Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: TakeOver: Philadelphia happened! We got one five-star match in Johnny Gargano/Andrade “Cien” Almas, and one definitely not-five-star match in Velveteen Dream/Kassius Ohno.
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And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for January 31, 2018. I’ll see you around — we’ll bring the house down.
Best: Can’t Finish What You Started
Most TakeOver pre-show episodes of NXT are usually on the skippable side, with little in the way of storyline advancement. This episode tried a little harder than previous pre-show episodes, though; from a main event with No. 1 contender implications to the hyped-up return of a tag team to our opening match between newly alt-right Lacey Evans and always-bonkers Nikki Cross, which was set up two weeks ago after Evans’ sketchy-ass promo.
Literally nobody thought Cross was going to lose this match, but that didn’t limit the crowd’s (or my) enjoyment: Cross is one of the brightest stars NXT has, and she excites the audience in a way only a few Superstars on the main roster can do. She never moves like a wrestler; she moves like a stuntman doing a controlled burn, flailing her body around in thrilling ways, spreading the burn to her opponent at every possible moment.
To Evans’ credit, she looked good in defeat, and she didn’t seem to show any stage fright being put out in front of 10,000-plus rabid Philadelphians. (I mean, those dudes booed Santa Claus, so honestly, she got off easy.)
Best: Don’t Call It A Comeback
Despite having been competing on NXT house shows since September, the TakeOver: Philly pre-show marked the first time we’ve seen Shane Thorne and Nick Miller in a televised match since January 2017, when them Revival called them the “tilapia of NXT.” (Still a sick burn, imo.)
Now, TM61 have dropped the hyphen and added in flashy new shirts, but otherwise, they are back to their old ways as a strong babyface team with decent tandem offense and a breakout star in the making with Thorne. They go up against the Ealy Brothers, who continue diminishing the returns of WWE’s sets of identical twins (the order obviously goes Usos > Bellas >Ealys, if you were serously wondering).
The match benefits from a hot crowd excited to see some wrasslin’, and they get something more than just a simple squash — the Ealys pull twin magic to get the upper hand, leading to Thorne’s hot tag (featuring a dope-as-hell jumping somersault into the corner) and, eventually, a victory via Thunder Valley, aka a double gorilla press slam, which is hella underwhelming as a finish if you ask me.
The funniest part of the whole thing was Mauro Ranallo interrupting the broadcast to throw it back to TM61 in the middle of their post-match promo in the back, as if they were going to say anything less canned than “We are the mighty, and the mighty don’t kneel.” Surprise: They didn’t! Still, TM61 looked good, and it’s nice to have another strong tag team back in the division.
Best: Modern Chemistry
Can you believe it’s only been a year since Tyler Bate has been a part of the (extended) WWE Universe? He won the UK Championship in January 2017, and since then has literally not had one bad match on WWE TV. And it’s worth reminding everyone time and time again that he is only 20 years old. Twenty. Dude has had incredible chemistry with every single person he’s wrestled in the past year, it’s honestly hard to believe.
Here, Bate squares off against Roddy Strong to determine a new No. 1 contender for Pete Dunne’s UK Championship. I’m not sure how much of the match was edited out for broadcast, but it ended up getting about 10 minutes on TV, and it couldn’t have been much longer in the arena, as both guys got their shit in ASAP — Bate hit his airplane spin right off the bat, and Roddy delivered an awesome double underhook backbreaker early too. I also was a huge fan of Roddy pressing Bate straight up and chucking him into the corner, just barely missing the referee in the process.
While it’s always great to see Bate and Dunne go head to head, having Roddy win to become No. 1 contender is the right decision, just to avoid the UK belt getting stuck in an infinity loop between the same two people and to give Roddy something to do, as he’s been treading water since WarGames. Of course, now both Bate and Strong have been (at least temporarily) called up to 205 Live as part of the Cruiserweight Championship tournament, with Bate losing in the first round to TJP and Strong facing Hideo Itami next week (which you have to assume Strong loses, but who knows).
So the real question is what are we doing with Tyler Bate? He loses to TJP and Roddy Strong in back-to-back nights, he’s not a part of NXT’s main-event scene, and there’s no mid-card title in NXT to chase after beyond the UK championship, for which he already spent the past year competing. Would it be so bad to just call him up now to 205 Live permanently? At least that could land him on Raw every couple of weeks, which is better than nothing.
Next Week: The Undisputed Era continues their war against SAnitY, as Adam Cole squares off against Killian Dain, and Bobby Fish & Kyle O’Reilly defend their tag titles against Eric Young and Alexander Wolfe.
