The Best And Worst Of WWE NXT 4/18/18: Bye Bye Love

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: The TakeOver: New Orleans pre-show happened, and we got a brand new tag team out of it.

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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for April 18, 2018. You kept it going ’till the sun fell down.

Best: Shake It Up

So, the Superstar Shake-Up happened this week on the main roster, and as a result, NXT got pillaged a little bit. Drew McIntyre headed off to Raw, while Smackdown picked up Andrade “Cien” Almas, Zelina Vega and SAnitY (sans Nikki Cross). While it’s odd to essentially do two straight weeks of call-ups, it’s good to see NXT’s locker room cleared a little bit to make way for all the new talent showing up. By sending up Almas and McIntyre, not only does it save me from having to write about either of their faults again (thanks for that, btw), it also clears up the main event picture and eliminate two potential challengers for Aleister Black, which in turn sets up Johnny Gargano as the presumptive No. 1 contender. Which brings us to…

Best: Hello Again

Johnny Wrestling is back in NXT, everybody! (In case you were wondering, Tommy Entertainment is still on Twitter, heeling it up daily.)

Gargano’s return promo was pretty straightforward — he’s happy to be back, he loves the fans, he loves his wife even more — but it did have a bit of swagger to it: When he announced Candice LeRae would be facing Vega and said that if Almas interfered, “I’m gonna drop him like his name was Tommaso Ciampa,” I popped. What I really love about that, though, is Gargano vanquished his foe at TakeOver but now he can’t get his name out of his mouth, which will eventually be F*ckface Ciampa’s reasoning for coming back to Full Sail and beating the tar out of Gargano.

The only bit I didn’t like here was the very end of the promo, when Gargano challenged Aleister Black via the supremely clunky line, “You’re looking at his first challenger, because I am Johnny Wrestling and we are NXT.” Dude, this does not make any sense. You’re just reciting your nickname and Triple H’s catchphrase for the brand. Furthermore, considering this episode ends with Gargano challenging Black again, why not just save that motivation for the end? What good did it do to put Gargano’s intentions out at the top of the show if you’re just going to reiterate them an hour later? So, yeah, Worst to that, but Best to having Johnny Gargano back, because Cleveland is the city.

Best: Got A Lot On My Head

First off: I can’t get over how dangerous Ricochet’s finisher looks. Dude’s doing a 630-degree senton off the top rope and essentially landing with the back of his head on his opponent’s chest. I don’t care how much you think you’re tucking your chin; there’s no way you’re avoiding contact and/or whiplash every time you do that move. Yeah, it looks cool, but let’s avoid neck surgery, ‘kay ‘chet?

That said: Man, Ricochet rules. If you’re gonna call a guy “the one and only” in his theme song, then let him repeat that mantra in a post-match promo, clearly you have big plans for him, because anything else would be a letdown. Trotting out Fabian Aichner as his first Full Sail opponent was a perfect matchup, as that dude is just a slightly more compact version of Cesaro and has hung with the best of ’em on NXT TV over the past few months.

After his barn-burner performance at TakeOver: New Orleans, this match was a bit more simplified for Ricochet, but he still got some cool sh*t in, from his somersault out of the corner into a dropkick, to a corner 619, to his always-gorgeous standing shooting star press. I half-expected Velveteen Dream to interrupt his post-match promo, but I guess we’re gonna let that confrontation slow-burn a little bit.

Best: Moving In Stereo

Unlike seemingly the rest of the internet, I have zero issue with the changing of War Machine’s name to War Raiders. It’s fine. But I do have to Worst War Raiders’ entrance: They come out in near-total darkness, wearing what looks like to be some pretty cool ring gear, but then they take it off and throw it to the side before the house lights came up, so no one even gets to see it. That makes zero sense. Imagine the Legion Of Doom coming out in their spiked shoulder pads, then taking them off 10 seconds into their intro. (Or think about how Ember Moon comes out in this elaborate hooded cloak with a mask, then pulls it off before you can ever get a good look at it on camera.)

