WWE NXT Highlights This Week: Otis Dovozic Vs. Tommaso Ciampa

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: Pete Dunne and Ricochet tore the house down before the inevitable disqualification, Aliyah continued to wade through gimmick purgatory, and TNA’s Gunner wrestled. Gunner, everybody!

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 September 26, 2018.

Best: William Regal Disciplines His Small Children

I think we take William Regal as General Manager of NXT for granted sometimes. I wouldn’t have imagined anybody could do Dusty Rhodes’ job, but William Regal’s about as close as you’re gonna get on the lovable dad who is also a wrestling genius scale. Here we see him arguing with his nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

Seriously though, I love that even Magnus Lee Regal still has such an air of authority, and is also twice as big as most of these dudes and could still take them to the fucking woodshed even with an inoperable neck. Like, if Adam Cole had done two or three more finger pokes to the chest he would’ve gotten Knee Trembled into unconsciousness. Bonus for Regal: he runs NXT, so the matches he announcers or makes in these segments are always things we actually want to see. No RIGHT HERE TONIGHT sudden matches; he makes Undisputed Era vs. War Radiers for the NXT Tag Team Championship, puts Adam Cole in a North American Championship triple threat against the two guys whose match he ruined last week, and it’s only happening because Undisputed Era couldn’t keep their mouths shut and stay in the back to let their giant old dad solve a Dutch occultist murder mystery.

Speaking Of That Mystery

It looks like we’re finally moving forward with that, as we get a couple of crucial backstage segments to fill in some gaps. In one, Nikki Cross has hidden in Regal’s office like the crazy person she is to demand another fight with Bianca Belair — good luck, Nikki, she’s undefeated, if you haven’t heard — and wanders away yelling “AH NO! AH NO!” That’ll become important later. In the other, Velveteen Dream gets aggressive with Queen Cathy (in his first heel move ever, frankly) when she suggests he implied that Tommaso Ciampa jumped Black. Velveteen Dream is no snitch.

Note: I really don’t like when people call him “Velveteen,” like that’s his first name. It’s not his name, it’s an adjective. His name is The Dream.
Secondary note: Dream if you turn on Cathy I swear to God I will fight you

In a non-Regal-related backstage bit, NXT’s roving team of reporters — the one guy with the iPhone, and his partner, the person with the NXT microphone flag — find Johnny “Gargano” Failure arriving to the arena. He promises that he took a minute at home to chill and get his shit together, which is good for him, and that next week he’ll return to being the guy he’s supposed to be. He’s wrestling Tony Nese, so I hope the guy he’s supposed to be is able to carry a backflipping mannequin with abs to a good wrestling match.

That leads into a bit where Gargano and Candice LeRae get accosted by NXT Superstar Wendy Pfeffercorn, and Candice goes into Protective Wife mode again. I really wish they’d let her be her own character, and not Johnny Gargano with a bow in her hair like a pro wrestling Ms. Pac-Man. Gargano getting called up to 205 Live or Smackdown or whatever and leaving her to her own stories and her own points of view beyond “feeling sad for my husband and having to pick fights based on what happens to my husband” would be the best case scenario. It’s Candice LeRae, y’all. I don’t know why she’s the one thing you can’t realize you’re doing wrong.

Also, Lacey Evans makes me want to move into a three bedroom house and start caring about the estate tax.

Best: The Mighty’s Boss Tones

Up first in the ring this week is the next match in the series between the Street Profits, who bring the swag like nobody can, and The Mighty, who have like 10 gimmicks piled on top of one another and are stuck somewhere between early Revival (when they were Mechanics) and “Austin Aries and his friend, Austin Aries.” Real quick, I love this GIF of Shane Thorne attempting to bring the swag and getting knocked out for his audacious cacuasity:

First of all, here’s your weekly reminder that Montez Ford is the most underrated and can’t-miss guy on the NXT roster right now, and that I love literally everything he does. That dive to the outside was magic, and his jumping feint to the apron was almost better. The guy has it. Angelo Dawkins is coming around to being pretty good too, which is great to see, because I was seriously worried “too many headbands” was gonna be as far as he’d get.

