Pre-show notes:
– You can watch this episode on Hulu here or for free on WWE’s YouTube channel. Or you can just watch the clips, whatever, I’m just here to entertainment you.
– Be sure you’ve read the Best and Worst of NXT season 1, the Best and Worst of NXT season 2 and what we’ve done so far in the Best and Worst of season 3.
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Please click through for the Best and Worst of WWE NXT season 3, episode 9.
Worst: It’s A Kissing Contest, And Quick, Guess What The Joke Is
From NXT season 2, episode 9:
As you know if you’ve been following along (or watched too much SciFi channel four years ago), NXT is built around a series of asinine challenges that are supposed to reveal who the “best” rookies are, but mostly just make everyone look like idiotic assholes. One of the finest of these challenges is the legendary Kissing Contest, a bit so grand they did it several more times. Let me put it to you this way … if I said “WWE had a kissing contest,” what would you THINK would happen? If you said “they’d bring out someone fat and ugly and everyone would act embarrassed about having to kiss someone gross,” congratulations, you are aware of WWE’s Board of 5-Year Old Directors.
If the joke in the male kissing contest was an overweight lady with a unibrow and food on her face, what’s the joke for the Divas version? You’ve got three guesses, and two of them are “Hornswoggle.” Note: guess three would’ve been “The Great Khali.”
Here are your official With Spandex NXT season 3 kissing contest power rankings:
5. Aksana
Aksana is excused from the kissing contest because she’s getting married IN LIKE HALF AN HOUR, so she defaults to last place. It’s interesting, though, that WWE respects the sanctity of an arranged green-card marriage and doesn’t want “was forced to kiss a rapey leprechaun” to cause problems.
4. Maxine
Creative note: only 2 of the 5 women actually participate in the kissing contest. Again, this takes almost 15 minutes.
Maxine refuses to kiss Hornswoggle, pie-facing him and shooing him out of the ring. This becomes important later, believe it or not. Hornswoggle’s replacement is Dashing Cody Rhodes, but Maxine won’t kiss him either. She holds out her hand and makes Cody kiss it. The only place for MAXINE is ON TOP, or whatever. Somewhere in the darkness, Michael McGillicutty throws down his light beer and yells, “I RUBBED MY CROTCH ON A FAT LADY’S STOMACH AND LICKED MARINARA SAUCE OFF HER FACE AND YOU CAN’T KISS CODY RHODES?? COME ON.”
3. Naomi
Two weeks after being able to identify Cody Rhodes’ torso without prompting, Naomi puts her hand in his face and says she wouldn’t kiss him if he was “the last man on Earth.” This draws a chorus of boos. Cody explains that he’s okay with this, because Naomi’s butt is too big and he didn’t want to kiss her anyway. It’s a good comeback, I guess, but also total bullshit, because look at his wife.
The announce team is audibly upset every time Naomi talks now, so that could explain why she was a mute dancer for the next three years.
2. Kaitlyn
Kaitlyn gets a raw deal here, having to kiss two people AND having Striker make creepy “heh, s’not like you’ve never kissed two people in the same night” jokes. On top of that, she kisses Hornswoggle about 30 seconds after Striker’s clarified that Horny must judge the winner based on who makes him feel the most “happy inside.” Yes folks, it’s the BONER INDUCEMENT CHALLENGE.
She’s the only one who gets the AAAHH AAAHHH forced kiss from Hornswoggle, so by the time Cody shows up and they restart the contest, she’s already under the bus. Ah well, at least she didn’t have to push anybody around in a wheelbarrow.
Best: 1. AJ, And The Creation Of A Character Trait
The final contestant is AJ, who gets put over has having “never kissed a boy.” So keeping it kayfabe, this is AJ’s first kiss … this is important, as like a year and a half of the upswing of her career was based around her kissing boys. She makes out with Primo later in this season, and that eventually turns into Daniel Bryan, CM Punk, Kane, John Cena and Dolph Ziggler. And, uh, Paige, kind of.
It goes like you imagine it might; AJ is nervous, but decides to “go for it” and jumps Cody’s bones, knocking him down. She gets up and acts erratically, which plays here as “geeky nervous” but in retrospect is perfectly in tune with her “crazy” gag. She’s a smart, confident, playful woman who is driven to instant madness by confrontational emotions like love and betrayal. Cody chooses her as the winner, because those kinds of women are always the best kissers. Every kiss should come with a tiny bit of madness.
Note: This is not the last of tonight’s kissing, because “love is in the air.” It’s the same airborne disease that caused Stephanie McMahon to make out with a guy in a Vince McMahon Halloween costume, so keep that in mind.
Best: Josh Mathews’s Sick Burn
Because he’s terrible at jokes, Michael Cole (a man who is in a suit 99% of the times we see him) wears a tuxedo t-shirt for Goldust and Aksana’s wedding. He chuckles and asks Josh what he thinks about it. Josh’s response?
“You look like Jerry The King Lawler.”
+1
Worst: Primo’s Pick-Up Lines
After the kissing contest, Primo and AJ walk down a hallway with a cameraman a few steps ahead of them, walking backwards. Primo’s jealous that AJ kissed Cody, so he hits her with his best line: “AJ. You look. REAL GOOD.” Hey Primo. Your mic skills are. Real bad.
