Previously on the Best and Worst of NXT: Apollo Crews tried to prove himself in a non-title match with the NXT Champion but came up short. He’s promising a “new Apollo Crews,” which we’re hoping involves a full astronaut suit and some people following him around with cameras. Also, Carmella continued her rise to the top to face her best friend for the Women’s Championship, The Hype Bros had an existential realization and Enzo and Cass refuse to accept the fact that American Alpha’s eventually going to make them obsolete.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for Feb. 10, 2016.
Best: Baron Corbin Vs. His Infant Son
This week’s opener is Baron Corbin vs. Johnny Gargano, and the size difference is so extreme it might as well be JBL vs. Hornswoggle. Gargano looks like he should Krang and live inside Corbin’s weird torso.
It’s a lot of fun, though, and I continue to love Corbin’s outstanding beef with anyone who made a name for themselves on the indies. Having Corbin work with guys like Gargano, Rich Swann, and even Sami Zayn is great for him for a lot of reasons. He gets to work with smaller guys, so his natural size gets amped up and he can play the “dominant” card. Those small guys tend to be fast and dynamic, which allows the surprisingly dynamic and always-getting-better Corbin to try some fun stuff like turning a Chad Gable tornado DDT into the End of Days, and look like a million bucks. He also gets an ongoing story that’s relevant for the times and real in the context of the show. Far too often WWE gets a big guy and decides he should only wrestle other big guys. Look at The Undertaker. He didn’t start having what anybody’s consider “great matches” until he traded in Kamala, King Kong Bundy and Giant Gonzalez for Jeff Hardy, Shawn Michaels and Rey Mysterio.
The more I think about the finish, the more I like it. Corbin dominated most of the match, but Gargano fired up and started putting together some offense and got him on the run. Corbin bailed and took half a lap around the ring getting punched. He had to retreat back into the ring, and that moment of high ground allowed him to recover, hit the End of Days and win the match. It’s dominance without making your opponent look like he can’t hang.
Baron Corbin is my jam.
Best: Sami Zayn Is Struggling To Be Fine With Everything
This guy. I’ve missed this guy. He more or less got screwed out of a #1 contender shot last week when he had Baron Corbin dead to rights in a sharpshooter and Samoa Joe slid in and added Additional Submissions before Corbin tapped out. That move was all Sami’s, and worst case scenario the referee should’ve restarted the match. But he’s gotta sit here waiting a week for William Regal’s decision, and then be okay that Regal wants him to wrestle another match to prove himself. Ninety-nine percent of wrestlers would be like, “COME ON WHAT THE HELL, ARGH” and flip a table, but Sami’s all, “I respect William Regal’s decision and winning the championship isn’t easy!”
One of the best unspoken truths about how NXT characters interact is that Sami Zayn is affable, patient and respectful because he had to spend his entire adult life hanging out with Kevin Owens.
Worst: Girl Buy (A Book About How To Wrestle)
If you can’t figure out what’s going on in that picture, it’s Cameron “kicking” Alexa Bliss. I’m calling it the “Sliding C.” There’s also an especially terrible moment where Cameron throws the worst clothesline you’ve ever seen, and it’s Erik Watts dropkick bad. Divas are already taught to do that thing where you tuck your legs to make it look like you’re getting “air” on strikes, and Cameron makes it worse by turning a goddamn clothesline — aka “hold out your arm and run at somebody” — into, like, a jumping uppercut. It makes no physical sense. It’s like a leprechaun hopping through a meadow. I sincerely know small children who can throw better and more believable strikes than that. How do you f*ck up a CLOTHESLINE? Even Erik Watts had the excuse of “you have to jump to do this move and I suck at jumping.”
I’ll give Alexa Bliss a supplemental Best for getting through the match, and for that wonderful moment where she stands on Cameron’s back and kicks her face into the mat. They should’ve just done five minutes of that.
Worst: Cameron’s Little Tie
Here’s our own David D. with further analysis.
I honestly don’t know if Cameron and NXT Bae Alexa Bliss had a good match or not. But they could have been Steamboat and Flair and I wouldn’t have noticed, because Cameron wore a tiny necktie. And she never took it off. I kept watching the match wondering if she left the tie on on purpose or if there was an accident. So instead of watching the match, I wrote down bunch of questions.
1. Is that a toddler’s necktie? That’s a toddler’s necktie isn’t it?
2. And as someone who buys clothes for a my toddler, I know that most toddler neckties come with full suits. Did Cameron go to Sears and buy a full toddler suit, discard the suit and keep the tie?
3. Did Cameron see a toddler and say “that’s a nice tie…I think I should wear one”…?
4. Did that tie come with one of those cellphones from Zoolander?
5. Was her upper torso cosplaying as Chris Jericho?
Please don’t do this to me again.
Best: Last Name Gable, First Name Greatest
Okay, so Enzo Amore and Colin Cassady cut a promo about how they’re gonna go “back to back” as NXT Tag Team of the Year award winners, which turns into them quoting Drake’s ‘Back To Back.’ That would’ve been enough, but then his grace Chad Gable steps in trying to quote it too, and f*cking it up. NXT is for real bonding its characters based on misquoted Drake lyrics. Sometimes I watch Lucha Underground and wonder why I bother with anything else, and then a dorky Minnesotan wristlock wizard shows up to piss off the New Jersey Calvin and Hobbes by ruining their hip-hop references. NXT is just as weird as Lucha sometimes, guys.