Second of all, I love the story of this match. Wrestling has trained us to expect certain things from certain scenarios. If you see a tag team match where a guy’s getting his ass beaten, and his partner’s on the apron riling up the crowd and clappin’ and stompin’ and reaching out for a tag, you know eventually there’s gonna be a hot tag. You’ll buy the cut-offs, but they wouldn’t be doing it if they weren’t going to do the tag. Here, the Mighty have been working Montez Ford’s leg after dropkicking the steps into it earlier in the match. Ford builds and builds and builds to a hot tag, but when he flips out of a move and you expect him to like, crawl through an Australian’s legs and make a jumping tag, his leg buckles. AND THEN HE LOSES, WITHOUT MAKING THE TAG. It’s such a simple, wonderful subversion of expectations that informs every hot tag sequence going forward, because hey, we have evidence that maybe the guy won’t make the tag this time, and he might lose. It’s part of what The Revival did so well for so long in NXT, and I absolutely adore that the talented tag teams that followed them (and DIY, who also contributed deeply to this ecosystem) are able to keep it going.

Best: Vordell Walker!

The dream of 2000s indie wrestling is alive in Lars Sullivan’s opponent, Kinda Muscular Bald Guy In Long Tights. You may remember him from EVERYTHING wrestling did between 2000 and 2012. This one’s special, too: it’s “Victor Orchant,” better known as former TNA and Ring of Honor competitor Vordell Walker. You may know him best as the guy Rick Steiner tried to bully in a match back in 2005, only to realize the guy he was punching was a trained shoot fighter and get real apologetic when he started getting his ass kicked. As the saying goes, Vordell wanted some, so he came and got some, and he didn’t like him, so he bit him.

Orchant — you’re allowed to sit quietly, Orchant, your decision — gets fed to Lars Sullivan, which is just a bunch of “jump while I hold your throat” throws until EC3 charges the ring and gets FUNKY LIKE A MONKEY with 1980s Memphis revenge jabs. I’m a huge EC3 homer, obviously, so I’m excited to see another match where Sullivan is positioned against a veteran who can work to his strengths and carry him to a big showcase match. That Aleister Black match was the jam until the iffy finish. I’m afraid The Carter’s going to lose again, but I’m confident he’ll end up a popular television millionaire somewhere on the main roster, and not be Pro Wrestling Tees Presents Bull Dempsey like Kassius Ohno.

Best: Don’t Tug On Superman’s Cape, Don’t Spit In The Wind, Don’t Pull The Mask Off The Old Lone Ranger, And Don’t Put Kairi Sane’s Pirate Hat On If You’re Just Gonna Throw It On The Ground And Kick It

I love that Kairi Sane has an Asuka trigger now. Asuka’s thing was that she wouldn’t take you seriously until you hit her in the face or slapped her or something, and then she’d get serious and kill you. Sane is a goofy dancing sweetheart, but if you mess with her pirate shit, so help you God. I love you, New Maxine, but you need to do your homework.

The best (best best) news here is that a post-match interview with Dickhead Fonzie sets up an NXT WOMEN’S CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH BETWIXT KAIRI SANE AND SHAYNA BASZLER FOR WWE EVOLUTION. Not only do I desperately want to see that match again, especially now that they have three top-shelf matches they can knowingly draw from, but I’m happy Evolution finally has an actual, good match announced for the card, and isn’t just going to be “Alicia Fox vs. Candice Michelle, what a legend” over and over.

Plus, what better way to finally get Ronda and Shayna together holding championships on the same main roster show to start up that Survivor Series build you keep hinting you want? The NXT Four Horsewomen team is going to be the most “unlikely partners, can they co-exist” squad ever. Kurt Angle’s gonna have to send them to Bible Camp or something.

Best: OTIS

I loved this week’s main event so, so much, you guys. It’s Tommaso Ciampa vs. Otis Dozovic in the NXT version of Triple H vs. TAKA Michinoku, where the challenger really shouldn’t be getting this much offense in, but he is, and it’s awesome. The physical dichotomy works really well, with Ciampa being fitter than a gross of fiddles but also relatively small and up his own ass, so he just assumes he’s going to run through one half of a lower-card tag team, not really taking into consideration that the guy is taller than him and heavier than him and like six times wider. Plus, Otis isn’t an immobile hoss; he’s dynamic, and his potential is still largely untapped (or unseen), which means he can speed around the ring or do apron bumps or suplex you on the floor, and all of it’s still pretty surprising.

The fact that this was such a competitive match does a favor for everyone involved. It shows that Otis could really be something (and already IS something, honestly), it lets Tucker Knight get involved in a main event and have a reason to be out there, and it lets Ciampa play his pitch-perfect character while also showing his ability to adapt to different kinds of competition, so if someone like Velveteen Dream or EC3 or whoever challenged him, he wouldn’t feel “outmatched,” even if he’s physically smaller. It’s brilliantly booked all around, and I can’t say enough about it. Plus, it’s FRESH. Do you know how desperate I am to just want things I haven’t seen a million times on these wrestling shows? It was almost a WCW Saturday Night level of random pairing, and it worked perfectly. A+.