The Best And Worst Of NXT TakeOver: The End

Pre-show notes:

– If you missed it, you can watch NXT TakeOver: The End here. We do a weekly Best and Worst of NXT column as well, so you should go here and check that out, along with all of our other NXT coverage.

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And now, the Best and Worst of NXT TakeOver: The End for June 8, 2016.

Best: Tye Dillinger Forever

As you might’ve noticed, Tye Dillinger is too good — and way too over — to be the “incoming popular guy from somewhere else” punching dummy. Here, he opens the show against the former La Sombra. As good as La Sombra is, even with NXT’s obsession with signing dudes who are fantastic heels and insisting on babyfacing them when they arrive, Dillinger overshadowed him a little.

That’s the last thing you want from your enhancement talent, isn’t it? For them to be so popular and beloved by the crowd watching the show that any popular new arrival’s praise has to cut and wade through a sea of somebody else’s? That’s why CJ Parker was so good in this role. Nobody gives a f*ck about CJ Parker. Same with Solomon Crowe. But Dillinger’s been around for too long and has too much promise with too little observable return, and the crowd wants him to be a thing. Anybody with a brain and a heart and two eyeballs should want Tye Dillinger to be a thing. He says ten a lot.

Worst: Andrade’s Look

Camacho dressed like one of the American Males wearing The Godfather’s hat? His actual wrestling attire was fine, but that entrance getup as got to go. Pairing it with Generic Latin Beat #6 didn’t help.

Here’s the thing. If you put a luchador in a suit and give him a hat, he looks awesome. A lucha libre mask is the ultimate fashion accessory, at least when it’s yours and you wear it for work. Putting a suit and a hat on a regular wrestler? It can go either way. Sometimes it looks great. Sometimes you look like you bought a No Way Jose costume at Party City. Sometimes you look like one of John Cena’s WrestleMania gangsters.

Best: Andrade Though, Because Come On

Even with the corny entrance attire and Tye Dillinger being a cult hero, I’ve got to take a second to say how excited I am that Cien Almas is on the NXT roster. His debut was a little too evenly matched and probably against the wrong guy, but he’s clearly got what it takes to succeed, and is going to be a big deal. If he doesn’t win the Cruiserweight Classic, something got lost in translation.

Best: Holy Sh*t

I can’t say enough about this tag match. I’m not sure I can put it over Zayn vs. Nakamura as my NXT match of the year, but it’s really f*cking close, and is the best straight-up tag team match I’ve seen in a long, long time.

In our predictions for The End, I wrote that this felt like a sort of “make-up” for the great-but-not-perfect Dallas match. “Their last TakeOver match was on its way to being an all-time NXT classic before a few badly timed botches, so I’m guessing this is their attempt to get all the way through it.” Quick version: They got all the way through it, and god damn was it good.

It was everything right about tag team wrestling. The strategy, the timing, the blind tags, the interference, the distractions, the tandem offense. You have The Revival — a team that is finally as good as everyone was supposed to think they were when they first started teaming up — working this wonderful, old school but fast paced rudo style against American Alpha, two guys who are so lovable and great at what they do they can barely keep it from spilling out of their bodies.

Remember that great double-German American Alpha pulled off? Here’s a callback to it, made even better by KURT ANGLE INFLUENCE~:

https://twitter.com/SenorLARIATO/status/740700582953013248

Then there’s stuff like this backslide counter into a dropkick/German combo, which sent me from “I’m really enjoying this match” to “I’M WATCHING THIS ENTIRE THING WITH MY MOUTH OPEN.”

https://twitter.com/SenorLARIATO/status/740703234755592192

You want tandem soccer celebration knee-slides? WE GOT TANDEM SOCCER CELEBRATION KNEE-SLIDES.

https://twitter.com/SenorLARIATO/status/740701151683878912

If you haven’t watched this match, watch it. Watch it twice. It’s so good I don’t even care that American Alpha lost the titles clean after only holding them for two months. I don’t care that they immediately got distracted by a different feud, which means Gargano and Ciampa are taking their spot.

Speaking of that …

Best: THESE GUYS

I’ve been very worried that NXT was turning into a promotion full of 4-foot-11 dudes throwing rolling forearms and slappy shin-strikes — aka “a thing everyone likes that makes me feel like a fussy old man” — and then LOS HIJOS DEL THE HEADHUNTERS show up.

