WWE NXT Highlights This Week: Aleister Black's Attacker Revealed

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: Aleister Black returned via in-ring teleportation to make Nikki Cross tell him what she knows, wha she nooose. Also, Shayna Baszler broke a dentist’s arm.

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 October 24, 2018.

Best: Un-3-Sputed Era

This week’s episode opens with something NXT desperately needed: to give EC3 (now in a fur jacket that makes his entrance look even MORE like the dramatic chipmunk) a strong singles win, and give the Undisputed Era a little comeuppance/reason to get pissed in the process.

EC3’s entire first era in TNA was about how he never lost, so it’s been kind of surprising to see him show back up in NXT just to lose to Velveteen Dream, lose to Johnny Gargano, lose to Lars Sullivan … in fact, the only people even approaching “of note” that he’s beaten on NXT TV have been the bottom of the barrel: Kassius Ohno and Kona Reeves. Unless you wanna count Raul Mendoza as a heavyweight threat. Having him step up to Adam Cole and actually succeed in handing Undisputed Era a loss single-handedly is a big deal right now, so much so that it necessitated an extended post-match attack with a chair. I’m gonna assume EC3 finds some helpful friends to back him up this close to War Games, unless they’re planning to go 4-on-4 instead of 5-on-5 and wanted to write The Carter off the card without just forgetting to give him something to do.

Study question: What would Adam Cole have to do to really get the Full Sail crowd against him? Like, Bo Dallas against him? Is it even possible, given how much fun it is to yell “Adam Cole” and “bay bay?”

Best/Worst: I Yim What I Yim

Two truths:

Mia Yim is really great, and one of those people WWE should’ve signed back when they were first trying to replace the NXT Four Horsewomen. “Eat Defeat” finisher aside, she’s a hard commodity to mess up.
Having Mia’s formal NXT debut match be against Aliyah, who has won maybe two matches in NXT ever, and having Aliyah dominate almost the entire thing felt like the wrong call. They did this with Keith Lee at first too, so maybe it’s a purposeful thing. You know you’ve signed this dynamic, unconventional person with a ton of on-screen skill and energy, so should you show that to the crowd by having them lie around looking hurt for 90% of the match? Or should you, you know, feed Luke Menzies or Aliyah to them?

I’m sure Mia will be fine once they put her against Shayna Baszler or Kairi Sane or someone who can go. I also really want a Batman The Animated Series ‘Almost Got ‘Im’-style episode where Ohno, Aliyah, Tye Dillinger, and Tyler Breeze all sit around playing cards talking about the time the latest independent wrestling star got signed and kicked their ass, but how they almost won.

Best: Bro Wrestling

Hey look, Matt Riddle debuts next week! It says so right here, in this clip that might also be a deleted sex scene from Lost Highway. Matt Riddle looks like the Beast when he becomes a human prince again, and never wears shoes, either because of his MMA background where you aren’t allowed to wear footwear during matches, or because he’s the reincarnation of like every Von Erich at once. Pretty excited to have him around, if only for Tommaso Ciampa to bite his feet on television.

Best: Failure Is Contagious

This week we finally found out who was driving the Hummer that injured Aleister Black or whatever, and surprise! It’s the guy whose recent bad life decisions include losing a match by running directly at his opponent because they made him mad, and losing a match throwing himself off a stage into some production equipment legs first, Johnny ‘Gargano’ Failure. Short version: Ciampa was right.

The longer version:

When Kassius Ohno is done proving he’s the top athlete in the world by dressing up like a big thing of mustard and beating an opponent who’d be embarrassing even if you made him off the top of your head in WWE 2K19, Nikki Cross shows up to laugh at him (natch) and remind us that she has a secret. We also see her backstage harassing security guards by rambling about her secrets and announcing that, “he’s coming!” After last week’s interaction with Aleister Black, everyone should’ve figured this out and been on high alert for any tattooed, cat-loving Dutch murderers wandering around in the parking lot.

Commish Bill Regal shows up to make a big announcement about NXT TakeOver: War Games — spoiler alert, the Ultimate Warrior is gonna be in this year’s version — and gets interrupted by NXT Champion Tommaso Ciampa. The Velveteen Dream interrupts them, Bus Driving Chris Farley Lars Sullivan interrupts THEM, and some choking in response to noted pantslessness occurs. While that’s happening, Cross shows up for a final notice, and we jump backstage to see Al Black fucking up everything in sight on a rage walk to the ring. Real quick, I haven’t always been the biggest fan of Aleister Black in NXT, but man, you could NOT look like more of a bad ass than he looked here. This is the Aleister Black I want to see. Just a straight line between his internal, well-earned fury and his target.

Black lays out Sullivan with one kick because he’s in BEAST MODE and demands to see his attacker. That’s when Johnny Husbandry shows up and superkicks him, saying he’s “right here” and insinuating that he’s the one who attacked Black in the Full Sail parking lot.

So! The fun theory here is that Gargano isn’t actually the attacker, his wife is, and that he’s taking credit for it so, you know, a Satanic European man doesn’t spin around in place and kick her to Hell. Especially given that Nikki Cross still “knows” something Velveteen Dream and Tommaso Ciampa did. Theory: Ciampa and Dream conspired together to get into Candice LeRae’s head and make her think she had to attack somebody to keep her husband from falling off the deep end, but he fell anyway. Shout-out to Nikki Cross for suddenly being the Three-Eyed Raven, I guess?