The Best And Worst Of WWE NXT 3/9/16: 2-Out-Of-3 Falls

Previously on the Best and Worst of NXT: Austin Aries made his long-awaited NXT debut, and immediately got taken to the woodshed by a biker werewolf. Also, the longest-reigning NXT Champion in history took on the current NXT Champion. Hugo Knox and Tucker Knight became NXT’s best tag team to wrestle in Victoria’s Secret underpants.

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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for March 9, 2016. First, the non-match stuff. Note: there isn’t a lot.

Best: Austin Aries vs. Baron Corbin at TakeOver

First, enjoy the fictional world of that promotional image where Baron Corbin’s got a full head of hair and Austin Aries is 6-foot-8, and not the size of one of Corbin’s legs.

Second, I want to make sure I say how much I love straight-forward NXT booking, and how sometimes the obvious story is the one you want to tell. Corbin/Aries is a more aggro version of Breeze/Liger. Corbin’s spent the past year being angry at the influx of independent wrestling stars like Samoa Joe and Apollo Crews. He thinks they’re little and unimpressive and don’t deserve WWE jobs because they made their name in the minor leagues. Now here comes AUSTIN ARIES, the littlest of all of them, having made his name as the guy who wears a bathmat as a cape in TNA, and Corbin hates it. It’s all his worst fears realized. So he jumps him from behind and tries to take him out before he can even get in the ring and say hello, and now he’s blindly walking into a marquee match against the dude. It’s the best scenario for both guys. Aries gets to wrestle his first match on one of the company’s biggest shows ever and have it announced weeks ahead of time, and he gets to look like a million bucks against a guy everyone hates who is secretly really good. Corbin gets to learn from another high profile veteran and keep getting better.

Third, if you want to know why I give Aries so much sh*t, it’s for stuff like this:

It’s less “Austin Aries the wrestler” and more than character type. It’s so dorky. “Borin’ Corbin?” Did Izzy write that? Did I write that pretending I’d forgotten how to write jokes? And hey I don’t want to undersell Austin Aries or whatever but you know Corbin wrestled Crews in London and wrestled Samoa freaking Joe in Brooklyn at the biggest and best show in company history right? If you’re gonna be cocky, at least back it up with sh*t that makes sense.

(Yes, I am just on Team Corbin, leave me alone.)

Best: NXT Had A Show Planned And Then Joe/Zayn Went Long

One of my very favorite parts of the show, and something I need everyone who watched to recognize and tell WWE you noticed, is that NXT had a full show booked before Samoa Joe vs. Sami Zayn “went long.” I can’t properly express how much I love this. Every single f*cking Smackdown that starts with guys on Miz TV getting into an argument or someone getting interrupted and a 4-person brawl breaking out to set up tag matches later in the night, I wonder what WWE had planned if things had gone smoothly. Like, if Bray Wyatt doesn’t attack Dean Ambrose to set up the tag, what do you have as a main? Is there some sad Zack Ryder vs. Alex Riley match scheduled every week that gets pushed back?

I don’t know why they’d run Zayn vs. Joe 2-out-of-3 falls first and expect it to only go like 15 minutes, but Tom Phillips insists that we’ve got American Alpha and the Vaudevillains coming up later, and mentions that Bayley and Asuka are here. They’re establishing a universe that exists to contextualize and explain what’s happening in the ring. Now when Joe and Zayn go long, it not only feels special, but is given a context in which it feels dynamic. It’s exceeding expectations. Zayn and Joe won’t go down easily, and just because it’s a 2-out-of-3 falls match doesn’t mean they’re gonna start getting pinned via transitional moves. Love love love it. Love it. Pretend I typed “love” 400 more times.

Best: Joe Vs. Zayn

I’ve read a lot of conflicting opinions about this match. If you missed it (and skipped the column until now), Samoa Joe wrestled Sami Zayn in a 2-out-of-3 falls match to finally, definitively determine a #1 contender to the NXT Championship. The first time they tried, they tapped out Baron Corbin simultaneously (in a match nobody cared about, right Austin Aries) and it was a draw. The second time they tried, they accidentally pinned each other. The only way to get a real answer is with 2-out-of-3, which is basically NXT’s Hell in a Cell.

But yeah, I’ve read a lot about this match since it happened. Some people think it’s the Match of the Year. Some people think it’s a boring disappointment. I’m trying to figure out where I stand on it.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t as hype for it as I expected to be. I expected a big blowout exciting thing like Zayn/Cesaro, I think, and that’s not fair. This is a different relationship. Zayn was a new guy in Cesaro’s shadow, and had to use the element of surprise and his flashiest moves to gain an advantage. Here, Zayn is a veteran. Joe is a veteran, too, and they’ve fought around the world. Sami is a physical underdog, but emotionally and socially they’re on the same level. This was about cleanly deciding who was the better man, without all the bullsh*t. That’s a tough note to hit.

