Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: NXT TakeOver: San Antonio happened, and then that followup episode that’s technically the TakeOver pre-show happened a little less. Now we’re back at Full Sail with Bobby Roode as NXT Champion, the Authors of Pain as NXT Tag Team Champion, and UK Champion Tyler Bate as the show’s weird infrequent Intercontinental Champion.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for February 8, 2017.
Worst: Oh My God, Graves, Please Come Back
Meet your new announce team: Percy Watson (Norbit from the movie Norbit if he thought calling wrestling matches meant making up stories about you and the wrestlers instead of, like, paying attention or reacting), Tom Phillips (the Conner Kent to Michael Cole’s Clark) and Nigel McGuinness, who sounds like the GEICO gecko if he took a Tylenol PM before telling you how much he could save you on car insurance.
Just gonna quietly back up into the hedges and pretend something’s wrong with the sound on the Network.
Best/Worst: Killian Kills Bollywood
Starting off the show this week is a tag team best known for shitting the bed in show openers, Gurv and Harv Sihra, the Bollywood Boyz. Honestly, nobody should be calling themselves “boyz” with a Z in 2017. Matt and Jeff Hardy are respectively pretending to be a brain-damaged family-man southern-prospector Vampire Time Lord and a “deleted” zombie who can turn into an umbrella-themed Spriggan or pro wrestling Riff Raff and live on a compound featuring a lake that instantaneously changes your wrestling gimmick patrolled by sentient attack drones and even they call themselves “The Hardys” instead of “The Hardy Boyz.”
Note: if you’re wondering what the Bollywoods are doing with the middle part of a scissor lift, that’s known as a “Chhikka,” which is either a Punjab musical instrument or someone brutally misspelling “Chikara.”
The good news here is that the opener is built around “SAnitY” killing the Boyz, with SAnitY in quotes because it’s just Killian Dain. Alexander Wolfe never tags in. Dain just rolls over them, figuratively and literally, and finishes them off with that Authors of Pain powerbomb that almost killed a guy. I still can’t take the name “Killian Dain” seriously yet, nor can I totally get over the fact that looking at the fur on his weirdly slippery seal body makes me physically uncomfortable, but I kinda like that. Wrestlers should occasionally be horrible looking dudes, so at least SAnitY’s got that going for them.
Look at the dude, he looks like one of the guys from Sweetwater got bit by a cartoon werewolf.
He’s not really scary in a “wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley” kind of way — he looks more like an affable metalhead than a scary adult — but if I saw a guy like this make that face at me in the locker room at the gym, I’d go change in the Family Restroom. That’s all I’m saying.
After the match, pocket-sized rabid Kristen Stewart NIkki Cross says she wants another shot at Asuka, and post-apocalyptic John Laurinaitis Eric Young tries to get Tye Dillinger to join the group again. That eventually sets up a backstage interview with Dillinger where he’s like, “haha what, seriously, still,” and SAnitY jumps him from behind. They throw him out into the arena and beat him up in and around the ring until the most Tim Horner and Brad Armstrong motherfuckers on the NXT Roster, Roderick Strong and No Way Jose, make the save. That sets up a six-man tag for the night’s main event, and I appreciate NXT using the full hour to piece together a story and follow through on it. Even if it makes me watch Rod wrestle Eric Young. That shit wouldn’t have made Bound For Glory 10 years ago.
Best: When The Post-Match Segment Justifies Everything
So the second match of the week is Living Morgan versus Dark Mercury Billie Kay, in a continuation of the feud they use after TakeOvers to keep the women’s undercard busy and connect some dots. Here, Liv uses some very slow “clever” wrestling and like 3/4 of an O’Connor Roll to get a surprise pin on Kay, forcing Kay and Royce to run backstage and demand a 2-on-1 match with her. That, as usual, sets up Kay and Royce in a tag team match against Liv and a “partner of her choice,” which will have to be Ember Moon, because (1) she’s the only important women’s championship challenger that (2) isn’t a heel. She might also be the only other female face on the show, come to think of it.
