Previously on the vintage Best and Worst of WWE NXT: Sofia Cortez (Ivelisse), Jake Carter (shockingly not Jack Swagger’s real name) and Corey Graves (Corey Graves) all made their NXT debuts, and Seth Rollins teamed up with Tyson Kidd and Bo Dallas to lose a six-man main event. This week: Husky Harris is back from the dead, and look out, he’s seen Cape Fear.
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And now, the vintage Best and Worst of WWE NXT for July 11, 2012.
Best: The Running Man
This week’s most important debut is future WWE Champion and psychological jobber Bray Wyatt, back when he was more Max Cady in Cape Fear (1991) and less post-apocalyptic magic hobo. If you’ve never seen Cape Fear, just watch any clip of Robert Deniro as Cady. That’s what he’s doing. I mean, he’s practically cosplaying him:
Wyatt debuts against Aiden English, and while modern Wyatt would’ve engaged in a month of mental warfare culminating in a haunted house full of actors in sheep masks and a humiliating loss after making the one of the walls look like a pulsating butthole, 2012 NXT Bray Wyatt chooses instead to beat up English until he’s unconscious and pin him. Original Bray Wyatt was the shit, and I can’t wait to spend the next couple of years of NXT pointing at him all excitedly and being like, “no, THIS is what we were so excited for, THIS is why we’re still making excuses and hoping for the best!”
Also, the original version of Sister Abigail was set up by the splash in the corner, which knocked you unconscious (due to intense, sudden huskiness) and left you prone in Bray’s arms so he could ballroom dance with your body a la Weekend at Bernie’s before throwing you over.
Join us next week when Luke Harper debuts as a 1930s West Virginia preacher with “love” and “hate” tattooed on his knuckles.
Best/Worst: Tyson Kidd Does Yeoman’s Work
Our actual first match of the week features Tyson Kidd being ask to spin hay into gold and carry Camacho to an almost 13-minute (!) back-and-forth match. He’s helped tremendously by William Regal, who is without a doubt one of the best color commentators of all time, and a major reason I’m not as into modern NXT as I was into the Hulu era despite a MASSIVE increase in production quality and visibility. Regal made everything feel important. Kidd and Camacho felt like John Cena vs. Batista through Regal’s eyes. Nobody else is gonna think it unless someone we trust says it.
Camacho is no Cesaro, but he holds his own. Everything’s going really well until the finish, which is supposed to be Michael McGillicutty getting up on the apron and distracting Kidd. That’s the most tired finish in history, made even worse by the fact that McGillicutty clearly misses his cue, and Kidd has to like, hold Camacho in half a sharpshooter and look back over his shoulder until he sees goober Axel jogging down the ramp. You can see it in the picture. Look how far away he is!
With that distraction made, Camacho hits the most complicated move in his arsenal — a DDT — then lies there a little too long until he’s able to cover. I’m honestly surprised Hunico didn’t have to drag one of those low-rider bikes into the ring and transfer Camacho’s body onto Kidd’s for him.
Best/Worst: The Ultra Diva
Remember a couple of weeks ago when Richie Steamboat debuted, and I wrote about how late-2000s early-2010s WWE was an absolute DELUGE of mildly talented second and third generation stars who probably could’ve been great if they hadn’t been stuck in that “real names, but not the marketable ones, and you all have to look the same and do the same moves” please-play-it-safe WWE aesthetic? That extends to the women, too.
Here’s your first look at Raquel Diaz, daughter of Eddie and Vickie Guerrero. If that made your eyebrows raise, you’re probably expecting someone with the wrestling ability of Eddie and the intense crowd management and charisma of Vickie. Instead, Raquel Diaz — who is advertised openly as a Guerrero, but not fucking called “Raquel Guerrero” — has the wrestling ability of Vickie, and the mic skills of 1997 Eddie. Which, I mean, is still pretty good, but it’s not the lucha libre Charlotte Flair it should be. And she kinda cuts promos that make her sound like a Pokemon gym leader. She’s even got the laugh.
We’ll get into Raquel when she actually debuts next week, but think about how crazy it is that in 2012, NXT had Ricky Steamboat’s son and Eddie and Vickie Guerrero’s daughter, and neither of them made it past 2014.
Slabriel Explodes!
Next week’s “visiting main roster talent” match features two NXT season 1 rookies and, if my fan fiction is to be believed, lovers, Heath Slater and Justin Gabriel, affectionately known as “Slabriel.”
Gabriel’s coming back from an injury and looking to make an impact, so Slater pops in and is like, “you want to make an impact? You can’t make an impact! I’m the one making an impact!” People used to cut promos like that all the time. When you’re brought into the company as part of a game show that asks wrestlers to conform as much as possible and do what they’re told without pissing everyone off, you get years of promos that’re just buzzwords and staring up and off-screen to the left.
So yeah, next week we see Justin Gabriel and Heath Slater square off to decide who should feel the worst about still being on NXT five seasons later. Spoiler alert: It’s Justin Gabriel.
Boring Best: The Usos vs. The Prime Time Players
Yeah, that’s the main event. It is what it is. The Usos are still the “Samoan princes” and Titus O’Neil and Darren Young are such a non-factor that Regal refers to them as the “main event players,” so it’s a perfectly cromulent tag team match wrestled by guys in various stages of ever getting it.
The Players win when the referee gets unusually distracted by a downed Uso, allowing for a tandem finisher that would also be allowed in pretty much any other tag team match scenario. After the match, Titus and Darren do the “millions of dollars” dance but they don’t have the theme to go along with it yet, so it’s super awkward.
And that’s our show!
Next Week:
- Richie Steamboat and Leo Kruger go one-on-one, because they got in each other’s faces backstage during this episode and NXT matches at this point are self-fulfilling prophecies
- NXT game show rookies Kaitlyn and Percy Watson return!
- Raquel Diaz debuts
- Justin Gabriel and Heath Slater do battle to determine who has the hardest corre
All this and slightly more, next week!
