The Best And Worst Of WWE NXT 6/22/16: Oney Yesterday

Previously on the Best and Worst of NXT: Finn Bálor vs. Shinsuke Nakamura was agreed upon, which is going to be great. Other than that, NXT continued its weird, awkward period where they’ve got to kill time before the WWE Draft, knowing that the Draft’s going to shuffle around their talent and give everything a hard deadline. Finn Bálor’s just kinda chilling, American Alpha is kinda hanging out and feuding with the Headhunters 2000, Bayley’s like, “should I come back from injury now, orrrrr?” It’s not the best time, but it’ll even out.

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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for June 22, 2016.

Worst: Oney Lorcan

Just to say it before the worst of you skim the bold and drop down into the comments to call me an a**hole, “Oney Lorcan” the performer is great. Nothing wrong with him as a wrestler or a dude. He works hard and he’s good at what he does, even if what he does is kinda-sorta off-brand Cesaro. And yo, off-brand Cesaro is better than store-brand most people.

That said, two things:

1. What kind of bullsh*t Skyrim-ass name is “Oney Lorcan?” He sounds like he should be one of those bounty hunters in the background in the Star Wars prequels who doesn’t get called out by name but gets an action figure. It looks like it should be pronounced “Wonny.” And Lorcan? Did he pull this sh*t out of a Scrabble bag?

A lot of you (including our good friend SAP Rich Brennan) might point out that he chose the name. Aside from not being able to make NXT Name Generator jokes, that shouldn’t matter. If you show up to the Performance Center saying, “I want to call myself ONEY LORCAN,” there should be somebody there to say, “let’s think of some other options.” It’s like when Hero decided to call himself “Kassius Ohno” and nobody in the company went, “LOOOOL, holy sh*t, no, you’re kidding, right?”

2. Like most of you, I’m hoping the Tye Dillinger story is going somewhere. I’m afraid it’s going the same place the “Tyler Breeze, CJ Parker and Solomon Crowe keep losing to new indie stars” went, but I’ll try to be optimistic. It’s just a bummer to see him lose to EVERYBODY, especially when the crowd is desperately trying to cheer for him and getting shut down at every turn. The crowd audibly hates it. Internet analysts like to get behind WWE losing angles and justify them as the first step in a great future, but damn if it doesn’t just look like a sh*tload of sad losing.

Like, what’s the ending? That someone like Roderick Strong shows up with a bunch of fanfare and Dillinger just jumps and murders him? They already did that with Baron Corbin, and the ending was, “Corbin loses and goes away.” So was everybody else’s. And granted, “going away” could mean “getting called up in the Draft in July,” but that could come with the Breeze and Corbin modifier. You’re here, and we’re gonna take you seriously at first, but we’re going to lose interest (or “faith”) in you in like a month and you’re gonna be just another guy. Why would the next step to Dillinger accidentally getting super over with a localized crowd be to remove him from that crowd?

Ah well, it could be worse. He could be named “Oney Lorcan.”

Best: King Of Garth Style

Shinsuke Nakamura’s hanging out backstage with NXT General Manager Rupert Giles when they’re interrupted by Buddy Murphy, who has just finished his first-ever acting class and DEMANDS a match. Nakamura obliges him with one of those great “say three words in English, say KING OF STRONG STYLE, pose, leave” promos, and the match is set.

The thing you should be paying attention to here is Nak’s outfit, because it for real looks like Michael Jackson cosplaying Garth Brooks. It looks even better when you see the whole thing:

LOOK AT THOSE SOCKS. Nakamura has most of his opponents beaten before he puts on his shoes.

Worst: Eyeballs, Cathy

Cathy Kelley is great. She’s what would happen if Renee Young and Jewel Staite had a baby. She’s like a super Veronica Lane, and at least 100 times better than the smaller Cathy Kelley they hired two weeks after her. But yes, a huge Worst to whoever told her she’s not allowed to look at the wrestlers when she interviews them.

Go back and watch her talk to Austin Aries. Aries is cutting a promo, and she’s just diagonally staring off-screen. You know that thing they told wrestlers to do where they can’t look at the interviewer and they can’t look at the camera, so they just gaze off into the horizon the entire time or have to keep looking at their hands? Apparently interviewers have to do that now. What’s great is that when he gets near the end of what he’s saying, you can see her eyeballs slowly move to the side to check and make sure it’s her time to talk. You can imagine a producer yelling DON’T BE CATHY in her face right before it starts, and see her brain going, “don’t be Cathy, don’t be Cathy, don’t be Cathy.”

