Previously on the Best and Worst of NXT: El Hijo del Baron Corbin made his debut, Kyle O’Reilly made an Undisputed Era NXT opening in iMovie, and some babyfaces made the mistake of thinking chaotic neutral Velveteen Dream would be a good tag team partner.
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 June 26, 2019.
Best: Wilde/Angel, Baby What Else Could It Be?
I’d like to open this week’s column by saying that after a week of watching Raw and Smackdown semantically avoid commercial breaks with bullshit stipulations and a Stomping Grounds pay-per-view where people are like, “you would’ve LIKED this overbooking if it was in a different context and you hadn’t seen them do it over and over for 20 years,” it’s reaffirming to remember that WWE knows how to make and routinely gives us an hour-long pro wrestling show that’s almost always fantastic and never makes you feel like a dumb asshole for watching.
This week we’re starting off the Breakout Tournament with Joaquin Wilde (the former DJZ from Impact Wrestling) vs. Angel Garza (the former Garza Jr., Humberto Carrillo’s cousin) and let me tell you, this tournament is immediately a great idea and immediately off the hook.
In case you haven’t seen these two before, Wilde’s sort of a cross between Mustafa Ali and The Amazing Red with Minoru Suzuki’s haircut (plus colored street chalk?) and a great story of surviving and returning from a life-threatening injury. Garza is like all the best parts of Andrade mixed with all the best parts of Alberto Del Rio plus BREAKAWAY PANTS that he breaks away in the middle of a match and pops the crowd so hard they’re still happily talking about it among themselves like two moves later. Seriously, look at this. If you don’t pop for a shithead luchador hulking up by Magic Miking it in the middle of the ring, you might be watching wrestling wrong.
For an immediate look at how successful this was, the crowd briefly chanted FIGHT FOREVER for a round one, one-on-one tournament match between two guys who haven’t been on NXT TV before. This whole thing was a rousing success, and I’m excited to see both guys compete again. Angel Garza’s already one of the best wrestlers in the company. Also, shout-out to Martina McBride.
Best: Open The Pod Bay Door, Eric Young
Besides Adam Cole hanging out with Rocky Dennis from Slipknot and getting his gopher Roderick Strong to place passive-aggressive pickup orders to harass Johnny Gargano’s family, the most interesting vignette of the week is former Sanity muscle Killian Dain teasing a return to NXT via literal and figurative projection. The only thing that would’ve made it better is if he’d been watching footage of Sanity’s main roster debut and wondering what any of them did to deserve being instantaneously shoved into the No Way Jose conga line.
Jobber Of The Week
Taking a big fat Greek loss to Keith Lee this week is Nykos Rikos, who looks like he got dressed in the dark at a Mediterranean Godwill and accidentally stepped into a festive trash bag. It looks even worse from the back. It’s like if Zack Ryder could only make gear out of whatever he found at CVS.
Anyway, Mypos Bartokomous makes the mistake of slapping Da Gawd Keith Lee on the boob and pays for it with extreme prejudice. If there’s one character in NXT I want to see more and bigger from right now, it’s Keith Lee. I’m excited for him to send Dominik Dijakovic back to Nationalist Croatia or whatever and start throwing hands with the promotion’s most important characters.
Tired: doing “boom” with Adam Cole
Wired: doing “keith lee KEITH LEE!” with Keith Lee
Best: One, Two, Street
In other middle-of-the-show news, the Forgotten Sons end up in a Tag Team Championship match against the new NXT Tag Team Champions and lose in like two minutes when Jaxson Ryker gets involved and gets disqualified. If there’s ever been an in-story reason for Steve Cutler and Wesley Blake to ditch the dead weight and become their own very good, motorcycle-themed tag team, it’s this. Everything Jaxson Ryker touches turns to butt.
YASSS DO ITTTT
Anyway, the good news here is that they pivot to Danny Burch and Oney Lorcan thanks to a run-in save, some opportunistic belt-staring, and a demand of, “remember, you owe us.” Oney and Twoey are gonna get a Tag Team Championship match for being Good Dudes — they also probably could’ve just asked, since the Street Profits seem super into defending the championship, but it’s fine — and I’m very ready for it. It’s so strange that they can instantly build a tag title match without having Montez Ford catching Danny Burch shaving Oney Lorcan’s back, or someone putting Oney Hot on the inside of Angelo Dawkins’s headbands. Feed the Profits vs. the Bald Number Gang directly into my veins.
Best: Io Arrives
Then there’s the main event. It’s Shayna Baszler vs. Io Shirai for the NXT Women’s Championship in a steel cage. Baszler and Shirai have great chemistry together, and beat the shit out of each other. Baszler wears gloves to the match so she can force Shirai into the cage and punch her to death without injuring her knuckles, and for protection against the cage. She also uses the cage as a weapon — something a lot of WWE Superstars in cage matches forget to do, even though you can still get a ton of great cage offense and visuals without everyone bleeding — and the cage is constructed to actually look and feel like it’s got some danger to it. It makes noise when you hit it, like old cages. It doesn’t bend like a trampoline when you hit it. It’s the best WWE steel cage in a long, long time, and everyone should start using it.
Also, Candice LeRae shows up to fend off the heel shenanigans of the Lesser Horses and jumps off the top of it like a crazy person. That leaves the door open and unattended, so Baszler tries to crawl her way toward it and gets moonsaulted. From the top of the cage. A “moonsault from the moon,” as Mauro awesomely calls it. Because you aren’t gonna put Io Shirai in a cage match and NOT have her moonsault off the top of a goddamn cage.
It’s the perfect TV match. It’s got a special stipulation. There’s a prestigious championship on the line. It goes just over 13 minutes, and never outstays its welcome. It involves multiple characters and multiple stories intertwining, in a way that leaves you wanting more, and not feeling robbed of the match you were promised. It’s got a creative finish and a sense of desperation, with Shirai finally knocking Baszler out only for Baszler to collapse out of the door to the floor. It has multiple crazy spots that you’d want to see in replay and GIF form. It’s violent. It’s emotionally intense. Everything means something, from the wardrobe choices to the decisions on offense and defense.
And, most of all, it pulls the trigger on something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time.
like finally waking up after a long dreamless sleep
Io loses because of bad luck. She did everything she could to win, and even had her one remaining friend show up to put her body on the line and fight off two opponents. She handles this in the way that this really cool Japanese wrestler named Io Shirai would: by flipping the fuck out, taking it out on the friend who tried to help her, and screaming in her face while she beats her to death with a steel chair. It’s MAGICAL.
The look on her face when she drops Candice on the opened chair with a suplex and takes a second to think about what she’s done is one of the best WWE faces of the year. It’s like Io finally hit her threshold for violence and was like, “oh, shit, this feels GOOD.” She’s remembering what it’s like to only care about herself, and to punish anyone who tries to help her and fails … because it’s better to be Shirai’s enemy than to disappoint her as a friend, whether you deserve it or not. ONLY IO MATTERS.
Give me the next six weeks of NXT TV right now.