However, a Best goes to War Raiders themselves, from the war paint to the synchronized devil horns along with their ultra-’80s WWF theme, to their absolute wrecking of Deuce and Domino 2.0, aka the Metro Brothers. I never knew I needed to see a 300-pound tattooed man do a cartwheel until Hanson pulled one off mid-match, leading to an absolutely gnarly lariat. And let’s not overlook their finisher, which is Hanson dropping a f*cking top-rope legdrop. Whoever in the crowd yelled out, “SOMEBODY STOP THE DAMN MATCH!” was spot on. Give me these guys versus Heavy Machinery immediately.

Best: You Are The Girl

First, an endless thumbs-down to WWE for not putting Shayna Baszler’s dynamite backstage segment on any of their social media channels. This may have been her best look yet, from intimidating some Performance Center lackey to carry around a handheld camera to film her, to barging into the women’s locker room mid-talent meeting to dress them all down — in front of one of her coaches, no less. The promo not only took us to a place we’d never seen before, location-wise, but it also took Baszler to a place she’d never been before, with her natural intensity only heightened by the arrogance carrying the championship provides. Simply fantastic work here. (Also, RIP Dakota Kai, probably.)

Worst: I’m Not The One

“The finest Kona Reeves” sounds like the marketing jargon from artisanal coffee ads that show up on my wife’s Instagram feed.

Best: Dangerous Type

With the news of SAnitY being called up to Smackdown Live, Hossfest 2K18 comes to its logical, disqualification-free conclusion with Lars Sullivan getting a big win over the similarly big Killian Dain. I still can’t get over Dain going for that suicide dive — I can hear Jim Cornette blowing a gasket from a thousand miles away — but there’s something about super-heavyweights going for cruiserweight moves that gets me every time.

Not to sound too much like a neanderthal, either, but man, I love when crimson finds its way into a match naturally. Sullivan bloodied Dain’s nose up on that flying forearm to the outside, and that only heightened the match’s danger — and this was before weapons got introduced. Once the steel chairs showed up, we had a missed flying headbutt from Sullivan onto a chair, before Dain teased going coast to coast, which, given his suicide dive earlier in the match, I totally bought as a viable option (he pulled it off at WarGames, so why not here?).

Sullivan eventually got the win via Freak Accident on top of a few chairs, and Hossfest2K18 has sadly come to an end. I can’t wait to see who they book for Hossfest 2K19. Maybe Beyonce is available? I’ve heard she’s a good festival headliner.

Worst: Double Life

Something about this main event felt off. Usually, it’s a big deal when a non-wrestler gets in the ring for the first time. Yes, I’m well aware that Thea Trinidad the woman has nearly a decade of in-ring experience, but Zelina Vega the character has never competed in a televised match on NXT before — yet somehow, she’s just chucked into the main event and has ring gear ready to go? It felt like we skipped more than a few steps to get to this point, but maybe we had to in order to accommodate her Smackdown call-up.

Vega and LeRae barely got their match underway before Almas showed up to interfere, which predictably led to Gargano coming out, which truly bummed me out: I don’t believe we’ve had a women’s singles match in the main event of NXT since Asuka/Nikki Cross Last Woman Standing last June, which was a goddamn barn burner. But here, the focus is taken off the women and thrust back onto the men, even leading to a double Garga-No Escape finisher from Gargano and LeRae onto Almas and Vega, which made the women feel like supporting players in their own match.

Supplemental Worst for Gargano stepping all over his wife’s post-match celebration by grabbing the mic and once again demanding a match with Aleister Black for the NXT Championship next week. He appears and accepts, and Gargano’s music gets played. If this is some sort of suuuuuper-long term setup for Gargano and LeRae splitting down the line because he’s mistreating her or something, cool. (I should give some leeway to NXT as they have shown they can deliver excellent long-term storytelling, especially when it comes to Gargano.) But as it stands, the whole thing felt ham-fisted and disrespectful to the women involved.

Next Week: Adam Cole defends his North American Championship against Oney Lorcan, and Aleister Black puts up the NXT Championship up in a match with Johnny Gargano.