Previously on the Best and Worst of NXT: The card for NXT TakeOver: London is coming together. Enzo Amore and Colin Cassady are getting a shot at the tag team championship, Nia Jax threw Bayley through a door to accept a match for the NXT Women’s Championship, and Samoa Joe is suddenly a Mil Muertes-style living embodiment of death and is coming for the NXT Champion’s head. We’ll be here next week with predictions, analysis, an open discussion thread and results, so be here for that. It’s like Christmas before Christmas.
Click here to watch this episode on WWE Network. Be sure to follow the weekly column on the Best and Worst of NXT tag page. Please scroll through to enjoy the Best and Worst of NXT for December 9, 2015.
Best: The Realest Guys Get Serious
A lot of good stuff happened on this episode, but the very best, and one of the best things I think they’ve done in months, is Enzo Amore and Colin Cassady getting to squash a couple of jobbers with authority and cut an actual, serious promo. Do you know how long we’ve been needing this?
Enzo and Cass are great. I tend to get snarky about catchphrases and repeated scenes, but even I play along with the “you can’t teach that/sawft” stuff. There’s a comfort in the repetition. It reminds you of 18 years ago, when having a thing the crowd could say along with you sorta made or broke you as a performer. The only problem is that the opening match speech became Enzo and Cass, and as delightful as it was, you’ve gotta be more than delightful. At some point you’ve got to take a step back and say, “hey, people watching, this is who we are, and this is why we do what we do.”
This episode was that for The Realest Guys. They didn’t do their intro on the way to the ring, and waited until they’d won with emphasis to talk. Enzo skips the funny phrasings and exaggerated body movements to say something crucial: that he, Cass and Carmella are family, and when you try to hurt one of them, you hurt them all. If you take out Cass, you jeopardize Enzo’s career. That’s not a platitude, that’s the truth. Where would Enzo be without Cass? Cass without Enzo? Carmella without the two of them? It applies wrestling logic to real life situations, and that’s exactly where it needs to go. The Realest Guys not only seem like a legit threat for the first time in their careers, but they’re even more likable. This helps. They don’t seem like cartoons now. They seem like human beings with dreams and goals who also happen to be stupidly entertaining. Sometimes you just have to let a little of this seep in. I don’t need a full Breaking Ground about them every episode, but it sure as hell helps to know they give a sh*t about what’s happening and can explain why.
Beautiful stuff. Bonus points to Corey Hollis and John Skylar for handling their loss to Dawson and Wilder by becoming The Discount Mechanics.
Best: The Tomspiracy Is Now Canon
This one’s complicated, so stay with me.
Reddit — well, a small part of it — has spent most of the year obsessed with something called the “Tomspiracy,” the belief that advertised-at-5-foot-8 Tom Phillips is constantly manipulating his height to make wrestlers seem like ice giants. Most of the theory involves him taking a wide stance in interviews and standing far enough into the background to turn every promo into a Peter Jackson film.
Anyway, NXT has either knowingly acknowledged the joke or made the Tomspiracy canon during this backstage interview with Dana Brooke and Emma. When it’s done, Dana forces Tom to “scootch down” so she can pat him on the head, because he’s “so tall.” I’m not sure how to phrase it in a way that won’t make me sound crazy, but if you’re going to do fan service, this is the way to do it. It’s such an obscure thing that the people who get it will love it, and the people who don’t won’t think anything of it. They’ll just think Dana’s being weird, because she’s the weirdest.
Tom should just start doing interviews from down the hallway, lying on the floor. Or like, have him do interviews on a beach where he’s buried up to his neck in the sand. Turn him into The Head Detective.
Best: Asuka, Intelligent Babyface
Speaking of Dana, one of my favorite running gags in NXT is that Dana is SUCH a perfect WWE Diva that she has no concept of how non-Diva situations work. She’ll be like, “I’VE DONE MY HOMEWORK ON YOU, ASUKA, I KNOW HOW TO BEAT YOU,” and then her master plan is “distract Asuka while someone jumps her from behind.” Dana’s like, working her way up to distraction rollups. She’s so blissfully inhuman.