Anyway, AJ FALLS FOR IT because she’s in a fit of lust rage or whatever and says she wants to tell Primo something in private. This leads to a series of gags of them opening doors and finding wacky things behind them, the first of which is ‘The American Dream’ Dusty Rhodes about to get it on (if you will) with Michael Cole’s dates for the wedding, The Bella Twins. Dusty tells them there’s no room at the inn and does a Ricky Ricardo impression, because Mexicans. Great job, everybody.
Don’t worry though, they find something way worse behind the second door.
Worst: LOVE IS IN THE AIR, FOLKS
Behind door number two, Maxine is forcing sex on a mute man-child. You see, the joke is that she didn’t want to kiss him in the kissing contest because he was kissing everybody ELSE. Jealousy and all that. The context here is weird, because when AJ and Primo open the door, Hornswoggle’s flailing his arms around like he’s upset. The second they stop and Maxine starts yelling “NO IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK,” Hornswoggle’s laughing and giving the thumbs up. Are … are they roleplaying? Do they sexually roleplay bad NXT contest segments??
All right, let’s take it home.
Worst: DID I MENTION LOVE BEING IN THE AIR
AJ decides that standing next to a production crate is “private enough,” but the crate is shaking. Why? Because Dolph Ziggler and Kaitlyn are making out inside of it. Inside of it with one of the sides missing. Why is there a person-sized, freestanding production crate with one of the sides missing?
Regardless, Dolph and Kaitlyn have been found out, and this is broadcast on the TitanTron so Vickie Guerrero sees it. She hurries backstage to find out what’s going on and is IMMEDIATELY HIT IN THE FACE WITH A WEDDING CAKE. Like, seriously, she’s not back there 10 seconds before two guys wander up with a cake and plaster her with it. Reminder: this woman is a heel for being upset that her boyfriend’s cheating on her with her student, and deserves instant emotional and physical humiliation for it. Remember, friends, the worst thing you can do in WWE is “feel something.”
Best: Wait, Is This A Wrestling Show?
Good news: There’s a wrestling match on this show.
Bad news: It’s a Kelly Kelly match.
Good news: It’s actually a pretty good Kelly Kelly match!
“Pretty good” is relative, of course — she still hits the ropes like she’s doing a shuttle run — but it’s got a little bit of heat, it’s competently wrestled, and Alicia saw AJ Lee sell a facebuster like Rob Van Dam and decided to eat Kelly’s Fame-Asser by going down headfirst at a 45-degree angle. I’m not going to complain. Plus, Kelly’s wearing USA-themed gear on a NOVEMBER show and the announce team can’t stop pretending it’s the Fourth of July. It’s fine.
One thing I will ask, though: what’re the physics of Kelly Kelly’s tilt-a-whirl headscissors? She goes into it like a headscissors takedown, brings her arms into her chest real tight and the person taking the move just spins and spins and spins. You’ve seen the momentum she gets coming off the ropes, right? If that could get ONE spin around a human body it’d be a miracle. The way they’re spinning it’s like she’s coming in like Barry Allen. Also, is Kelly Kelly’s body weight zero? Why aren’t the people falling over? How can she create so many spins independent of inertia?
Best/Worst: The Wedding Of Goldust And Aksana
Where to even f*cking begin
1. Before the wedding’s even underway, Michael Cole mentions that it’s a “fake wedding.” What he MEANS is that Aksana’s only marrying Goldust to get a green card (something we’ve clearly established via Goldust saying “marry me so you can get a green card”), but they end up talking about how EVERYTHING is fake, doing all the worst “pfft wrestling sucks” jokes your shitty uncle might while you’re trying to watch Nitro. AW HE STOMPED WHEN HE PUNCHED, YOU SEE THAT, IT AIN’T EVEN CONNECT.
2. Dusty and Cody are Dustin’s Best Men and Hornswoggle is the ring bearer, because he’s (a) a child, or (b) inhuman, and always the punchline to the joke. Aksana shows up in a gold wedding dress, so Cole and Josh instantly call her a “showgirl.” SOMEBODY in this situation has to be a babyface, right? Am I suddenly watching Impact?
3. In the best moment of the wedding, the minister reveals that HE objects to their marriage. He probably could’ve mentioned it before now, but here we are. He’s “got a price,” it turns out, and was bought out by Ted DiBiase Jr. and Maryse to get back the Million Dollar Championship. CONVOLUTED WEDDING SCHEME is a great idea, Ted, that’s way easier than trying to have a match. You know what else would be a good idea? Wrestling tailgating!
4. Dusty Rhodes steps in and reveals that he KNEW this would happen (because if anybody knows about getting turned on, it’s Dusty), so he says he visited the Pope (…) and ended up wrangling THE MILLION DOLLAR MAN to officiate the wedding.
5. The Million Dollar Man pronounces Goldust and Aksana man and wife, so Dusty Rhodes steps between them and kisses her. Dusty’s testosterone levels are funky like a monkey here. But WAIT JUST A MINUTE, there’s ANOTHER swerve about to happen: Aksana slaps Goldust before the kiss and struts away confidently. They’re married now, and there’s nothing Goldust can do about it! Except, you know, walk 100 feet up the ramp and tell that immigration officer that this lady duped him into marrying her so she could get citizenship.
Unbelievably, there is something AFTER this.
Worst: Maxine Gets Eliminated
Don’t worry, Maxine. You’ll be back and chloroforming and kidnapping this guy in no time.
