O-Face. -1 to Percy for acting like this is the first time he’s ever seen it, proving that you don’t actually have to watch NXT or know what’s happening to get a job explaining what’s happening on NXT.
Worst: Sawyer Fulton Dies Off-Screen
Before SAnitY wrestles No Way Jose and Rich Swann, Eric Young holds up Sawyer Fulton’s jacket, throws it on the ground, beats it up and throws it down the ramp. Sawyer Fulton … died on the way back to his home planet?
According to the Observer, he’s been written out because he got injured, officially making him the Eli Cottonwood of the group. Or the Kenneth Cameron. This week’s column is FULL of people you don’t remember!
The point of this week’s match is to debut Fulton’s replacement with the most Ascension name of all time, “Damian O’Connor.” He’s better known as Big Damo, former Everywhere In The United Kingdom Champion. He looks and wrestles like Bull Dempsey if Bull Dempsey was actually tough and strong and agile and threatening. So … Buller Dempsey?
Here’s a highlight video if you’ve never seen him in action. His Wikipedia page lists a coast-to-coast dropkick as one of his signature moves, which you can see in the clip. That sounds super impressive, but you have to remember that most wrestling promotions nowadays use those little rings they used to drive people to the ring at WrestleMania 3.
Damo shoves Jose into the ring post, allowing Eric Young to put Jose away — Jo, se! Away! Jo, se! Away! — with his Kama Sutra neckbreaker. I guess my only concern about replacing Fulton with Damo is that it changes the SAnitY name gimmick. Sawyer was the “S,” right? So if Damo’s replacing him, does the group become DAnitY? Can we team them up with Kane?
Backstage after the match, DAnitY walks past a production crate with the NXT Women’s Championship sitting on it for some reason. Nikki Cross (aka lowercase n-i and a lowercase T, which looks like a cross, get it) stops and stares at it until the Women’s Champion, Asuka, calmly steps in to stare her down about it. I’m all-in on an Asuka vs. crazy Nikki Cross feud, and I appreciate the lengths they went to to set up this Christian rock album cover of a confrontation, but the more you think about it, the less sense it makes. Let’s just focus on how awesome it’s gonna be when Asuka faces somebody who gets off on pain, never stops running at you, and apparently doesn’t even have the mental ability to be affected by your bullshit.
Best, I Guess: Joe Vs. Nakamura Again, To Set Up Joe Vs. Nakamura Again
Finally this week, we’ve got the already spoiled by social media Japanese rematch between NXT Champion Samoa Joe and Shinsuke Nakamura. As you probably heard well before Wednesday night, Nakamura took back the title almost immediately after TakeOver: Toronto, making most of us say, “wait, what? Why?” Other than, “to make the Japanese crowd slightly happier” or “we at WWE recently decided the only way to do a title feud is to have the two people in it repeatedly win the title,” I’m not sure. Miz/Ziggler and Banks/Flair make me feel like it’s a little from column A, and a little from column B.
I’d already kinda checked out on these Joe/Nakamura title matches, and it’s especially hard to get into a house show version where you already know the result. It’s probably good. Your mileage may vary. The interesting slash expected part is that this match seems to have only happened to set up ANOTHER rematch between the two, in Melbourne, Australia, inside a steel cage. For next week, and taped this morning.
The good news at least is that this seems to be the end of the Nakamura/Joe, at least for now. Next week we’re having four one-on-one matches that’ll start to help determine a new number-one contender to the NXT Championship, featuring Bobby Roode and a bunch of guys who haven’t done anything to earn a title shot. It’ll be Tye Dillinger vs. Eric Young, Elias Samson vs. Roderick Strong, Oney Lorcan vs. Bobby Roode and Andrade “Cien” Almas vs. No Way Jose. If anybody other than Roode wins that, I swear. Even Tye Dillinger is about to retire or whatever before Regal puts him in it, and he’s the second most viable guy.
Next Week: Oney Lorcan goes back to his roots!