On this episode, Asuka faces Deonna, aka “the lady with the Ferrari logos on her gear,” and it goes like you’d expect. Emma and Dana interrupt, because “they can,” and the scene is set for Asuka to get distracted and lose the match. Instead of that happening, Asuka realizes she’s being set up, turns around before Deonna can jump her from behind and kicks her in the f*cking face. Deonna’s soul leaves her body and flies to heaven, and Asuka wins the match by knockout. Dana and Emma stand at the top of the ramp like they just saw someone get hit by a car.
This is A+ for a lot of reasons. First of all, Asuka won a match by KNOCKOUT, which is Brock Lesnar-levels of badass. Second of all, Emma and Dana already had the fear of God put into them once, but tricked themselves into thinking it was an anomaly … and now they’re starting to realize that maybe there was something to that fear. They looked like they’d just walked in on their parents having sex. Third of all, I love that the entire feud has been built up as an It Follows situation, and I think Emma vs. Asuka might be the sleeper match of TakeOver. I want Emma to get kicked the wrong way, drop all the WWE preconceptions and start throwing strikes like she’s in AJW.
Dana should invest in a suit of armor.
Best: Those Tag Match Pre-Match Interviews
Two things:
1. I considered making today’s report just 45 pictures of Alexa Bliss, Blake and Murphy’s Nightmare on Elm Street-inspire gear. Holy SH*T is it great. Alexa now has two exoskeleton hands, moving the old one to the left hand and adding a new right with a GLOVE and FINGER BLADES. I think my favorite part of the ensemble is that they only had money for one Freddy costume and had to cut it up and split it between three people. Blake got the top half of the sweater, Bliss got the bottom (to wear as a top), and both Blake and Murphy have one Freddy arm each. The weirdest part is that they also each have one green glove, so it’s like a Hulk Freddy? I don’t even know. I love these guys, and Bliss gets a little funnier and better on the microphone every time we see her.
2. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s an impossible sweetheart in real life, but I’ve come all the way back around on Mojo Rawley. The Hype Bros pre-match interview didn’t have any horror gear, but it DID have Mojo describing Blake and Murphy as, “two guys that, guaranteed, go number two at the club.” That’s such a graphic, specifically-Mojo description. Even better is when Ryder’s like “what,” and Mojo screams back BRO, GUARANTEED THEY’RE THOSE GUYS.
The match between the two teams felt a little like filler — okay, it felt a lot like filler — but I enjoyed it. I’m not sure the Hype Bros have a single wrestling move that makes sense or looks like it should hurt, but I’m into Mojo’s stupid discus punch where the crowd has to yell HYPE to propel him around. He’s like Sy-Klone from He-Man. To their credit, they at least worked to make Ryder’s Jumping Dick To The Face make sense by adding a spinebuster to it.
I’m a little worried about Blake and Murphy, if we’re being honest. Not because they aren’t good, because they are, and their gear game is ahead of the curve, but I’m worried that Alexa’s gonna progress faster than them and they’re gonna get Bodydonna’d.
Best: Peyton Royce Is Poison Ivy Now For Some Reason
Peyton Royce has a new gimmick, which is “repeatedly smells a flower.” She leans back and smells a flower like five different times during her intro. If we’re going full Poison Ivy with her, I want the promos to go with it. I want her ending interviews with “COME, MY GARDEN NEEDS TENDING.”
Also, maybe it’s just me, but it feels like when WWE signs Divas they tell them they’ve got to come up with a creative way to get into the ring, or else. That’s why Alexa does her little under-the-rope twirl, and why poor Peyton Royce is spending 30 seconds hooking her legs around ropes just to lean back, turn sideways mid-hang and wrap her leg around a different rope just to let go and limbo into the ring. I thought the “do the splits and roll in under the bottom rope” was weird, but man, they need to pump the breaks on that. You can just get in the ring, it’s cool. You’re fine, we swear.
