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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for September 2, 2015.
Worst: The Descent
I feel so bad for the Ascension. These guys are the longest-reigning NXT Tag Team Champions of all time — 364 days on top — and are called the “most dominant” team in company history. Remember when they were around, though? If they had 100 title defenses, 99 of them were against “local talent,” and the 100th was the one they lost. They got called up to Raw and were instantly made into a joke. JBL threw them under the bus on commentary, then got in the ring and physically threw them under a different bus. Since then, they’ve been off-brand Demolition goobers who only show up if WWE needs four teams in something and Los Matadores are unavailable.
They return to NXT here for the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, and they get a nice reaction. For better or worse, the Full Sail crowd ends up attached to these people, and despite the truth behind Kevin Owens dragging them, they want the people they’re attached to to succeed. “Succeeding” has a lot of definitions, I guess. The Ascension’s a total joke, but they’ve been on Raw, right? They’ve gotten pay-per-view paydays. It’s that old thing where someone asked CM Punk, “What will you do if WWE misuses you like they did with guys like Shannon Moore?” “I’ll go out and purchase a hummer and buy a nice house, just like he did.”
Anyway, they’re back and people are happy, but they’re The Ascension. That’s the end of the story.
They face Baron Corbin and his inamorato Rhyno in round one of the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic and lose to them, because Corbin and Rhyno aren’t Local Talent. It’s fine in the way that every Ascension match ever is fine, and not particularly compelling, something something every Ascension match ever. It’s weird seeing The Ascension trying to remember what it feels like to be liked, and working babyface via Road Dogg punches and dancing.
The first round of the Dusty Tag Classic — full bracket here, in case you missed it — is a total gimme. Samoa Joe and Finn Bálor aren’t losing in the first round. Enzo and Cass, Dawson and Wilder and The Hype Bros all drew NXT jobber teams that aren’t going to advance without a miracle. Marcus Louis and Alexander Wolfe, really? Couldn’t we bring out Sylvester LeFort with a falconer glove or something and reunite the Legionnaires? I figure Blake & Murphy (and specifically, Alexa Bliss) will get some measure of revenge against The Vaudevillains, and that’s really the only question mark. Things don’t get interesting until round two.
Best: ROH Guys, Meet This Model We’re Never Doing Anything With
There are two major highlights here:
1. William Regal pronouncing Tommaso Ciampa’s name “Chee-AM-pia” because he has no idea who he is and met him like 5 minutes ago, and
2. Tyler Breeze’s face during anyone else’s dialogue. Breeze and Alexa Bliss will find each other again one day, and the faces will be spectacular.
Anyway, Regal is welcoming Ciampa and Johnny Gargano into the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic as “TEAM INDEPENDENTLY CONTRACTED” (I’m assuming), and Breeze bursts in demanding a partner. Because we can’t yet tell if Regal’s Tyler Breeze’s best friend or his worst enemy, Breeze gets saddled with BULL DEMPSEY, the ultimate boner pick. Now Breeze is absolutely getting kicked out in round one, and gets to slum it on the sidelines with Bull Dempsey while everyone else has fun and wins polka-dotted trophies. BOO, MR. REGAL, BOO.
And just to say it, as a guy who spent most of the mid-2000s at Cleveland All Pro Wrestling shows, it’s weird as hell to see Johnny Gargano on WWE TV. No disrespect to the Sicilian Psychopath, but I wish that was Chuck Taylor behind Johnny so we could get F.I.S.T. into the tournament. That ironic-ass Full Sail crowd and Icarus’s back tattoo are probably soulmates.
Best: The Inevitable
If you want the full-size of that image so you can put a watermark on it and post it on your Hilarious WWE Memes Page — shoutout to The WWE Bible — here you go.
Here’s another one:
Samoa Joe approaches Finn Bálor about being partners in the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, and if you’ve ever watched wrestling before, it triggered every “Joe’s gonna turn on him” sensor in your body. I don’t know if it’ll be a straight-up turn or if it’ll be him beating up Bálor when they lose to someone, but unless WWE’s interested in subverting some tried-and-true tropes, Bálor vs. Joe is one of your next TakeOver main events. If they lose in the tournament and Joe turns on him, that gives us a title match for October 7, right? The show’s not just gonna be the tournament finals and nothing else.
Best: Alexa’s Exoskeleton Gloves
Alexa Bliss takes on Blue Pants to gain previously-recorded revenge on her for what happened in Brooklyn. It’s a squash for Bliss and Blue Pants looks better on offense than she probably ever has in a WWE ring, but the conversation we need to have is about Alexa’s decorative robot gloves. Those things are AMAZING. She needs to add colored jewels to the knuckles and start controlling Blake & Murphy with an Infinity Gauntlet.
