Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: Not a lot. Eva Marie and Nia Jax won a tag match against Bayley and Carmella, Bull Dempsey smacked his belly and spun his way out of NXT and Apollo Crews beat the new WWE version of Biff Busick. We’re in a bit of a holding pattern until we get to WrestleMania, but things are finally starting to happen.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for March 2, 2016.
Best: Malibu Stacy Has A New Hat
This week’s opener is the rebooted, more serious Vaudevillains against Hugo Knox and Tucker Knight.
1. The Vaudevillains have fancy jackets and hats now! I’m not sure if they’ve worn them before and I just forgot to mention it (or wasn’t paying close enough attention), but I like them. At some point, every strange WWE gimmick has to sorta dull its colors and become a rushed explanation. “So why are these super serious guys in black trunks called The Vaudevillains?” “Well, at first they were like, silent movie Vaudeville guys, but now it’s mostly just a name.”
The Villains win to keep their new upswing of momentum going. I feel bad for any team in the NXT tag division right now that isn’t American Alpha, because as good as they are — Enzo and Big Cass, I’m looking in your direction — they just aren’t gonna be the point for a while.
2. Their opponents are Hugo Knox and Tucker Knight, who (and I know I say this too much) sound like lost inventory from the 2010 NXT factory and might be the most create-a-wrestler motherf*ckers I’ve ever seen. Granted, NXT loves turning nondescript jobbers into characters I love — Baron Corbin, Tyler Breeze, Jason Jordan and like a dozen others — but yo, Knox and Knight look like they bought their gear at an Aerie.
3. NXT is in love with subverting the hot tag trope. I’ve given it a Best a few times, but I want to know who in production keeps pushing that through. There are so many NXT tag matches where one jobber takes a beating the entire time, finally tags out to his partner and the partner just runs in and loses.
Best/Worst: Emma Vs. Santana
I love a good Big Boss Emma squash and Santana Garrett continues to look great in her way-too-quick losses, but real quick I need to throw shade at whoever picked Santana’s entrance theme.
If you missed it, watch this and give it a listen. How are you gonna give somebody the Kronos Quartet cover of Emma’s entrance theme and then book her against Emma? And if you do that, how are you gonna show it on TV without editing the music? This is one of the strangest, “how the hell did nobody catch that” things I’ve seen on NXT in a while.
Best: Baron Corbin Is My Patronus
So, William Regal announces that Triple H handed him a post-it note that read, “HIRE EVERYONE I LIKED FROM SUPERCARD OF HONOR 2006,” and since Ricky Reyes is under contract to Lucha Underground, he’s signed Austin Aries. If you take out everything between “announces” and “he’s signed,” that’s the actual thing that happened.
Aries wanders out looking like the porno version of Elijah Wood and Corey Graves loses his mind. In the interest of transparency (and to remind you that these columns are just my opinion, and I’m not “right,” I just think sh*t about a wrestling show and type it), I’ve never been an Aries fan. A lot of people love him and NXT’s got a way of changing my mind about indie standouts who were never my cup of tea — I love Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn way more than I ever liked Kevin Steen and El Generico, for example — so who knows? My pre-existing preferences and prejudices might fade away. That’s irrelevant here, though, because the homie Baron Corbin shows up out of nowhere and just WRECKS Aries before he can even get in the ring.
I used to make jokes about how The Shield would interrupt boring segments because I’d hit my Limit Break or like, willed them into existence. That’s Baron Corbin for me now. I’m also kind of tired of NXT signing indie stars instead of making cool, original NXT things, and anything we can do to make the show less like 3-years-ago-TNA is good with me. I’m a proud, stalwart member of Team Balding Werewolf.
One End of Days on the floor later and Aries’ debut is ruined. There’s a pretty funny followup video on Dot Com of Aries being all, DON’T CRY FOR ME, WILLIAM REGAL, I’M ALREADY DEAD while fans yell “welcome to NXT” at him. I hope Corbin treats him like KO treated Alex Riley.
Worst: We’re Still Drifting
Acoustic Fandango gets another win, and here’s how much I liked it: when I was screencapping I forgot what I was doing for a second and accidentally got Samson fading into a Hype Bros interview. I didn’t have enough energy to hit the “10 seconds ago” button and get a better one. Elias Samson, everybody.
Best: Hey Neville, Remember How Much Fun It Is To Wrestle
This week’s main event is one of those matches that would be incredible with any kind of build or gravitas, but will probably be overshadowed by the Sami Zayn/Samoa Joe matches sandwiching it: current NXT Champion Finn Bálor vs. former NXT Champion Adrian Neville. Man, is it good.
Neville’s spent most of his time on the main roster playing the “WWE Cruiserweight” role, which is almost exclusively getting beaten up, flipping on bumps to make big guys look good and hitting one (or a maximum of two) cool signature moves. This is also known as “Evan Bourning” it. It’s good work if you can get it, but I can’t imagine it’s the most artistically fulfilling thing in the world. Thank goodness there’s a place in the company like NXT where guys who feel like wrestling baller 16-minute back-and-forth classics can do so without sacrificing their rich world-traveler dream jobs.
Putting Neville in this match also addresses him for when we ultimately build to Bálor vs. Zayn, and the question becomes, “Who is the greatest NXT Champion ever?” If Bálor beats Neville and Zayn in the same span of a few months, it’s him without question. He’s the only one of them that beat Kevin Owens, after all. If Zayn eventually beats Bálor, he becomes the first two-time Champion and sets right some of that embarrassment of how his first title run ended. Or, you know, they never wrestle and Zayn goes up to the main roster to f*ck with Kevin Owens and Bálor’s still beaten everybody.
Even if it’s meaningless, I will take this match with no connection to the grander scheme of things over almost anything else you want to give me. I miss being a Neville fanboy, and I hope he gets weekend visitation rights for “good wrestling.”
Best: I Can’t Wait For This
We end the show with a quick Sami Zayn/Samoa Joe interview, and the reminder that while Joe is the heel and Zayn is the face, neither guy is really “wrong.”
Joe is the reason Sami Zayn wasn’t permanently injured at the hands of Kevin Owens, and he feels like Sami’s constant (indirect) interference in his quest to become NXT Champion is a sign of ungratefulness and disrespect. Zayn is WWE’s purest babyface, but he’s also a little entitled sometimes, and plays the “I helped pave the way for you” card a little too often. When he did it to Owens, there was a history. Now he’s doing it for Joe, and you’re like … maybe? NXT DID only become “NXT” when Sami Zayn showed up and got popular, but still, Joe deserved to be here before anybody knew what a Sami Zayn was.
I love that Joe’s point of view is now, more or less, “I brought you into this world and I can take you out.” He saved Zayn from a career-ending beatdown, and now he’s gonna give him one. Zayn’s got more heart than anybody in the building, though, and his confidence is earned. He fought for it.
I’m pretty excited for the 2-out-of-3 falls match, you guys. I don’t know if it’ll top Zayn/Cesaro, but if it comes within 100 feet of that it’ll be one of the best matches of the year.