Royce and Bayley is fun, and another good victory for the champ. Royce got way more offense than probably anyone was expecting, and I like that boot choke in the corner. With a little story and character development besides “likes this one flower” behind her, Royce feels like a sure thing. I appreciate that Bayley’s gotten to the point where a few of her moves are super powered and can end the match in a second. If they don’t lean on it too hard (like they might on the main roster), they can use it to tell a lot of interesting stories. Bayley/Eva wouldn’t have been the same if Bayley didn’t have the ability to just grab Eva out of the mists and throw her at the ground.
Worst: Someone Should Probably Do The Talking For Both Of You
Speaking of Eva, she and Nia Jax interrupt the post-match to threaten Bayley a bit and hype the match for TakeOver. Just to say it, because sometimes what I think about NXT comes across as way more severe than intended, I get that the show is “developmental” still, at least in regard to teaching people how to work a TV show and be comfortable in front of WWE cameras. I’m not expecting everything to be perfect.
Still, though, the biggest flaw in NXT are these moments where a story has to progress, and the people involved sorta default to having to read their lines as scripted. It’s … rough. Eva is Eva, God bless her, and Nia Jax kinda sounds like a supporting character from Bob’s Burgers. Listen to her, you’ll hear it. I’m not sure which one, exactly, but it’s one of them. It’s almost Linda. “You’re looking at the next NXT Women’s Champion! Right here, Bobby!”
It’s not just the women, don’t get me wrong. There’s a backstage interaction between Apollo Crews and Finn Bálor that’s just as forced. They don’t sound like people, they sound like actors in a middle school anti-drug assembly skit. I know what I’m talking about there, don’t doubt me, I had to write one of those when I was in 5th grade. I brought some flour in a ziploc bag as “cocaine” to sell and got it taken away from me, so we had to do the skit with the drug dealer selling nothing. That’s what those interactions are. You’re doing the skit, but you took away the cocaine that would make it work.
That’s … probably not a good analogy to use for wrestling.
Anyway, you know what I’m saying. I know that “we’re partners tonight, and we might not always get along, but tonight we’re gonna get along to beat up the guys we don’t get along with MOST” isn’t something everyone can deliver with affected Brando-style realism, but it shouldn’t feel so much like Grand Theft Auto pedestrians having a conversation.
Best: Joe Is Gonna Kill You
The main event of the episode is Finn and Crews vs. Samoa Joe and Baron Corbin, and while it’s good, it seems pretty obvious that they’re holding back for TakeOver. That’s not a bad thing. Crews is a natural in the ring but needs someone to push him into more dramatic situations and Corbin’s been getting better and better, so that could be special. Joe and Finn are as good as it gets right now and they’re on the top of the card, so there’s no way that disappoints.
Plus, I love how the Joe and Finn beef has been built. Joe has a reason for his anger, but he’s misguided, and Finn’s been able to coast through most of these NXT “feuds.” The issues with Kevin Owens got a little personal, but the title match ended up being in Japan and he put on the Demon, and everything worked out. He had a ladder match as the rematch and he’d never been in one before, but it was fine. He won so hard he got to do a top-of-the-ladder double-stomp before winning. Now he’s just chilling and wearing a leather jacket and making t-shirts for his club. Joe is a guy who is not only taking advantage of his big chance in WWE, he’s grabbed it by the throat and is shaking the sh*t out of it. He’s on fire. He IS fire. Every single chance he’s had to put his hands on Bálor, he’s choked him out. Here, he not only wins the match (with Corbin’s help, naturally), but he chokes him out so hard he POPS him. Bálor starts foaming at the mouth because he’s been choked out so bad, and Joe’s destroyed him so singularly and effectively that he’s just posing with the belt on his dead body.
My favorite part of the entire thing is how the ref handles Finn after the decision. Joe lets go of the joke, and the ref looks like he’s observing a damn medical emergency. Like he’s a coroner showing up to a crime scene. He puts his hands on Finn’s shoulders and straightens out his arms. Love it. I’m excited to see what happens in London, because man, if Finn doesn’t bring the most powerful Demon he’s got, Joe’s gonna f*cking wreck him.
Next Week
NXT TakeOver: London! At 3 in the afternoon! Let’s do it!
