Previously on the Best and Worst of NXT: ‘Prince Pretty’ Tyler Breeze made his long-awaited return to Full Sail and immediately ran afoul of either his future best friend or forever mortal enemy, Velveteen Dream.
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 May 29, 2019.
Best: Hair Apparent, Part 2
I was honestly pretty bored by most of the Mia Yim vs. Bianca Belair rematch, possibly because the crowd didn’t seem into it at all, but I have to admit that the finish was hot fire.
In their previous match, Belair picked up the win by reversing the momentum of a sunset flip, wrapping her hair braid around the middle rope, and holding the other end for leverage. Not only was it a great visual, but it’s technically fair. I don’t think there’s ever been a case of someone getting a rope break because of their hair, and no part of her physical body is actually touching the rope, so it’s one of those Air Bud “there’s nothing in the rule book that says a dog CAN’T play basketball” scenario.
In this match, Yim reverse a Belair powerbomb by grabbing the braid, dropping her feet, and using it to pull Belair IN for her finish. So good. You live by the hair, you die by the hair.
If they were really brave, they’d blow this feud off in a hair vs. hair match, or at least a Dothraki-style “if Bianca loses she has to cut off her braid.” At the very least they need to end the next match in the series like Cena vs. Umaga Last Man Standing, but with someone using Bianca’s hair as the rope.
Best: Catch As Catch Can!
I loved this match. One thing we don’t get enough of in professional wrestling is matches between two guys who are really good at wrestling, but the action never “escalates.” They never start throwing each other into guardrails and hitting top rope Falcon Arrows and shit, they just keep wrestling until one of them wins. Strikes are meant to stun the opponent and take temporary advantage, or as part of a combination with the end goal of a hold or submission. There should be an entire division of this, if WWE didn’t already have way too many titles and divisions already.
It’s the best KUSHIDA’s looked so far by a mile, and you can thank Drew Gulak for that. Keep Gulak in NXT until he wrestles everyone at least once, please.
Note: It’s not new, but that hip toss into the cross-armbreaker was as beautiful as I’ve ever seen. Just magical-ass pro wrestling excellence.
Please Enjoy TakeOver® Brand Pay-Per-View!
Not much going on this week due to it being the end of a taping cycle a few days before TakeOver XXV — you can read our predictions for that here and our 25-show GIF retrospective here — so let’s move right into the main event.
It’s the two least important teams out of four in the NXT Tag Team Championship ladder match (the Forgotten Sons and Oney and Twoey) going two-on-two until the other teams show up and everything devolves into a brawl. It’s not the most clever way to book it, but it builds momentum™ for the match and all the teams that aren’t crummy biker extras are fun, so I’ll allow it. The critic in me thinks you should just take the bottom two teams and the ladders out of the match and run 22 minutes of Street Profits vs. Undisputed Era, but I’m probably alone in that.
The final image of the show is Undisputed Era posing on a ladder and saying they’re going to beat everybody at TakeOver, which makes me nervous about my prediction of an Undisputed Era sweep. WWE’s trained me to expect you to lose big if you get the last say before the pay-per-view, and it’s about how you’re gonna win everything.
The good news is that TakeOver XXV is set to be ridiculously good. Look at the card:
1. NXT Championship Match: Johnny Gargano (c) vs. Adam Cole
2. North American Championship Match: Velveteen Dream (c) vs. Tyler Breeze
3. NXT Women’s Championship Match: Shayna Baszler (c) vs. Io Shirai
4. Matt Riddle vs. Roderick Strong
5. Ladder Match for the Vacant NXT Tag Team Championship: Street Profits vs. Undisputed Era vs. Forgotten Sons vs. Oney Lorcn and Danny Burch
That’s one of those lineups where anyone winning is fine, because the journey’s more important than the destination. As opposed to the main roster, where we’re constantly trying to guess the correct destination so we don’t have to bother going through the journey.
