The Best And Worst Of WWE NXT 2/13/19: I Am Era

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: The world met and fell in love with Eric Bugenhagen, the jobber who looks and acts like Joey Ryan did the fusion dance with both Young Bucks. Drew Gulak went to grapplewar with Matt Riddle, Io Shirai pinned the NXT Women’s Champion, and Jaxson Ryker wrestled, but I don’t remember what happened.

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 February 13, 2019.

Best: ‘That 2010s Guy’ Mike Awesome

Up first this week is Dominikolai Dijakovicenstein against Shane Thorne. Thorne is stuck somewhere between tag team wrestler and singles star, so even though his partner left the company he’s still out here using The Mighty’s music, doing The Mighty’s entrance, and wearing The Mighty’s Great Value Keiji Mutoh gear. If you’ve been reading the column very long you know I think Shane Thorne’s got a huge upside and could be a big star if he had the right character and motivation, but as Wahoo McDaniel learned when he sat through Killer Klowns from Outer Space, this ain’t it, chief.

Anyway, the point of the match is that Donjack over here is the 2019 Mike Awesome and will throw you at the damn ground before hitting you with a springboard plancha even though he’s six-foot-seven and could get by with some clubbing forearms. Dijakovic’s agility is nigh-superhuman for a guy his size, or maybe he’s just fearless, but no matter what it’s pretty baller. Here he is hitting the Donovan Dibackoflip:

I think Dijak will be hurt a little by existing on the roster at the same time as Keith Lee, who is at least in the ballpark of this combination of strength and agility — just put all the points Dijak has for agility into Keith’s strength and vice versa — but is, at least to me, infinitely more charismatic. Let’s hope “reviving, modernizing, and perfecting the role of pro wrestling manager or mouthpiece” is next on NXT’s list of old things to make new again.

Best: And Speaking Of Keith

Lee shows up randomly during a Big Kass promo to knock him on his ass, condescendingly sing to him while he’s knocked out, and super politely keeps the show rolling. It’s the first time I’ve seen Keith Lee really seem like Keith Lee on WWE TV, and that’s the best thing in the world. Dude is so wonderfully and legitimately weird, in an abnormally charismatic way, and he’s such an actual dork that it brightens all of his colors. The man has a set of Mewtew-themed gear, if that tells you anything, and I once heard him cut a promo about how he beat Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts on the hardest setting. He’s the best. Whatever the opposite of Ohno is, he’s that.

I agree with Lee’s “don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out” sentiment, minus the “don’t.” Let the door hit you hard enough to bounce you into an off-screen agent role, or better yet, let it knock you onto a Big Time Wrestling card against the Boogie Woogie Man.

Best: Tag Teams, Back Again

The match Ohno was trying to interrupt was the Street Profits vs. Humberto Carrillo and Stacey Ervin Jr., which would’ve been a crime against humanity. Here’s four quick notes about the match:

• if you’ve been watching 205 Live, you know how much (and how quickly) Humberto Carrillo’s been growing as a character, and the confidence he shows in this match vs. his early NXT bouts is night and day. It’s not a hard reference to make, but the man really does wrestle like a ninja sometimes
• Stacey Ervin is gonna be real good. We saw his first match (ever) at the Performance Center when we went to cover WWE 2K19, and it was like he’d been wrestling for years. So far all we know about him is that he’s great at majestic backflips and can die on-screen without being dead, so I’m looking forward to some Ervin Development
• Montez Ford is NEXT LEVEL in this match. We usually put him over in these columns, but got damn he was on fire. He had such intensity to everything he did, from basic moves and restholds to a bug-eyed Doomsday Blockbuster and a post-match promo. Ford might be my favorite guy on the entire show right now, which is saying something considering almost everyone competing at the top of the card in NXT is bonkers great
• lol:

After the match there’s a big schmozz involving the Street Profits, Marcel Barthel and Fabian Aichner, Oney and Twoey, the War Raiders, and the Undisputed Era to remind us exactly how popping NXT’s tag team division is right now. Extremely, extremely popping. THROW THEM INTO THE ELIMINATION CHAMBER, I DON’T CARE IF YOU DO IT ON THE KICKOFF.

P.S. let the Sky Pirates be the sixth team

Worst: The IIronics

The low point of the show (read: still not that bad) is Taynara Conti vs. Aliyah. Conti’s about as green as the back of her shorts, but she has a good idea of what kind of wrestler she wants to be, and I think after she’s been doing it for a while she’ll put it together. She needs to hurry up and be ready for whenever Sonya Deville decides to stop teaming with Mandy Rose and starts a posse of martial-arts bad-asses. Should that ever happen.

Aliyah continued her “slightly different gimmick every time we see her” trend by randomly forming an alliance with Vanessa Borne, which is weird, because Vanessa Borne’s basically Better Aliyah. NXT has a history of getting over groups of mean mid-card ladies, though, so I’m sure I’ll fall in love with them the same way I did the Beautiful Fierce Females, Emma and Dana Brooke, the Iconic Duo, and so on.

When Aliyah wins (thanks to Borne’s supremacy), the new team gets swagger-jacked by the Three Horsewomen. Shayna Baszler angrily power-stomping to and from the ring in a KISS t-shirt to kick people’s asses is my aesthetic. Not so great is that tandem finish Marina Shafir and Jessamyn Duke have worked out, which is like 30 seconds of ushigoroshi to set up a kick to the stomach. It’d be like Dijakovic doing the first half of Feast Your Eyes and just dropping you in a headlock at the end.

Note: I will venmo $50 to the first wrestler who does this and calls it the UPROXX Driver.

If I Told You This Ricochet Vs. Adam Cole Match Was Good Would It Surprise You At All, What Am I Supposed To Do As A Wrestling Critic When The Wrestling’s Just Good And I Love It, Someone Help

yeah it was pretty good, see you next week

No, but for real, while it doesn’t ever reach the gear their TakeOver Brooklyn 4 match did, there’s a lot of cool stuff in here. It looks like they’re still trying to figure out the middle ground between Ricochet’s absurd video game offense and the whole “selling” thing that makes slower-paced and pathos-centric WWE storytelling work, so they’ve got him selling the hell out of his leg and still trying to do his moves. It mostly works — there’s always going to be a bit of suspension of disbelief involved with Ric because he’s such a unique athlete — and I have to give it up to the man for hitting a one-legged springboard off the top rope. He doesn’t hit it clean, but the fact that it even resembled what he was going for is insane.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a wrestling ring and tried to springboard before, but that shit ain’t easy. I think I could get my knees up to the top rope. Ricochet makes doing the entire thing on one leg look almost simple. He makes doing a normal springboard look like walking down a flight of steps. Pairing him with someone like Adam Cole is the best, because Cole can literally and figuratively “ground” him and make these big spots and moments really matter. I’m almost afraid to type, “if he can stay healthy, Ricochet’s only going to get better.” Imagine if the notable difference between CHIKARA’s Helios and NXT Ricochet can be duplicated and added onto how much he’s already grown. Brother might ascend to Heaven at some point.

Next Week:

Two more quick notes:

• Roderick Strong faces Aleister Black next week
• Undisputed Era ending the promo with their catchphrase and pose only to be asked more questions and not knowing what to do with it is so, so funny