American Alpha loses a heartbreaker to the Revival, and suddenly they’re getting beaten up by (in case you don’t know them) Sunny Dhinsa and Gzim Selmani, the “Authors of Pain.” They’re easily the best Sunny and Gzim you’ve seen since Sunny Side Up. They’re two sorta enormous, violent, ugly dudes who approximate Three Minute Warning by way of The Shield and add HOSS to The Revival’s gameplan. NXT has desperately needed a big man team that doesn’t suck for the entirety of its existence, and it looks like they may finally have one.

After the attack, former Road Warriors manager Paul Ellering shows up (sans shades, rolled-up newspaper AND motivational puppet) to join them. Giving these guys a mouthpiece right out of the gate is the best idea, and I’m guessing the Ascension just flipped a table somewhere.

My only complaint is the crowd chanting “who are you,” which I hope was directed at the Authors of Pain and not at Paul f*cking Ellering. Corey Graves should tell the crowd it’s Christopher Daniels to make them cheer for it.

Best: Austin Aries Desperately Tries To Be As Cool And Good As Shinsuke Nakamura

I had to take a while to think about this match, and the more I did, the more my opinion changed. At first, I thought it was pretty average. Aries dominated the match for way too long, to the point that the crowd went from spirited dueling chants to a kind of chatty murmur, and it didn’t really pick up until the finish. Plus, there’s that personal bias of, “why the hell would anyone pick the Austin Aries side of a dueling chant with Shinsuke Nakamura?” I thought the match was fine, but nowhere near the quality of Zayn/Nak, and kind of a let down after the hot tag titles bout.

Instead of just going with that reaction and deciding I was right, I decided to really consider it from a different point of view, and try to understand the story they were trying to tell. Once I processed that, I came around on it.

The story here is that Aries is completely overshadowed by Nakamura. He has been since the first day they arrived in the company. He called Nakamura out for a match, and nobody really agreed with his constant promo insistence that he’s “the greatest.” Everyone just likes Nak more, because it’s f*cking Nak. So Aries is coming into the match with a desperate point to prove, with the added complexity of having to be the coolest and most popular guy in the ring while he does it.

When I watched the match the first time, I was annoyed by how much Aries was countering Nakamura’s offense. It was like somebody put WWE 2K17 on Very Hard. That’s the point, though … Aries knows this guy’s reputation, is aware of his offense and his offensive quirks, and has to wrestle a perfect match to beat him. This is his best shot at it, too, because Nak’s not going to be as familiar with him, and Nak’s still in the super chill early honeymoon stages of NXT fame. Aries shows up with his ribs taped for some reason, presumably to throw Nakamura off his own gameplan and possibly create a tiny fraction of a psychological edge.

The second part of Aries’ goal comes into play near the end of the match, though. Aries controls most of the match — a lot of it, really — working Nakmura’s legs. That leads to a lot of neck work, because Aries wants to win with the Last Chancery, a move that works the neck by can best be countered by moving around with your legs. If he weakens the legs, Nak will have a tougher time getting out. By the time he hits that DVD on the ring apron, he’s got Nakamura beat. Or, worst case scenario, he’s as close to beating him as anyone’s gotten in NXT so far.

The problem is that Aries has to be flashy and has to be the coolest and best guy, so he can’t just continue wrestling a smart match and finish him off. He goes for one last torpedo tope, and … well, it doesn’t go well for him. He dives basically throat-first into the guardrail and f*cking murders himself. If you missed it, here’s a GIF:

That completely blows his plan, and Nakamura (who is way better at selling long-term, cumulative match damage than moment-to-moment pain, because Japan) gets it together, hits a string of moves Aries is too weak to counter or defend against, and wins the match. Aries made one big mistake against a guy you can’t make a mistake with.

Great stuff, in retrospect. I still think Aries belongs in the tag division with Bobby Roo, but I appreciate the work he did here, and hope he’s not three inches shorter from accordian’ing himself into the barricade.

Best: Nia Jax Stops Being Polite And Starts Getting Real

Thank you.

Asuka vs. Nia Jax didn’t have the epic scale of the tag match or even Nakamura/Aries, but it didn’t have to. It was the story of two very different kind of powerhouses — one large, strong lady who is just starting to come into her own and realize what she can do, and one little brutal motherf*cking buzzsaw lady who will kick you to f*ck — and how they smash against one another until one of them falls.

I like this as the precursor to a much more violent match down the road. The way Asuka sold her exhaustion during and after the match was great, and the look on her face reminded me of when Jumbo realized Misawa was gonna rise up and take his spot … Nia’s not there yet, but Asuka just realized how close she is, and knows she’s not just gonna be able to kick her into unconsciousness forever.

