Previously on the Best and Worst of NXT: Aleister Black used teleportation to get the jump on Tommaso Ciampa, Johnny Gargano used “being an opportunistic jerk” to get the jump on Ricochet, and Hector Perfecto jumped so high he almost left the screen.
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 January 16, 2019.
Best: Their Fans Are Called “Metro Sexuals”
This week’s episode starts with an interesting, seemingly forgotten callback for the Street Profits; they’re in the ring with jobber enhancement talent team the “Metro Brothers,” the same team they faced in their debut way back on August 9, 2017. The one on the left is Douche, the other one’s Domino. Yes, it looks like the first and fifth place finishers in a Kenny Omega lookalike contest.
Anyway, this is mostly just here to remind us how much better the Street Profits have gotten in the last year and a half. They get interrupted by the FORGOTTEN SONS after their win, and the crowd begins to entertain themselves with chants of, “we forgot you,” and, “stay forgotten.” The three of them walk up the ramp backwards together like that in identical jackets looked like a Dugtrio.
Maybe the Metro Brothers and the Forgotten Sons can team up to form a super group of Italian bikers and be the Fuggettedabout Sons.
Best, Mostly: Girl, Uh-Uh
I’m really interested to see which direction they go in for the Shayna Baszler vs. Bianca Belair NXT Women’s Championship match at TakeOver: Phoenix, because it’s unlike any story they’ve done before. It’s a true conflict of character and momentum. Belair is “undefeated,” sure, but she’s also been running with the lower level of NXT Women’s Championship challengers. She got a big win over Nikki Cross, finally, and came out on top against three of her rivals to get the title shot. Meanwhile you’ve got Baszler, a woman with waning self confidence (thanks to Kairi Sane) who is suddenly surrounding herself with allies to cover for any perceived “gaps” in her wrestling game. She sees Ronda thriving on Raw and makes sure to position herself as the “leader” of the group when the leader’s not around. Baszler wants to prove why she’s the champion, but is facing a still somewhat unknown “wild card” with no big match experience. It could be a heel deconstructing a babyface’s game and overcoming them with cunning, or it can be Goldberg killing Hollywood Hogan in the Georgia Dome.
The actual promo exchange here isn’t remarkable, but I do like that they had Bianca wait to strike until it was extremely clear Dickhead Fonzie was gonna try to start something physical. She knows she’s outnumbered 3-to-1 out there, so the best she can do is land a big shot to send a message, then duck out and bail before she’s overwhelmed. It’s a person who just got called stupid by her opponent winning the segment by being smart.
Best: Johnny Lucha
Here’s another brilliantly placed and purposeful match. Johnny Gargano’s started a feud with Ricochet, and the first basic question as a fan would be, “how would he do in a match with a guy like that?” Gargano’s feuds in NXT have all been these technical affairs or gritty grudge matches, so we haven’t seen him work a lot with any scrappy-ass high-fylers. So why not give him an NXT TV match against Ricochet’s non-union Mexican equivalent, Humberto Carrillo?
Outside of the quick match (which lasts about four minutes), there’s not much plot development here. Aleister Black and Tommaso Ciampa cut pre-taped promos about one another, a couple of challenges are laid out (like Gargano challenging Ricochet to show up next week), but we’re mostly just killing time trying to get to Phoenix. At least even NXT’s more boring or pointless stuff still feels constructive and a little like world building, and not so much like they’re trying to get us from one Popeye’s commercial to the next without changing the channel.
Feast Your Arms
We also get a squash match highlighting Jeepers Creepers monster Dominik Dijakovic (-ensteinowitz). It accomplishes the same thing every other Adrian Jaoude squash match I’ve seen, in that it made me like Adrian Jaoude more than his opponent. Don’t get me wrong, Dijakovic has a great upside, it’s just that right now in temrs of on-screen development there’s a fine line between him and Eddie Dennis. “He’s GOOD ENOUGH to WIN EASILY!” has never really worked as well in NXT as they want it to.
Anyway, my favorite moment from the match is when Dijakovic winds up for a big clubbering forearms, lets out a roar, then realizes his arm’s hooked under the top rope.
Normal White Folks In The Woods Stuff
I know it’s not intentional, but where I come from, “a couple of good ol’ boys going out into the woods and dressing up to paint their faces and wear robes and burn stuff” has a different connotation than “cool Viking guys.” Plus, I watch WWE, so “violent bearded wrestlers dress up the same and go hang out in the woods to cut promos and burn stuff” makes this feel a little more than the Wyatt Family than the Road Warriors. Or, splitting the difference, the Bludgeon Brothers.
Worst: Ohno, You Didn’t
This week’s main event is Keith Lee vs. Kassius Ohno, in which Keith Lee of all people is cast in the role of “friend of the protagonist,” and we’re supposed to buy him going toe-to-toe with Ohno for an entire match after seeing Ohno lose like a total chump, twice, to Matt Riddle. It’s not a bad match, and it’s at least attempting to rehabilitate Ohno a little for the third match with Riddle, but it feels like very wrong, modern WWE booking to do it that way. It’s the Austin Aries vs. Neville feud. Why am I hype to see the third match between them if one of them has already won the first two? Ohno is “making it personal!”
So really for the entire show, this is the only thing that didn’t work for me. I just can’t take Tinky Winky seriously in there against guys who should light him up and throw him into the ceiling in the first minute. Probably just me. Asking Riddle to show believable human emotion in promos about it is also not the best call, as he’s got that disaffected Rob Van Dam personality for a reason.
Next Week:
- Velveteen Dream is back, hopefully to address the fact that he and Poppy might be in the same building soon
- Hey homeboy, hey young blood, listen up, G, Ricochet is back ya feel me to hit his home skillet Johnny Gargano with the mad deets
- Oney Lorcan and Danny Burch vs. Marcel Barthel and Fabian Aichner (!!)
And more! And also Lacey Evans!