Of course, when No Way Jose shows up she has to smile and be Cathy again, because that dude is the precious holy spirit in giant dancing Dreamworks Animation man form.

Best: The Women’s Division

Carmella and Alexa Bliss get in each other’s faces because they both want to be Women’s Champion, and because their daughter Liv Morgan is getting beaten up by Nia Jax. I don’t care, Liv Morgan is their Nate Summers-esque time-traveling daughter. She’s their exact middle point.

Speaking of Liv, more like Die Morgan, am I right? Somebody at NXT finally talked to Nia Jax (cough cough showed her a Best and Worst of NXT cough cough) about how she’s never going to be taken seriously as a powerhouse until she starts showing some power and destroying some houses, so now she’s got that Asuka-wrecking powerbomb as a finish and it’s GREAT. I never thought that weeks of typing MAKE HER LIKE VADER would end with her powerbombing people, but I’m so into it. The best part is that she powerbombs poor Liv so hard it actually bends her body in half. Watch it, Liv hits the ground flat, but she hits it so hard her hips are just like BLOOP and he leg flaps over. F*cking brutal. This Nia Jax forever.

The other women’s match on the show is a utilitarian affair between Bayley and Deonna Purazzo, aka “the woman in the Ferrari gear most famous for getting kicked in the face by Asuka.” Deonna manages to get in more offense this time, but the result is mostly the same … this is Bayley’s first match back from being trounced by Nia Jax, so she puts it together quickly and Bayley-to-Bellies Deonna into dust. There’s not much to the match besides getting Bayley back and establishing that she’s still a strong wrestler who isn’t gonna fall apart every time she’s challenged, but it was entertaining, and it’s nice to have the heart and soul of the show back.

If we’re doing Finn vs. Shinsuke on NXT TV in a few weeks, let’s hope Bayley sticks around to get her brand farewell in Brooklyn. She deserves her own dedicated moment.

Best: Sarcastic Hate-Dancing

God, if you’d told me a month ago that Austin Aries dancing with No Way Jose would’ve been my favorite NXT thing of the month, I wouldn’t have believed you. I couldn’t have. But hey, here we are. It’s glorious.

If you missed it, watch the video. No Way Jose defeats a generic MMA create-a-superstar and is interrupted by Aries. Aries tells him that a man isn’t measured by his victories, he’s measured by his defeats, and he’s realized that NXT is supposed to be fun. Jose convinces him to stick around and dance, and Aries launches into some of the worst, most enthusiastic Dad Dancing you’ve ever seen. They dance in the ring, do all of Jose’s taunts, then dance out of and AROUND the ring. Then they dance up the ramp. Then they dance onto the stage. Then they decide to leave the stage and dance on the announce table. Only THEN, after like 45 minutes of hyper Carltoning, does Aries reveal his plan: he’s going to PUNCH JOSE IN THE FACE.

I can’t overstate how much I enjoyed this. Dude dances with Jose FOREVER before turning on him, even orchestrating a turning-in-place cooperative dance on the announce table so he can hit him with a rolling elbow. Like, Jose’s standing there with his back turned to Aries several times and Aries is like, nope, gonna stretch it out a little longer. He loses to SHINSUKE NAKAMURA and instead of taking it out on Nakamura, he’s like, “I’m gonna go beat up No Way Jose.” It’s such an impossible sh*thead move, and I love it.

Plus, who turns on No Way Jose? Especially unprovoked? That’s like turning heel on a kitten.

Best: So Long, Buddy

The entire time Buddy Murphy’s in the ring with Nakmaura, even when he’s winning, the announce team’s kinda like, “yeah, Buddy Murphy’s gonna die. This was stupid. Buddy Murphy definitely shouldn’t have had a match with Shinsuke Nakamura.”

There isn’t much to analyze here beyond, “what were you THINKING, Buddy,” so watch this GIF of him getting Kinshasa’d into outer space on loop for five minutes:

Poor Buddy wrestled this match like he was trying to run in QWOP. I look forward to him resurfacing in early 2017 as one half of the Shining Stars Of The Barrier Reef.