Previously on the Best and Worst of NXT: Sasha Banks and Bayley returned to Full Sail and got us in our feelings. Plus, Shayna Baszler tapped out Mia Yim, DIY reunited, and Keith Lee and Dominik Dijakovic nearly destroyed the ring and each other.
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 March 6, 2019.
Best: An Hour-Fifteen Of The Best Tag Team Wrestling
Hooooly crap this episode. You know you’re in for a treat when the show opens with Ricochet and Aleister Black vs. Marcel Barthel and Fabian Aichner, and it’s like the third best match of the night.
Everything about this episode was spectacular. It was the first round of the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic 2019, so they devoted the entire thing (and an unexpected 15-minute overrun) to watching 16 of their top stars go balls out and put on some of the best matches on WWE TV this year. I can’t pump it up enough, and it’s actually the hardest kind of episode to write about, because there’s not really a lot of plot development beyond “I got to see the guys I like being awesome,” and not a lot of analysis for the matches beyond me typing an exclamation point 50 times.
But yeah, we opened with Two Black Guys against the closest thing round one has to a team of cans, the Pact of Steel. You know Ric and Black aren’t losing, especially after we’ve watched them go over every team on Raw and Smackdown with minimal effort the past few weeks, but Aicher and Barthel did their best to make it feel competitive. There’s so much talent down in NXT now that you could wipe the roster clean of its top guys two or three times and still have WWE’s best weekly show.
I still don’t think Prince Puma and the Prince of Darkness make a lot of sense as a tag team, and they have almost no tandem offense or cohesion besides their awesome two-man rope feint, but they’re this year’s Finn Bálor and Samoa Joe — the unstoppable combination of singles stars who could believably beat teams like the Forgotten Sons 1-on-2 — so they’re my pick to coast to the finals and win it all. Not a tough call, despite how stacked the tournament is.
Speaking of the Sons, they have the best match they’ve had so far against Oney Lorcan and Danny Burch, because of course they did. The Forgotten Sons gimmick is bootleg Aces and Eights, which in itself was a bootleg Disciples of Apocalypse, but the combination of Steve Cutler and Wesley Blake improves the group like, tenfold. Really, the only time they suffer as in-ring performers is when Jaxson Ryker’s in there. No shade against him as a human, but there’s really no reason an NXT roster can be so deep you’re able to send up four stars to immediately overshadow the six stars you just called up and devote television time to goddamn Gunner. I’d rather see Crimson than Gunner.
I’m EXTREMELY bummed to see Oney and Twoey bow out of the tournament this early, but outside of the Undisputed Era there’s a pretty notable lack of quality heel teams in the division right now, not counting the will they/won’t they thing going on with DIY. And even that’s going to get cut short. So I’ll boo and hold up two thumbs down, but I’ll also enjoy the hell out of the match, and try not to be surprised when they beat Mustache Mountain in the second round.
I don’t know if Street Profits vs. Mustache Mountain was the best match on the show — it’s hard to say that about an episode with 14 minutes of DIY vs. Undisputed Era — but it might’ve been my favorite, and it was definitely the most GIF friendly.
A few random notes:
- Montez Ford entering with a crown over a red ski mask is one of those visuals that’ll instantly get him over in front of bigger crowds, in case they’re somehow blind or deaf or confused and can’t see that he’s the next coming of Seth Rollins
- Angelo Dawkins seriously needs to use the spear more often, because he’s got the best-looking one I’ve seen in a while. He just MURDERED Tyler Bate with it.
- Dear Montez Ford, how are you a human being
- NO SERIOUSLY HOW DO YOU DO THIS
If I could make one stylistic change in NXT, it’d be to make Montez Ford wear like 10 pairs of kneepads at once, Ahmed Johnson-style, to keep him from ever losing that vertical leap. Also let’s start measuring him like they do to people on the Mega Ramp at the X Games to see how high he can get.
Just like with Oney and Twoey, I’m pretty bummed that the Street Profits bowed out of the tournament so early. But the good thing about NXT is that I can comfortably trust it to be a great show no matter what, so I can have normal emotional reactions to watching people I like a lot lose matches. It never feels like the sky is falling, or whatever, like when The Revival loses a non-title match to a strong gust of wind on Raw.
And then, Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa vs. Kyle O’Reilly and Bobby Fish. Wow.
There’s so much going on here before you even take the match into consideration. Ciampa “gifting” Gargano with the original DIY music as a show of good faith for him “listening to him” was great, and I don’t think I’m alone in wondering if Ciampa was gonna go nuts on that first tag and just beat Johnny Wrestling into the earth. Then you have all the classic tandem offense that made them special, like riding a bike, and the soulless finish combo attempt of Johnny’s slingshot DDT after Ciampa’s rope-hung variant … the move that put Johnny away in their street fight. Now, it’s on Johnny’s side.
Pairing them with Undisputed Era in the first round was great, and not just because Re-Dragon is so good together. It allowed you to knock the previous winner and tournament favorite out in the first round and not have it seem like too much of a shock, because they were up against the super team of Primary Champion and Secondary Champion; the ultimate combo of WWE’s love of singles stars teaming together to defeat regular tag teams plus a history as a regular tag team.
Emotional explosions, fierce back and forth offense, great teamwork, and Ciampa somehow validating his statement that Gargano’s better and more confident with his blood rival in his corner. It’s a freaking shame that the DIY story is going to get curbed by injury again, but hey, maybe it’s at least enough to keep Johnny Wrestling on the best wrestling show in the world for another year. Just pay him main roster money and keep him here. You’re paying a ton of guys main roster money to do jack shit in catering.
Non-Tournament Action
- Adorable wonder-person Kairi Sane wants to be the NXT Women’s Champion but believes in her best friend, and makes fun of Bianca Belair with this little hair whip. Kairi Sane is our most precious resource.
- Dijakovic and Keith Lee are about to come to blows at the Performance Center, and they’re having a rematch on NXT TV in two weeks. I hope they find a way to break the ring and the concrete floor underneath. If Ciampa’s out, give these guys a third match at TakeOver: New York and make it for the championship, I don’t even care.
- Velveteen Dream (in a pearl necklace with pearl earrings, because he’s the best) meets Matt Riddle, possibly the most non-Velveteen Dream person on the show. That match is going to be something special, if only for Dream showing up dressed like a flamboyant Brock Lesnar.
- my only complaint is that Cain and Abel were the “original bros”
