The Best And Worst Of WWE NXT 6/21/17: Heroes Eventually Die

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: Velveteen Dream needed to work on his elbow drop, Authors Of Pain felt threatened by the lethal combination of steaks and weights, and we went bobbing for Asuka.

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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for June 21, 2017.

Best: Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder

As hard as I’ve been on Ember Moon in the past few months (and deservedly so, because her character has been reduced to “lose to Asuka, look sad, repeat”), it was good to see her back in the ring. From the second she walked out and mouthed “I’m back, baby,” until the finish 10 minutes later, Moon projected confidence and her moves looked fresh after having been off TV for some time.

Kudos to Peyton Royce for focusing her offense on Moon’s shoulder (even if she focused on the wrong shoulder the first time), helping reinforce the idea that these are not just sports entertainers, these are competitors who watch tape on each other and stay up on injury reports. I still fear a live mic in Ember Moon’s hand, but if she can continue to kick ass in the ring, hopefully that will do the talking for her.

Worst: Controlled Chaos

In a match so inconsequential, there’s not even a clip of it on WWE’s YouTube channel, SAnitY’s Eric Young and Alexander Wolfe take on the Ealy Brothers, which poses the existential question, “If a wrestling match happens in front of a sold-out crowd and there is no response, did the wrestling match even exist?”

This glorified squash featured one of the coldest hot tags I’ve ever seen, and the way SAnitY chose to wrestle this match baffled me. Do y’all not see how crazy and unhinged Nikki Cross is? You should be chaotically laying waste your opponents, not doing traditional strategies like corner isolation and frequent tags. Where is the danger? At this point, I would not complain if SAnitY were dissolved, leading Nikki Cross and Killian Dain to form a Natural Born Killers-esque partnership, because I never need to see Wolfe’s dumbass hardcore dancing in a wrestling ring ever again.

Best: Am I Deville? Yes I Am

Next, Rachel Evers (aka Rachael Ellering, aka the name on the dedication page of the Authors Of Pain’s next book) squares off against Sonya Deville in a quick match that made both women look good. The timing wasn’t perfect, and it feels like Deville is spending a bit too much time wandering around the ring before figuring out what her next sequence is going to be, but when she kicks into gear, it’s awesome: The one spot where she just starts delivering hard shots to Evers’ gut made me cringe with how real it looked (and probably felt).

Deville’s character is forming nicely, and her take-no-sh*t, give-no-f*cks attitude works for me. Plus it was cool to see her win with a submission after winning her previous match against Lacey Evans with a pinfall, keeping her offense varied and helping make her more well-rounded. Who knew they actually developed people in developmental?

Best: Trailer Park Boys

Goddamn, Bobby Roode was perfect in this segment, from pushing the narrative that Roddy Strong and his family are trailer trash to not giving an inch after Strong jumped him (and needing to be restrained by a randomly passing-by Oney Lorcan) to full-on challenging Strong to a championship match because that’s how little he fears the guy.

That’s the kind of heel champion I want: a cocky, arrogant prick who puts the good guys in their place and doesn’t run from confrontation. We’ll get the match in two weeks’ time, not at a TakeOver, which sort of telegraphs the result, but I look forward to it regardless.

Best: Strike Anywhere

Our main event this week featured the undefeated Aleister Black going up against Kassius Ohno in Chicago Bulls colors. (Aleister? Chicago? It took my entire willpower not to title this section “Somewhere On Fullerton.”) This match between the former tag team partners started off a little too slow for my liking, but I understood that NXT can’t rely on its audience knowing the two combatants’ combined histories, so they needed to establish a feeling-out process of the match. (Even though that process gets undermined when you have commentary talking about how Ohno was involved in the training of Black, but ¯_(ツ)_/¯.)

The second half of the match got as close to strong style as NXT has been since Nakamura was called up. Boots to the face, slaps to the chest, blows to the back — these two guys were laying it in pretty stiff, and it was great to see Aleister Black finally humanized in the ring. He’s yet to take any real damage in any of his matches, so seeing him struggle against Ohno (and watch as Ohno mocked his meditation pose) went a long way in helping flesh out his character. The finish was creative, too, with Ohno going for his forearm and getting caught with a Black Mass outta nowhere. Both guys left the match looking better than they did going into it.

Best: Troll Troll Hideo

This part was left off the broadcast, but was a great follow-up to earlier in the episode when Hideo Itami half-heartedly apologized to Kassius Ohno for being a turd to him a few weeks back. The best part about this is it could go one of two ways: The two could immediately feud with one another, or they could realize they are stronger as a unit than separately and try to run the table in the Dusty Rhodes Classic later this year. (And, hey, they could go the second route and then have Hideo turn on KO, fulfilling the early promise of this story too!)

After a long stretch of nothingness, it finally feels like NXT is kicking back into high gear once again, and I’m getting excited to see where everything goes.

Next Week: Asuka squares off against Nikki Cross in a Last Woman Standing match. If it’s anything like Last Comic Standing, expect Dat Phan to swoop in at the last minute to steal the victory.