Enzo loses a few cool points for quoting Macklemore by calling Chad Gable “tiramisu” when he says he has layers. Give Carmella a Mary Lambert gimmick and we’ll call it even.
Worst: I Am Running Out Of Ways To Say I Don’t Give A Sh*t About The Drifter
This is the first set of tapings at the UCF Arena, and if I can be straight with you for a second, it’s kinda the version of NXT I never wanted to see, but was afraid was an inevitability.
If NXT could ever be Smackdown, it’d be this. There’s a little bit to like on the show — some of the talent is good, there’s a funny backstage segment and the women busted their asses in the main-event — but man, the rest of it is just jobberriffic. Maybe there’s too much empty space. Maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe it’s Sign Guy in the front row, I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel the same, even when it’s exactly the same. Putting the weekly shows in front of big audiences seems like a step too far for me, even though I think seeing NXT TakeOver specials in 10,000 seat arenas is the coolest thing ever. It’s probably just me being a selfish fan, and the type of guy Kevin Owens bodied in that “you’re the John Cena of wrestling fans” promo a while back.
The reason I put that here is because Elias Samson had another match, and I cannot summon the strength to say anything new about it.
Also, The Hype Bros Are On This Show
They wrestle Corey Hollis and John Skyler, aka NXT’s Norv and Dewey, and while it’s a good followup to the Hype Bros getting their sh*t together and putting in work, it’s not the most entertaining thing in the world. Hollis and Skyler get in way too much offense, and NXT’s finally signed enough guys that their extraneous indie talent’s starting to look like guys who’d be a little unbelievable on straight-up indie shows. Hollis and Skyler could sit on each others’ shoulders in Totem Pole Trench and I wouldn’t buy them as a threateningly-sized human being. They look like Creepy Greg could beat them up. Mojo should be launching these dudes into space. WWE taught me to believe that on WWE TV if you’re tiny, you’ve gotta be really good. NXT’s got a lot of really tiny, really good guys. If you’re casting jobber teams, at least give me some fat dudes and some old dudes. Go full World Championship Wrestling with it.
Best: Bayley Vs. Carmella
For a while now I’ve been saying how much I want to see
1. Bayley as the top star in the women’s division instead of being the underdog, and
2. Bayley being forced to wrestle a friend who remains her friend, and doesn’t try to turn on her to get an advantage.
I got that with Bayley vs. Carmella, and I loved it. It’s not the crispest match in the world, but it didn’t have to be … the story is that Carmella knows she’s in a little over her head and isn’t as good as her best friend, but this is her shot, man, and she’s gonna give it her all. They let her have an edge and not hold back on offense, but never go too far with it. There’s never a moment where you’re like, “here comes the dark side.” They didn’t need it. Carmella’s not taking the NXT Women’s Championship, not yet anyway, and the story is 100 percent about Bayley facing every kind of opponent she can before running into the one she can’t beat. More on that in a second.
But yeah, this was very good. I liked the pinfall exchanges at the end, especially Bayley countering Carmella’s finishing sequence, because it explicitly pointed out the differences between the two. Bayley is the veteran, the one who knows how to go the extra mile to win and get it done. She’s a champion because she’s fighting hard to keep the belt. She’s never slacking off and forgetting to do the homework. She knows Carmella because they’re friends, sure, but she also scouted her and learned how to counter her sh*t because she respects her and sees her as a competitive threat. Bayley gets to look like a huge babyface while beating up her best friend. That’s a delicate line to walk, and they walked it.
One complaint, though.
Worst: Sign Guy Is Human Garbage
https://twitter.com/ari_amaru/status/697973817331679232
Fat jokes and “you can’t speak English” jokes. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if I could Fight Club one dude, it’d be Sign Guy. I wonder if I could set that up through UPROXX? I’ll even wear boxing gloves. I mean, I’ll take them off before I start throwing punches, but I’ll wear them.
Best: The Escalation Of The Women’s Division
Bayley and Carmella do the NXT Women’s Division Traditional Hug Of Honor after the match, and as Carms is headed to the back, she gets jumped by NXT’s Cait Sith, Eva Marie and Nia Jax. Bayley tries to help, but the Damned Numbers Game gets the best of her, and the fight looks lost … until ASUKA shows up and puts the fear of God into Eva and Nia by standing near them. Perfectly understandable. Eva and Nia bail, and Asuka sticks around long enough to also God-fear-put BAYLEY, sending a message that she’s aware of the NXT Women’s Championship and probably wants it.
I love how complex they’ve managed to make the Women’s Division after losing Charlotte, Sasha and Becky. They’ve built up these greenhorn-ass heels like Eva, Nia and Alexa as foils for Bayley and given Bayley a greenhorn-ass babyface pal in Carmella, and run a story about Bayley proving herself as the best wrestler in the land. She can beat everyone who came before her in NXT, and everyone who’ll come after. The only problem is that NXT isn’t the only place in the world, and now one of the best wrestlers from outside of it has sorta entered the outskirts of the scene and started wrecking people. She seems like she’s on Bayley’s side, but like Carmella said, when the bell rings it’s all about the championship. Bayley is … probably f*cked.
That’s gonna be the biggest women’s title match ever, and I can’t wait for it.