My theory that I demand we all consider head-canon is that Bliss has to wear them to regulate the glitter-producing pores in her palms. It’s like Cyclops’ ruby quartz visor. Just once, I want to see her go crazy on offense and slap somebody and their face explode into glitter like in the Schick Hydro commercials.
Best: Apollo Crews-es To A Victory (Sorry)
Apollo Crews makes his definitely-not-taped-before-TakeOver Full Sail debut against Martin Stone, and it is what it is. Crews is can’t-miss, and all you’ve gotta do is put him in front of a crowd and say, “look at this.” His Hogan pose and catchphrase — “too easy!” — are the kind of thing kids are gonna be doing on playgrounds in a few years.
Wooooooorst: God Bless The Eva Marie Who Suffers
And now, the opposite of Apollo Crews.
Eva Marie takes on Bille Kay (the former Jessie McKay, who I cannot stop calling “Billy Ken Kay”) in the latest battle in the war to Get WWE Fans At Each Other’s Throats Over Whether Or Not Basic-Ass Wrestling Competency And A Small Amount Of Effort After Two Years Means Nothing You’re Doing Should Be Criticized. It’s gonna be a long war, folks. As has been the case recently, most of Eva’s match is passable, but intensely robotic and the kind of thing you’d expect to see from green girls at your local armory, not from WWE veterans who are the focus of multiple TV shows.
The problem and/or the most wonderful moment ever happens late in the match, when Kay hits a suplex and goes for a pin. The referee counts one, two, and whooooops not quite three because Eva Marie has forgotten to kick out of the pin. She just for real did not remember how to count to three. It’s the “Cameron tries to pin someone while they’re on their stomach and it’s not part of the gimmick” of NXT. As a moment in a match, it’s god-awful. As a social happening, though, it’s INCREDIBLE. The tiny amount of good will the crowd was trying to give her is immediately gone, and they do this grumbly, steady WEEEEEHHHHHHHHH for the rest of the match.
As someone who has dealt with this on a personal level a few times, a word to referees: your job is to count the three. Count it. If your hand’s coming down for three and the person who’s supposed to kick out isn’t kicking, or the person who’s supposed to break up the pin isn’t breaking it up, do not under any circumstances stop the count and stare at everybody. That is a sword through the heart of everything that’s happened on the wrestling show. The only way this works is if we’re allowed some suspension of disbelief, and are allowed to pretend on some basic level that this is a sporting contest with rules and an end goal. If the wrestlers f*ck up, it happens. We try to roll with it. If the referee f*cks up in a way that blatantly says “the referee is in on this,” there’s no way to explain it away. You’ve crippled the already fragile-ass reality, and now nothing that happens matters. If it goes against the finish or ruins future booking plans or whatever, so be it. You’ve gotta count the three. That’s the alpha and omega of your job.
Thank goodness the match didn’t end there, or else we wouldn’t have gotten to see poor Billie Kay lift Eva Marie in an atomic drop, guide her from one rope to the next and desperately throw her backwards on almost no kick-off so she doesn’t break her neck. Pretty soon that move’s gonna look like the Stratusfaction, where like 6 times out of 10 the opponent doesn’t lift her high enough or Trish misses the rope with her foot and it all goes to hell.
Best: GOOBLE GABLE ONE OF US
Chad Gable and Jason Jordan are the truth. Holy crap.
We’ve been talking up Chad Gable as secretly the dopest wrestler in the company for a while now, but man, Jason Jordan really stepped it up this week and impressed me. If you’ve got his weirdly charismatic little Olympian catch-as-catch-canning people to death, what’s the perfect supplement? A big dude turning powerbombs into overhead release belly-to-belly suplexes.
They take on Neville and Solomon Crowe (team name: “Summer Of 4 Ft. 2”) in round one of the Tag Classic, and I’ll be honest with you, Neville and Crowe got wrecked. I don’t know if Jordan and Gable are winning the tournament, but I don’t think anybody should beat them. If you go with Enzo and Cass in Block A, you’ve got to go with Jordan and Gable in Block B. Can you think of a better way to blow off the tournament than with iffy-tweener Jordan and Gable going full, brutal heel on NXT’s most lovable babyfaces and forming SHOOT NATION on NXT TV over their unconscious bodies? Enzo and Cass are even facing Angelo Dawkins and Sawyer Fulton in round one. It’s perfect. Tie it all together and give me my badass amateur wrestling nWo.