Nia’s strength and resiliency looks better than it ever has here. I like the idea that she can only be beaten by knockout or a fluke submission, and that she’s getting better at defending those submissions every time she wrestles. She gets out of the octopus pretty handily, and when Asuka locks on the guillotine choke (aka the Bayley Special), Nia gets out of it with the quickness. She’s learning, and as she learns, she gets tougher and meaner. That’s a good story, especially for someone whose biggest detriment is that they seem too gentle and nice in the ring. What we learned is that if you smack Nia Jax in the face for real, she stops being a gentle giant and starts throwing you around by your hair. That’s dope. I hope she continues to face opponents who really challenge her physically and emotionally, because when she completely turns that corner and gets physically confident, she’s going to be the BEST.

I also appreciate Nia upping her game and throwing hands with Asuka, because that’s what you’ve gotta do. As much as I love Bayley, seeing her throw Bayley-ass forearms to counter Kana spin-kicks to the gut was not the best.

Also, more finishes that are just people screaming until they’re kicked to death. It reminds me of that great old Samoa Joe vs. Low Ki Ring of Honor match where the finish is just a clubbing forearm. Always loved that.

Worst: Cage Matches With Escape Finishes

“There’s only one way to end the match … all the ways you’d normally end the match, plus leaving the cage via climbing over or just walking out of the door. ONLY ONE WAY TO WIN!” — Tom Phillips

Tom Phillips is a pile. From not knowing Paul Ellering to this crummy analysis of the cage match to him selling the finish — the first NXT loss of Demon Finn Bálor in an NXT Championship match in the first-ever NXT steel cage — with mild, scoffy excitement. How are you gonna Michael Cole one of the biggest moments in the history of the promotion, at the end of THE END? After a Muscle Buster off the ropes? Just because you Lord of the Flies’d out the rest of the announcers doesn’t mean you get to stop trying, Tom.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make here (I think) is that cage matches with escape finishes are f*cking dumb. Especially when you’ve built up a blood rivalry between two of the top stars in the company, centered around how much they want to prove they can beat up the other without distraction. They teamed in and won the first Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, then feuded for like half a year and multiple TakeOver specials on MULTIPLE CONTINENTS over who was the better man. Their last TakeOver match got bloody. This one, advertised as THE END and featuring them both locked inside a giant cheese grater, starts with Joe trying to escape the cage 10 f*cking seconds in.

Escape finishes are the worst. Stop doing them. I know Bret and Owen had a great match about them one time, but that’s the only match to make them seem reasonable EVER. Put people in a cage to (1) keep one of them from being able to escape the other, or (2) keep everyone else out. End of story.

Best-ish: Joe vs. Finn Ends

First of all, NXT TakeOver: The End should’ve been called “NXT TakeOver: Finn.”

Second of all, this Joe vs. Finn match is a lot like the rest of them. It’s good, and sometimes it gets great, but it’s always kinda holding back and never as good as the rest of the card. It may have been the match I enjoyed least on the show, which is really surprising. That’s not to say it was bad, but damn, how have we gotten to the point where even Demon Finn is kind of a bum? The excitement of the entrances has given way to predictability, and his matches are just him spamming the same 3 moves over and over. Dropkick, dropkick, Slingblade, Slingblade, Slingblade, Slingblade, dropkick, stomp, stomp, dropkick. Braun Strowman’s got a more diverse moveset than Finn right now, and his matches are 80% neck hugs.

Don’t get me wrong, Finn is great. As a performer, he’s as good as anyone in the world. As a character, I’m very ready for him to be done here and move on to the bigger stage. The simpler moveset will play better there, the entrances can be bigger and better, and he can make all the damn money in the world. He had a great run in NXT, and I am totally fine with it being past tense. Joe is as good as he’s ever been, and I’m okay with him using the rub of murking the Demon to fat-man senton Nakamura and put Hideo Itami back in the hospital. The times, they are a-changin’.

So that’s how the show ends. With a, “huh.” The Demon loses without a lot of fanfare, Finn’s off to greener (read: redder and blacker) pastures, and Joe gets to melodramatically palm-slap some hard-ass Japanese dudes. It’s gonna be great.

All in all, I enjoyed everything on this TakeOver, and it’s nowhere near my favorite they’ve done. It’s probably in the bottom percentile, especially if you take out the tag match. That’s how good they’ve been, and how high the standards are now.

And hey, watch that rope color. Those white ropes are for away games.