Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: Liv Morgan finally got to challenge Asuka and got bodied so hard she’s now a severed head in a jar. Also on the show, Hideo Itami beat up a kitty cat.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for Oct. 5, 2016.
Worst: The Bollywood Boyz Are Here To Deliver A ‘Butter Chicken Beatdown’
Hope there aren’t any KUNG PAO BITCHES in the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, because Blerg and Gurv Sihra are here to give their first round opponents a “butter chicken beatdown.” The only problem is that their first round opponents are the Authors of Pain, so their promo should’ve just been like, “it’s fine, we’ll ALOO GOBI eliminated!”
If you haven’t been following along, the Authors are “Occam” and “Razor,” a philosophical wrestling theory that says the simplest team is usually better. They beat the Bollywood Boyz so bad they’ve got them screaming, “we don’t want naan.”
The brackets for the Dusty Classic are weird this year, because Block B has all the established actual teams — The Revival, DIY and the world’s most dangerous NaNoWriMo project all in the same block — and Block A is just TM61 and a bunch of hodgepodge CWC jams:
I hope they build up the mystery of Austin Aries’ partner until the Internet’s like, “It’s Roderick Strong! It’s Matt Sydal! It’s, I don’t know, Davey Richards!” And then it’s just Sean Maluta.
Anyway, the highlight of the Bollywood Boyz/Adultz Of Pain match happens during the Boyz’ entrance, when Garrett from Community interprets “Bollywood dancing” as, “KARATE ROBOT.”
Seems like the perfect chance to segue into this picture of Rich Swann:
Best: Rich Swann’s Face
Up next on More Of The Cruiserweight Classic But Without A Point, Raw Superstar Rich Swann takes on Patrick Clark.
If you’ll recall the last time we saw Clark (on the July 20 edition of NXT), he was AMERICA THE JOBBER. His shirt was a billowy American flag, his USA tights had bald eagles and Patrick Clark faces airbrushed onto them, and we described him as looking, “like Ernie Hudson fell into a Toby Keith song.” This week, he looks … uh, different.
Yes, that’s a gangster sport-coat with puffy shirt ruffles pinned to the lapel and a headband made out of one of Chris Jericho’s old shirts. Tom Phillips spends the entire match comparing him to Prince and making timely-ass Chapelle’s Show jokes. What did the five fingers say to the face? Well I’ve seen the five fingers around the WWE Performance Center, and they’ve earned quite a reputation for saying “slap,” Corey!
We don’t jump to the crowd to watch real-life Peter Griffin doing the Beat It dance, so the best part is Swann’s “look at this f*ckin’ guy” face.
The worst part is Tom Phillips saying it should become a “jiff,” like I needed another reason to hate that guy. Don’t @ me.
UP NEXT
DAN MATHA IS COMING.
Best Ever: LOL DAN MATHA
After weeks of Glacier-esque hype videos that are like, LOOK AT DAN MATHA’S RIPPLING ABS, LOOK AT THOSE WEIRD BUMPS ON HIS THIGHS, GET RIGHT IN THERE AND SMELL HIS CROTCH, IT’S FINE, HE’S DAN MATHA, Dan Matha finally debuts. If you’ve never seen him, imagine Nathan Jones. I was gonna make a “with ___” joke there, but just imagine Nathan Jones. That’s fine.
Matha’s got the funniest history. He was on the Pitt football team from 2007-2009, but didn’t play because his shoulders were always injured. Nothing says, “this guy should be in NXT” like, “he’s about to get a shoulder injury.” He was invited to a Cincinnati Bengals rookie mini-camp in 2013, but they didn’t offer him a contract. Now, after like a month of DAN MATHA IS DEBUTING videos, he shows up for about 30 seconds and Samoa Joe beats him to death. Nothing left of him but his Bo Dallas tighty-whities and a pile of popped bacne.
Joe insists that if Regal doesn’t listen to him, the beatings will continue. Because Samoa Joe is THE BEST.
Hey William Regal …
I think you should strip Nak of the belt …
Maybe you’ll find someone to protect you.
Maybe Dan Matha?
That was a joke. Ha Ha. Fat Chance!
Anyway this show is great!
It’s so delicious and moist!
I hope we either (a) never see Dan Matha again, or (b) we wait six months, start up the DAN MATHA IS COMING, LOOK AT HIS CROTCH, DO IT videos again, wait a month and then have someone instantly injure him again in his re-debut.
Best/Worst: This Right Here? This Is Kamela. And She Loses To Peyton Royce. And You Can’t, Teach, That.
Peyton Royce returns to finally give some closure to her hot “this flower smells REALLY GREAT” angle with a victory over Danielle Kamela. Her last name either reminds you of “Carmella” or “Kamala” depending on your age. She looks kinda like Nia Jax had a baby with ECW Layla.
It’s good to see Peyton back and to see the women’s division continue to awkwardly form itself after the Draft put all the “they’ll be good in a year or two” women on main roster TV, but you never get to see if the women in NXT have anything to offer if they aren’t going over. It’s just kinda like, “hey, I’m happy to be here, point point point, have a bad clothesline, have a bad dropkick, oh no you hit me with your move caw caw bang f*ck I’m dead.”
All I know is that they finally seem to be taking advantage of the fact that Peyton Royce is physically very weird and are having her wrestle like a pissed-off tentacle. Lots of weird bending and spinning and putting her legs over her head, and even her grounded forearm shots have these big, flailing wind-ups. Liv Morgan should beat her by giving her a Pepsi.
Best: Tye Dillinger, Straight Man
NXT has managed to turn the guy with the Vanilla Ice eyebrows who is obsessed with the number ten into a STRAIGHT MAN in his tag team, and I love it. Tye Dillinger and Bobby Roode are like the fit, polite Kevin Owens and his best friend, the love child of 2016 Chris Jericho and 2008 Best in the World at What I Do Chris Jericho.
They face the debuting SANITY in round one of the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic next week, which means … that they’re totally losing and breaking up and fighting each other, doesn’t it? God dammit.
Best: Tranquilo!
1. The Revival is the best tag team in the world. I just wanted to type that without a bunch of jokes and modifiers around it so you know I mean it. I can’t think of a tag team in YEARS that does such bulletproof work, and I can’t remember the last time the Revival was on TV and I didn’t enjoy it. These guys could get a great tag -eam match out of pile of laundry and Dan Matha’s dismembered braille leg right now. All I want for the Dusty Classic is for them to be the ones who take out the Authors of Pain. The only thing making them heel is that they’re jerks about how good they are.
2. This week’s main event is the Revival vs. Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas and Cedric ‘Alex’ Ander in round one of the Dusty Classic, and it ends in the best way possible: with Cedric eating a Shatter Machine, and Cien Almas finally cutting the Mexican Males bullsh*t and turning heel on him.
Every single aspect of this is positive. The Revival got another great, clean win to confirm that they are, in fact, the sh*t. Cedric is over as hell with the Full Sail crowd and got to look like the scrappiest babyface that ever scrapped, and lost to the Revival via bad timing and tag team inexperience. Almas is FINALLY getting to do what brought him to the dance, and rudo’ing it up will give him the personality he’s been brutally missing since his debut. Plus, sh*t, La Sombra vs. Cedric Alexander at TakeOver (maybe), and The Revival vs. DIY in round two of the Dusty Classic. Yes to everything.