Previously on the Best and Worst of NXT: On an episode it felt like everybody’d seen before, the highlights were a pair of video packages that went on for too long and a backstage interview with Austin Aries where he talked about No Way Jose being a goober. It wasn’t the best episode. Spoiler alert: who cares, watch this one.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for July 6, 2016.
Worst: Those Laser Noises
This has been going on for a few weeks now, and I tried to ignore it in the hopes that it’d just go away. Somebody took the perfectly cromulent NXT opening theme and added laser noises to it. I’d point out where you can hear them, but there’s no way you can’t. Just imagine the old theme with someone going pewwwww throughout. It’s jarring and terrible and the person who added them should be sacked.
Either that, or they should add assembly line noises to it and set the new opening to ‘Powerhouse.’
Best: Bayley vs. Bliss, Exclamation Point
The 2-out-of-3 falls match for the NXT Tag Team Championship is gonna get all the love from this episode (and it should get a huge portion of it), but don’t sleep on how baller this Bayley vs. Alexa Bliss match was.
The story here is that Bayley’s back, but she’s (finally) not stupid. She knows that Nia Jax and Asuka represent a new breed of female competitor in NXT and that they’ve kinda lapped her in the power and aggression aspects of her job, so if she’s going to have a chance to beat them and regain her position as NXT Women’s Champion and Top Dog, she’s going to have to step it up. Asuka’s not her friend even if they’re nice to each other, and Nia’s not that green-as-goosesh*t puffed-out-chest newcomer she made tap out in London.
Alexa Bliss is a great opponent to explain this character development need against, because she’s extremely threatening without being nearly the physical obstacle Jax and Asuka are. You can beat Bliss — she’s getting so much better, but professionally she’s not in the elite yet and is closer to Carmella than Asuka — but she’s not going to make it easy. If you need a clear example of how much Bliss has improved in the past year and a half, watch this match. Bliss is dope here, laying Bayley the f*ck out with a right hand and making even her more convoluted stuff like the sunset flip bomb out of the corner look painful. The “Insult To Injury” — the jumping double knees into handspring double knees, which needs way more knee puns in its name — is looking better every week. If she keeps it up, we’ll officially have to put Bliss in that “sh*t, has anyone noticed how good she’s getting” alignment we used to have reserved for Sasha Banks.
Bayley wins, of course, but it’s hard fought, and the best women’s match outside of the live specials this year.
Worst: Booing Bayley
The only downside is that Bayley’s starting to get booed, just a little, but the Full Sail regulars. My first response to that is what the f*ck, I’ll fight you in real life and a bunch of pearl-clutching. My second response is a lot like that, followed by the peaceful realization that even if she doesn’t maintain what we love so much about her when she hits the main roster, it’ll be nice for Bayley to finally, officially leave that little building and be a rich, TV-famous wrestler.
My third response is, “Bayley should stay in NXT until everybody’s booing her for being the only pure babyface left, then pull a Diesel and be all, BOO ME IF YOU WANT, IZZY AND ALL THESE LITTLE GIRLS IN HEADBANDS ARE MY TRUE FANS AND WILL ALWAYS SUPPORT ME, THE REST OF YOU CAN F*CK OFF.”
Worst: LOL What
The second match of the night is supposed to be the Hype Bros vs. Blake and Murphy, who are still trying to work it out, and it ends as soon as it begins when Rhyno runs in and Gores everybody. Okay!
If you’re a big fan of Rhyno and didn’t get enough of him during his first NXT run, here’s another one. I don’t actively dislike the guy (and he did some great work in the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic), but the last thing NXT needs is ANOTHER guy famous for being somewhere else showing up and getting all the TV time. We’ve done the Rhyno thing. Plus, I’m 95% less interested in him when Baron Corbin’s not around to get weirdly sexual about him.
Best: 2-Out-Of-3 Falls
[cues up ‘Happy Happy Joy Joy’]
The main event and last half of the show is the 2-out-of-3 falls match between NXT Tag Team Champions The Revival and the challengers slash FOREVER TAG CHAMPS NO MATTER WHAT American Alpha, and it’s absolutely as good as you want it to be. NXT 2-out-of-3 falls matches are about as prestigious a thing as you can get in modern WWE — thanks, Cesaro and Sami Zayn! — so taking NXT’s best match type and adding its two best tag teams and, by proxy, its best wrestling, timing and ring psychology is a win in every f*cking direction.
Revival/Alpha matches are, as the better parts of Larry Zbyszko would put it, A Game Of Human Chess. It’s not your normal tag team affair where one guy gets beaten up, tags out, everybody hits their finishers and somebody wins. This is about STRATEGY, and timing above all else. Timing is the most important thing in the world. It’s about where you are and when, and why. It’s about thinking three steps ahead of your opponents.
The first fall is about teamwork. Jordan suffers, Gable saves. Gable suffers, Jordan saves. Jordan gets an ankle lock on Wilder, so Gable has to run across the ring, slide under the rope and yank Dawson off the apron with an ankle lock of his own. Not only does it make sense and give us a great decision, it’s a callback to the stereo ankle locks from their previous match.
I love that what happens early in the match affects what happens later. Jason Jordan spends the early part of the match getting his leg worked on. He manages to tag out and spends FOREVER on the apron, so when he tags back in, he’s able to move on it fine. The announcers take a second to point it out, too, which is important. A little later, he slips up and ends up in a reverse figure-four, and because of that leg work from earlier that he’d been shrugging off, he has to tap. There’s something to be said for WWE’s talking point about adrenaline and ruthless aggression or whatever excusing a little no-selling, but hey, eventually that adrenaline’s got to wear off. That’s what makes The Revival work. They don’t have a lot of special qualities, but they understand everybody else’s, and learn how to work around them. It’s why Alpha skunked them in the first match, but hasn’t been able to beat them since.
And like I said, the timing here is the best. It’s not just about counters, it’s about counters to counters, and counters to the counter to the counter. It’s about momentum and positioning. The undisputed best moment in the match is when Alpha sets up for the Grand Amplitude, but Dash Wilder’s able to make the save and shove Gable out of the ring. That lets Dawson land on his feet and set up a Shatter Machine, which Gable stops by rushing back in and shoving Wilder out of the way. That lets Jordan reverse the first half of the Shatter Machine into a roll-up for the best nearfall of the night.
The third fall comes down to who has more in the tank, and that’s where American Alpha struggles. They’re a burst of energy, you know? They hit hard immediately. They make hot tags and f*ck you up quickly and efficiently. If you drag it out, you can outlast them. It’s hard, but not impossible, and the only way anyone’s been able to beat them. Timing and teamwork at the end of a long fight ends up being Alpha’s downfall, as Jordan takes a bad fall and isn’t around to help Gable fight off both Revival members on the apron. He ends up getting Shatter Machine’d and pinned, clean, not because the heels are jerks or cheated, but because the heels understand them and have a gameplan. It’s beautiful.
That’s the best thing about these matches. I’m openly mad when American Alpha doesn’t win, but not because it feels like a “bad decision” from NXT or WWE, or because I think someone deserves something they aren’t getting. It’s because I don’t like the heels. And I do like the heels as performers, I just don’t want them to win because they’re really smart and really good at what they do. I just like the other team more. It’s like sports, for crying out loud. Sometimes you hate your team’s rival because you lose to them a lot, not because they’re doing something illegal or unsportsmanlike.
Great, great episode of NXT this week. ULTIMO REGULAR WRESTLING hour one. Can’t wait until Finn vs. Nak in hour two.
