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Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: The Metro Brothers rode back into town, Bianca Belair used one of her “undefeated” clap hands to smack Shayna Baszler in the face, and The War Raiders burned some leaves.
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 23, 2019.
Best: Three Bald Guys And A Guy Who Should Be Commanding The First Order Walk Into A Bar
I don’t know if it’s what they’re actually building toward, but I would love to see the Oney Lorcan and Danny Burch trademark tag team sprint match turn into a Dragon Gate thing where they still sprint, but they do it for like 12 minutes of a 15 minute match.
This week we got a woefully truncated (but on-brand) match pitting Oney and Twoey against the European super team of Fabian Aichner (looking much more “rural” than he does when he shows up on NXT UK) and Marcel Barthel, who I guess is hanging around until WALTER gets established and Smackdown forgets they’ve got Axel Tischer on their roster.
What I loved about this version of the sprint is that it doesn’t culminate like normal, with Oney or Twoey (or a combination of the two, which is … Three-ey?) hitting a bunch of impactful moves in a row and winning quickly, but also strongly. Instead, they keep it level and competitive by having Oney win via roll-up, in the way roll-up victories should be used: an infrequent, “desperation” counter or hold used to sneak out and/or “steal” a victory without necessarily proving you’re better than your opponent. It just means you won. It’s the competitive version of a count-out or a disqualification, and if WWE hadn’t had 4 of 7 matches on every card for the past 20 years end on a roll-up it could still have that kind of impact. In NXT, it at least kind of does.
Like most of Danny and the Orcan Man’s matches, it’s a positive version of “10 pounds of monkey crap in a five pound bag.” They pack so much into five minutes they could’ve stretched it out effortless into 10 or 12 with just the content they gave us. I like it a lot as a match on the weekly TV shows, and hope they can find room on a crowded TakeOver or two to spotlight these guys and let them do their thing, but for longer.
Best: Kairi Sane And Io Shirai Are Best Friends (Don’t Mention Their Secret Society Of Organized Crime And Skeleton Assassination)!
In other tag team squash news, Black Lotus Triad members Io Shirai and Kairi Sane team up to easily defeat “Domestic Jinny” Amber Nova, whom you may remember from a recent loss to Nikki Cross or from her time at Impact, and the debuting Tanea Brooks, the former “Rebel” who is such an Impact Wrestling personality her first name is “TNA.” If you’re my dad, you know her as the lady from the ‘Honky Tonk Badonkadonk’ video.
Shirai and Sane are an A+ tag team, especially now that they’ve got a combo finish with Io alley-ooping Kairi into an elbow drop, then hitting an assisted standing moonsault. It’s a great in-ring finisher for two women with top rope finishes.
Also, NXT, if you don’t call their team “Captain Io,” you’re dead to me.
Best: Velvet Is A Fish Disease
More than his flashier TakeOver performances, I think this is the kind of match Velveteen Dream needs to be having as he grows into a truly complete, experienced pro wrestler. His TakeOver bouts have a smoke and mirrors aspect to them; the Dream “experience,” so to speak, where his character and athleticism are so good he can almost fake his way through looking like the best wrestler on the planet. Not saying he won’t be that, but even though he’s preternaturally talented, this (presumably) is just the beginning for him. So showing he can work what’s ostensibly a TV main event for a few minutes against a non-flash opponent in Bobby Fish and building the entire thing around him selling his knee is like Main Roster Boot Camp.
He’s up to the task, too, and Fish clearly knows what he’s doing in the ring, so it’s a good pairing all around. Fish’s injury sort of unfairly singled him out as the “weak link” of the Undisputed Era, and having him more or less just be a henchman for Adam Cole while he gets completely back up to speed’s not a bad idea. Not the best match I’ve seen, but certainly a constructive one, and one of the ongoing best things about NXT is how it can still function as “developmental” for guys who don’t seem to need any more help developing.
Best: DIY Another Day
Finally we have the post-main event “main event” segment, in which Ricochet is rightfully like, “hey Johnny Gargano, what the fuck, man,” about getting kicked in the face out of nowhere a couple of weeks ago. Gargano, who is now obviously completely broken, shows up to justify his actions; by, uh, saying he “always has a plan” and then running at Ricochet to get punched. Not a great plan.
But then! As if summoned by the internal disgust of Full Sail University itself, Tommaso Ciampa shows up to blindside Ricochet. Alesiter Black pops in to make the save, which causes Gargano and Ciampa to be “on the same page” whether they want to or not, and the Lawful Evil version of the team beats down the faces while the crowd chants “D-I-Y.” The Full Sail crowd rightfully gets a lot of grief for cheering for whatever they like instead of observing any kind of established alignment, but I do that all the time in these columns, so I can’t drag them too much. I will say that NXT has created a unique WWE environment that has independent wrestling’s “we just want everyone to be awesome” vibe, and that even if they’re having fun with two guys they should be booing, they’re mostly doing it because NXT character-based stories are great and it’s fun to watch wrestling shows where shit actually happens.
Up on the stage, Gargano and Ciampa almost formally reunite, until they’re stopped by Local Ruiner Candice LeRae. This is a billion percent building to something that can blow off on WrestleMania weekend, hopefully with both the NXT and North American Championships on the line. Just put all remaining eggs from this multi-year story into the next couple of months, put everything and everybody’s sanity on the line, end the show with them sitting criss-cross apple sauce next to each other in the ring, and then start a “new” NXT era where Gargano and Ciampa get called up to Smackdown or whatever and become happy millionaires. Happy millionaires we’re always really worried about on the Internet because they don’t seem artistically fulfilled even though that’s not our place to say ever, you know the drill.
Next Week:
It’ll be the first hour “pre-show” to NXT TakeOver: Phoenix, featuring:
- Black Lotus Duo vs. The Two Horsewomen
- The Street Profits face The Forgotten Sons, and we see if maybe Montez Ford can make Jaxson Ryker’s finisher not look like complete garbage
Oh, and before that, it’s NXT TakeOver: Phoenix Proper, featuring …
- Bianca Belair vs. Shayna Baszler, which should rule
- Johnny Gargano vs. Ricochet, which should rule
- Undisputed Era vs. War Raiders, which should rule
- Tommaso Ciampa vs. Aleister Black, which should rule
- Matt Riddle completing his Cornetto trilogy with Kassisus Ohno
- POPPY (!!!)
Thanks for reading, as always. Drop a comment, share the column on social, and make sure you’re here this weekend for TakeOver festivities. We’ll have a live thread, results, news breakouts, and whatever else you need. And we’re gonna talk to Poppy if it kills us. Which it may!
