Note: It would’ve been a perfect recreation, but Keith turned around too quickly and forgot to be anime.
Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: Johnny Gargano decided to listen to his wife instead of the insane, violent Gollum who has been making him miserable for two years and lost the North American Championship to Velveteen Dream. Also, JB made dreamy eyes at Matt Riddle.
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 27, 2019.
Best: Johnny Last Resort
Like the “previously on” blurb said, Johnny Gargano took the advice of NXT Superstar Johnny Gargano’s Wife® and tried to defend the North American Championship without Tommaso Ciampa’s help. Velveteen Dream won it from him, and now Johnny Failure has returned to admit that he’s just better when he’s in The Champ’s orbit. DIY is officially back together for the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic.
It’s one of those moments I wish they’d have let NXT TV handle instead of randomly pairing up Gargano and Ciampa on Raw and Smackdown with little to no explanation and putting them over the Raw Tag Team Champions — huge +1 to NXT creative for being good enough to work those appearances into the story to give Ciampa more reasons than simply “emotional abuse” to stan for the reunion — but it is what is. It’s a nice recovery, and now (especially if the report about Ciampa being injured is true) the main roster team-ups can stop complicating the more context-based and actually episodic show as we head into TakeOver: New York. Yeah I’m basically just looking for a bright side here, I don’t want Ciampa’s knee to be goo again.
I’ve probably typed it too many times but now, but I’m still beyond ready for NXT to realize they hired one of the best wrestlers in the world and that Candice LeRae has characteristics beyond “got married” and “isn’t happy about anything.” They’re doing her such an insane disservice, and doing us one as a result. Yo NXT, y’all know she’s also a wrestler, right? She could be having matches and doing things? This is the best brand in WWE, not the middle of a bad episode of King of Queens.
Something Something Got Her Eye On Youuuu
NXT is still trying to make fetch happen with Aliyah, as the IIronics are back this week and going over a team they probably shouldn’t beat in a million years, agile martial arts bad-ass Xia Li and legit judo limb-wrecker Taynara Conti. I like faux Maxine Vanessa Borne a lot though (with her little fake garter straps and everything), and like I said when they first got together, I have a long history of backing NXT’s randomly thrown-together “bad girls” tandem, so I’m willing to give it a shot. They lose infinity points for Mauro calling her, “Aliyah, battle angel,” though.
All four women in the match are showing improvement, which is good. I’m assuming they’ll be core components of a post-WrestleMania NXT women’s division, or whenever (if-ever) the brand loses Shayna Baszler and the Sky Pirates.
Best: The Hoss Toss
Hey, want to love pro wrestling this week? There’s a Keith Lee vs. Dominik Dijakovic match on NXT TV.
These two have had a bunch of matches in different places, and they’re all super fun. It’s a perfect pairing. It’s a 6-foot-7 guy who goes almost 300 against a 6-foot-3 guy who tops it, and they both do flips and leapfrogs and dropkicks and moonsaults. It’s like the more functional version of Braun Strowman vs. Big Show. Dijak is taller than Keith and more agile, but not as strong. Keith is stronger than Dijakovic — and maybe everyone else, seriously, that’s where the “limitless” bit comes in — but he’s not as agile. But they’re both capable of making your eyebrows go up so high they accidentally fly off your face, and at six minutes they got each other over stronger than pairing them with anyone else would’ve.
It’s so, so much fun. Come on, how can you not love this:
Plus, Keith palming Dijak in the stomach and throwing him into the sun was some Lance Hoyt-quality choke-slammage.
PRO WRESTLING. The match ends in a double count-out after Dijakovic hits an Asaiovic Moonsaultenstein to the ramp and everyone gets concussed. I seriously hope they give us a TakeOver version of this, and that Dom and Keith both break out shit we can’t currently imagine seeing. I know they can.
Velveteen Dream Meets His Fans
There are a few uneventful backstage segments peppered throughout the episode, but they each bring a level of angle advancement or character development:
- the aforementioned Candice LeRae “girl, uh uh” segment, where she chastises her husband for wrestling wrong while not actually wrestling herself
- Velveteen Dream showing up looking amazing, only to be interrupted by a bunch of little guys in t-shirts, which seems like a situation he’s going to find himself in every day for the rest of his life (note: Cole vs. Dream is gonna be a banger)
- Io Shirai and Bianca Belair getting into an argument backstage, and while my Japanese isn’t as good as it should be, I think Io was saying, “yelling about how you’re undefeated when you just got defeated is a weird flex, but okay.” I get that it’s a “Perfect 10” thing where it’s a “mindset” and not a literal boast, but they probably should’ve left that catchphrase in Phoenix
Oh No
Oh no I wasn’t ready for this
OH NO IZZY IS CRYING I WASN’T READY FOR THIS
It made my heart so happy to see Sasha Banks and Bayley return to Full Sail with the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship, and that surprised, instant joy when Sasha’s music hit might be the biggest (or at least my favorite) pop I’ve ever heard in NXT. I said it last night, but even though I see these people on television every week, their return felt like the first time I’d seen them in years. It’s like when Tyler Breeze showed up. It’s a reminder that the NXT versions of these characters that I loved and got so attached to still exist, and can easily slide back into that context whenever they’d like. What happens on the main roster feels like a bummer so often, but it’s like a remake of an old film you love. It sucks, yeah, but that old film is the same.
Also I’m putting together a hypothetical NXT TakeOver: New York card in my head, and holy shit. Lee vs. Dijakovic again maybe, Sasha Banks and Bayley vs. the Sky Pirates (or Shayna defending the NXT Women’s Championship against Io Shirai), DIY probably having a match over one or both of their sudden but inevitable betrayals, Ricochet and Aleister Black probably going to the Dusty Classic finals like so much Samoa Joe and Finn Bálor and wrestling, oh, I don’t know, maybe Mustache Mountain? Even the hypothetical lineup makes me feel like the dude in the Memorex commercial.
Best: Baddie Reputation
Finally we have the NXT Women’s Championship main event (of one of the best episodes of NXT TV in a hot minute) between Shayna Baszler and Mia Yim, which gets about eight dope minutes of submission and strike-based bad-assery. It’s another great combination; Baszler’s strength lies in how natural and real she feels as a character and performer and how she can methodically tear apart even the scrappiest of fired-up babyfaces, and Yim is maybe the best and scrappiest fired-up babyface in the women’s division when she’s in there with someone who can actually fuck her up. Yim’s awesome in the ring, but she’s got that Sheamus and Roman Reigns thing where she can take it to another level when pressed.
It’s all about Yim trying to damage Baszler’s hand to help her stay out of the Kirifuda Clutch — a plan that works, at least momentarily — and Baszler’s pitbull-like tendency to close her jaws around you and never let go. It puts the challenger over by showing that she’s good enough to be champions someday, even if today’s not that day, and it puts over the champion by having her go over an actually challenging challenger. The best part? The heel champ wins because she’s smart and good at her job, and not because she needed two extra people running in causing sports-entertainment drama. That’s crucial for at least most title defenses. Ballyhoo is as much a part of pro wrestling as “wrestling,” but it’s a sometimes food; if you tell us your champ can only win via bullshit, we’re probably not going to care about them. It’s not 1988, and there are only so many times that Honky Tonk Man bit works.
Really great stuff at the end of a really, really great episode. NXT TV makes me feel better about the rest of it.
