Yes, that’s a Chastity reference. Don’t @ me.
Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: Keith Lee (!!) debuted, and Velveteen Dream got into the world’s weirdest and most hilarious passive-aggressive pool area brawl with EC3. Also, someone attacked Aleister Black, I assumed it was the car full of heels speeding away from the crime scene, and everybody told me I was stupid. NOW IT’S A FULL-ON MYSTERY.
If you missed this episode, you can watch it here. If you’d like to read previous installments of the Best and Worst of NXT, click right here. Follow With Spandex on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter, where everything and everyone is terrible.
And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for August 15, 2018.
Best: The Street Frogs Defeat The Noozles
It’s a relatively low-key week in NXT with TakeOver Brooklyn 4 coming up this weekend — not to be confused with NXT season 2, where every week was a Low Ki week — so much of the focus is on cultivating the mid-card, putting a fine point on a few feuds heading into Saturday, and politely asking us to watch a metric ton of video packages.
Up first is a tag team match between The Mighty and The Street Profits. I’m never sure if “The” is part of their names and need to be capitalized. Like “The” Usos. It’s like EAGLES, where fans of the band are gonna jump up your ass if you call them the Eagles. Anyway, a lot of the same talking points for Street Profits and TM-Whatever-Their-Names-Are matches apply: Montez Ford is a lot better than his partner, Shane Thorne is a lot better than his partner, and both teams are a lot of fun to watch, even if they aren’t doing much. If I’m ranking the teams, I’ve gotta give the Profits the edge for having Wakanda Forever-themed moves. They should add Babatunde to the team to make it a trio and change his name to Yibambetunde.
Profs get the win using one of WWE’s most powerful moves: counting an O’Connor Roll from a heel with a handful of tights into your own O’Connor Roll, with your own handful of tights. Instant comeuppance gives a +5 to all attributes. Montez Ford for North American Champion by this time next year, please and thank you.
Best: Macho Man Kairi Sane
After that we get Kairi Sane proving to Shayna Baszler that she has a “killer instinct” by going full Macho Man Randy Savage on poor sacrificial lamb (cat?) Aliyah, dropping three Insane Elbows on her before pulling her up from a pin and tapping her out to the Anchor. Honestly, as much as I love a do-gooder Pirate Princess, this is the most I’ve liked and “gotten” Sane since that time she joined an Asian girl gang and tried to kill a pissed-off ninja skeleton in southern California.
And speaking of that match, I think both last night’s match and the Lucha Underground Pentagon Dark match are foreshadowing and a past illustration of what’s being foreshadowed respectively. Shayna Baszler’s all about catching people in the Kirifuda Clutch, right? She’s turned doing that to Candice LeRae into a sport. Kairi dropping multiple elbows from the top to send a message here mirrors when she did it in the Temple … and saw her lose the match when Pentagon saw it coming, caught her in a submission, and snapped her arm. I’ve got a bad feeling these repeated elbows are gonna come into play at TakeOver Brooklyn, and even though she could get the pin with one, she’s gonna drop a second one and get choked out.
If we’re being honest, the thing I want most from Evolution in October is Baszler sauntering into the arena with the NXT Women’s Championship over her shoulder and big-timing Ronda Rousey.
Best: EC3 Vs. Calvin Candie
There are few things in NXT better than when Velveteen Dream stops being funny and starts getting real. Because even Dream’s “getting real” is a little funny, and he’s probably the best in the company right now at combining pro wrestling storytelling with a heightened level of acceptable absurdity to underline how ridiculous everything about watching people pretend to be outlandish characters and fake fighting until they actually hurt themselves for our amusement is. Dream manages to be a meta statement on how pro wrestling works, and a great fucking pro wrestler at the same time. MY COLUMN:
But yeah, I’m still all about this feud, and I’m gonna be in a seat at the Barclays to make sure I see them fight live. My level of interest this week goes Miz/Bryan, then EC3/Dream, then everything else. Brother Carter’s out here dropping “this is what it sounds like when doves cry,” saying he builds “themed restaurants in people’s head.” Dream is confidently removing his earring for a brawl, then unconfidently pretending to have a sore muscle so he can throw his jacket in his opponent’s face and take a cheap shot. Oh, and he’s quoting Leonardo DiCaprio from Django Unchained. Lucha Underground Vice City is my shit.
LOL: WHO DUNNIT
As a guy who grew up with too much of his life revolving around WHO WAS DRIVING THE HUMMER, I’m pretty into NXT turning Aleister Black’s groin injury into a murder mystery involving literally everyone in the company. Cathy Prime does a great recap video pointing out the various suspects, complete with on-screen graphics, giving us great still-frames like these:
Yeah guys, I bet it was Jaxon Flaxon-Waxon who got the jump on Aleister Black. We’ve found our man.
Honestly, here’s my real read: it obviously wasn’t Gargano or Ciampa, because they’re too obvious. Gargano only cares about Ciampa — he doesn’t even care about his wife right now — and Ciampa wouldn’t try to injure and remove a third party from a match to help him take out Gargano. That’s not how he rolls. To me, the only actual suspects are Undisputed Era (because I could see an Adam Cole/Aleister Black feud happening in full before one or both of them gets called up, and UDE isn’t going to feud with undercard tag teams and Ricochet forever) or Lars Sullivan, because Black broke his jaw.
Hot take: It was William Regal.
Best: Finally, Here’s This Week’s Progress USA Main Event
Finally we have Tyler Bate vs. Roderick Strong, which is 100% exactly what you’d imagine when you read “Tyler Bate vs. Roderick Strong” on a call sheet. Translation: it’s fun, it’s hard-hitting, and a nice pairing of the whitest of the white-meat babyfaces against the slimiest of the slimy henchmen. Something like 9 out of 10 of my problems with Roderick Strong are solved by asking me to dislike him on purpose. I’m not always into Tyler Bate’s “knocked out Family Guy character” sells — Matt Sydal does the same thing — but when “I don’t prefer your style of physical illustration” is my biggest problem with a guy, you know he’s good at what he does. This was good, but it’s going to be so much better in tag form. Whole lotta guys coming up to their knees and yelling “GRRRAAAAHHHHHH.”
Next Week:
TAKEOVER BROOKLYN, DOG. IT’S GONNA BE SO GOOD.
- a last man standing match between Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano, which you should’ve been born hyped for (if you aren’t for some reason, watch that video) (I really hope they don’t start doing last man standing 10-counts five seconds into a match when Gargano spends too long selling a hip toss or whatever, like they do on the main roster)
- Ricochet getting superkicked so hard he flips onto the main roster
- Mustache Mountain vs. Team Can’t Grow A Mustache for the tag titles
- Shayna Baszler sending Kairi Sane to Tuxedo Sam’s Locker
- Angelica vs. Eliza
- the 7-hour “SummerSlam” post-show on Sunday