To me, it was a little like a Traveling Wilburys album. It’s a collaborative effort between objectively the best people in the world at what they do, and it’s great for what it is, but it’s not going to get you excited. Right? Nobody’s like, OH SH*T YOU HEAR THAT DOPE TRAVELING WILBURYS TRACK, YOU GOTTA HEAR IT MAN, OH MY GOD YOU WON’T BELIEVE IT. No. But it’s the best in the world doing what they do to the best of their abilities, independent of the image and expectations.

That was Zayn/Joe. It’s pro wrestling. I can’t imagine watching it and not liking it on some level, because it’s two of the best pro wrestlers in the world professionally wrestling their asses off. It’s not about the excitement necessarily, it’s about the story. It’s about the art. That sounds super pretentious and I’m sorry I don’t have a better way to say it, but it kinda cut the image and vibe you’d expect from a big-time NXT match and got down to what makes actual wrestling great. Does that make sense?

The main story the match tries to tell is that Joe and Zayn are the top dogs, and they have to just go nose-to-nose and fight it out until one of them drops. There are side stories — Zayn’s history with getting knocked out, Joe trying to get a knockout or count-out win in the second fall and Zayn refusing to stay down, Zayn going into adrenaline overdrive in the third fall and getting a hell of a final wind — but it’s beautiful in its simplicity. These guys are both really good. One can’t clearly establish dominance over the other, so they’re going to fight until one of them does.

As we’ve said a lot, it’s great to see Joe working on this level again. Seeing him go 35 minutes reminds us that even though he doesn’t look like the run-of-the-mill athlete, he’s got that badass wrestler cardio that can get him through longer matches. He’s the opposite of most bigger guys. Usually you can let those guys tire themselves out, and the longer the match goes, the better chance you have of beating them. When you wrestle Joe, you end up being at a disadvantage if it goes long, because he’s right there with you and STILL bigger and stronger than you.

Zayn has been on the next level since returning from injury, and I’m not even sure how to explain it. There’s even more focus on his in-ring storytelling ability, and seeing him go limp and collapse back into the ropes to sell strikes stays engaging. There’s a moment where Joe boot scrapes him and Zayn just kinda slumps over messing with his nose, convincing practically everyone in the building (including the announce team) that Joe broke his nose with what is basically a sliding leg-brush to the face. It’s great. I think Zayn goes a little too far with the “concussion selling” sometimes — that gets into an uncanny valley for wrestling fans, especially in a world where Daniel Bryan just had to retire — but it’s real. Zayn adjusting his knee and making sure he didn’t blow it out a few seconds into the match is real. We saw him actually do that to his shoulder on Raw, so now we never really know.

Joe ends up taking the first fall deep into the match with a Muscle Buster, but only after missing it a few times and having to capitalize on a Zayn mistake. He counters Zayn’s rope-walk tornado DDT and just kinda throws him at the ground, and that gives him the opening he needs. Zayn ends up ruthlessly boned because he took such a powerful shot that far into the match, and the second and third falls rely on him sucking it the hell up and fighting back with everything he’s got. You don’t want to be down 0-1 to Samoa Joe after 20 minutes. The good news for Zayn is that his guts have always been 40 times the size of his brains.

The second fall plays out the same way but in reverse, with Joe thinking he’s in control and getting caught with enough Zayn reversals that he ends up in the Koji Clutch. Joe’s forced to tap, and it reads to me like Joe knowing he’s going to be a lot worse off in the third fall if he stays in the hold forever instead of taking the tie.

That leads us into the third fall, with both guys spent and trying to throw their final bombs. Zayn breaks out the dive-through-the-turnbuckles tornado DDT here, and Joe breaks out my favorite thing in all of wrestling: slightly altered, Big Match finishers.

Zayn gets Joe in the Coquina Clutch, but Joe’s able to reverse it because it’s his damn move, so of course he knows the reversal. He twists Zayn’s ankle to break the body lock and just rolls over out of it. Later, in the final moments of the match, Joe dodges a Helluva Kick and grabs the clutch himself. He wants to keep Sami from reaching the ropes AND knows Sami might’ve paid attention to how he broke the hold earlier, so he hooks his leg over Sami’s right arm to keep him controlled. It’s BRILLIANT. Sami can’t reach the ropes with his entire body weight on his arm, and he can’t twist the ankle with one hand. Sami just passes out, and Joe wins. Sami doesn’t give up, he just kinda dies in the hold, and it doesn’t seem like forced nobility. His body just gives out on him. His heart’s still going, but his brain and limbs are shutting down.

And that’s the match. A brilliantly wrestled, brilliantly executed, not always super exciting pro wrestling classic you might never watch again. Does that make sense?

All in all, just to say it, I loved it. I love it more thinking about it the next day than I did watching it. I love going back and analyzing the stories, and paying attention to what moves happened where and when, and why. That’s not everybody’s bag, but it’s mine, and it’s a big f*ckin’ bag. I look forward to Joe/Finn II in Dallas, and to whatever Zayn will be doing on what might be his final weekend with NXT. I totally haven’t been spoiled, nope.