Anyway, the money here is when Regal tells them about the match, and their response is to laugh about how Liv doesn’t have friends and then hop away while holding hands. If you want to know what the inside of my brain looks like, it’s this:
Regal’s reaction is so perfect. What are they, evil flower-themed Australian lady-bunnies? Holy shit, I love them so much.
Best: #PopGuys
I thought for sure we were going to lose Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder to the main roster, where Smackdown needs a seventh team for matches with Breezango and The Ascension, but thankfully they’re sticking around for a while. The best part is that they’re … sort of faces now? It’s hard to explain, but the crowd has come around to understanding how good they are and kind of love them for being master manipulators — I don’t want to say “cheaters,” because they don’t really cheat, they just take liberties with the rules — so they’re getting cheered without changing at all.
Here, they have a good but too-short match with Heavy Machinery that is probably honestly the correct length, I just want to see the Revival exclusively wrestle 20-minute 2-out-of-3 fall championship classics. Machinery’s got a lot going for them and could be something one day if they got characters that weren’t, “I’m tall” and “I weigh a lot, and we’re out here to lose.” I loved one of them grabbing a bear hug, tagging out by backing into their corner and tossing their victim into a second bear hug. That’s such a good move. I’m also a huge fan of Heavy Machinery doing well but ultimately losing at the first Revival manipulation, because they aren’t DIY, don’t have that fighting spirit and haven’t spent months scouting those plots. Dash pulls one of Heavy Machinery off the apron to prevent a tag, then maneuvers the other one around until he runs into a Dawson DDT. H&M don’t know how to handle that.
After the match, Rev calls out the Authors of Pain, and when the Authors answer, they bail. Then, when the Authors are posing on the stage with their championship, Rev runs BACK out, shoves one of the Authors off the ramp and clubbers the other. When the shoved Author recovers, they bail again. It’s so good, and so slimy, and exactly the kind of thing you should cheer for as an enlightened wrestling fan who feels like these WWE employees should really be anticipating turns and swerves and traps 24/7.
Best: Bobby Roode Told You So
Synonyms for glorious.
Roode’s infectious enthusiasm in this promo is the best part about it. He’s not just coming out here saying a rehearsed thing, he’s living his character, bringing back everything he’s said in past promos and explaining that yeah, he’s actually that good, and yeah, he’s actually going to be the champion, and yeah, he’s going to be champion forever. He’s so into it that it’s hard to boo him, even though you totally should. Boo, Roo. Boo.
Best: Teams Defeating Not Teams
Something that always bugs me on WWE TV is singles stars teaming up with no prior working relationship or experience and being able to easily beat the top tag teams, because in Vince McMahon’s mind, every side of a wrestling match has equal power, so even the best tag team is just made up of 50% a singles star. That’s why when tags get hot they usually break them up, because they want them to be “real” wrestlers. It’s so weird.
Back in the day, it made sense to say, “if a tag team wrestler is wrestling a singles match, he’s at a disadvantage because he’s doing something he’s not used to.” That also worked in reverse, where you could put a tag team over two randomly paired singles stars because the singles stars aren’t used to tagging, and don’t know the natural ins and outs of it. Then, when the singles stars are two of the very top guys, you could run them against your top tag team and debate the whole thing. It’s why Lex Luger and Sting vs. the Steiner Brothers was so good. You had, for lack of a better term, a statistical argument in either direction.
So while this week’s NXT main event didn’t light my world on fire or anything, I like that SAnitY was able to work together to defeat No Way Jose, Tye Dillinger and Stevie from Eastbound & Down because they’re a unit, and not a random assemblage of well-wishers. The announcers play it up as more of the “damned numbers game” thanks to Nikki Cross’ interference, but still, I think it works. You should be able to beat most of the guys from SAnitY one-on-one, but if you end up in a multi-man match, you should be screwed.
Good episode for SAnitY this week, and while even the Revival match didn’t stand out as spectacular, everything was competently put-together and moved a lot of undercard stories forward.
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