Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE NXT: William Regal made me the happiest person in the world by announcing Shayna Baszler vs. Kairi Sane, 2-out-of-3 falls for the NXT Women’s Championship at NXT TakeOver: War Games. THANK YOU, LORD STEVE. Also, Velveteen Dream made an NXT Championship statement, and Bianca Belair made me laugh for a week by shitting on Mia Yim’s catchphrase.
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 November 14, 2018.
Best: Un?duh?fee?ted?
Up first this week is Bianca Belair vs. Mia Yim, which seems unnecessary since Belair completely nuked her in that backstage promo last week. While it’s not an especially exciting match, it serves a good purpose: to give Bianca Belair more of a challenge than she’s used to, push her into “deeper waters” of competition, and establish that yeah, she’s probably as good as she says. The look of “whew, okay,” on her face when she finally put Yim down with a KOD was great character work. She never really “doubted” herself, but the idea of doubting herself might’ve crept up a time or two.
The pacing here isn’t great, but it’s deliberate. Sometimes pro wrestling pacing makes sense without being thrilling. For example, the one real edge Yim has here is in her experience. Belair has a clear strength advantage, so if she wants to win the match, she’s got to cut off Yim’s high-impact offense, ground her, and slap on a hold. So it’s a lot of rest holds, but they seem more like a strong person trying to force a faster person to “stay down” as it were, rather than a bunch of chinlocks because somebody’s tired. So yeah, I’ll probably never watch this match again, but I’m glad it happened, and the right person won.
And speaking of stronger heels winning, here’s that match we were promised last week:
Best: The Nasties, Boys
Lacey Evans easily defeats Karissa Rivera, who is advertised as the daughter of former WWF wrestler Steve King. If you don’t know King’s work, here he is as one half of a team losing a handicap match to a young-ass Hulk Hogan. Hogan’s so young here he’s got a little bit of hair on his head. I always assumed Hogan came out of the womb with that horseshoe hair. I love that we’ve gotten to the point now where the children of jobbers are becoming “second generation stars.” Second generation, first stars. It’s the Carmella Precedent, since she’s the first child of a jobber (Paul Van Dale) I can think of on the WWE roster. Unless you count John Cena Sr., I guess.
Heels are really ruling the NXT women’s division right now, aren’t they? Shayna Baszler’s destroying all the young babyfaces, Lacey Evans keeps knocking people out, Bianca Belair is undefeated. Meanwhile you’ve got Dakota Kai losing all the time, Candice LeRae’s getting kicked around, Nikki Cross loses all her marquee matches, and so on. It’s time for a Goldberg to show up in the women’s division, or at least a Kerry Von Erich type who can do big discus punches and teach some of these cads a lesson.
Best: Kairi Sane Is Sad Because Her ‘Treasure Box’ Is Empty
As you might expect, all of the hype videos for NXT TakeOver: War Games are great. None are as good, however, as Kairi Sane moping and making sad faces because she lost the NXT Women’s Championship and now her “treasure box” is empty. She even opens it up to show us. It’s got some gold coins in the bottom, but I guess those don’t mean anything to her. She’s probably still picking gold coins out of the ramp at Full Sail from this.
Also worth watching but not necessarily deserving of their own section are the recap videos for the Aleister Black and Johnny Gargano feud — go read our interview with Gargano from earlier today if you haven’t already — and Velveteen Dream saying that if all Tommaso Ciampa sees is red, he won’t be able to see purple. I mean, he’ll see half of it.
That TakeOver show is going to be ridiculous. I’m not even sure I’ve got enough capital letters to write about it.
Matt Riddle Meets His Fans At A WWE Axxess Event
You’ve got to love Kassius Ohno, the guy who never wins anything in NXT unless he’s fighting enhancement talent, walking up to Matt Riddle backstage and being like, “hey man, you didn’t bother to go to our bosses and demand a match with me because I attempted to insult you last week, what’s the deal, I bet you’re CHICKEN,” and not once considering that maybe he just doesn’t matter. Congratulations on twirling in place a bunch of times before Riddle skunks you on the TakeOver pre-show, Big Kass.
Best: War Games Fulfills Its Own Destiny
Finally we have a “War Games advantage match,” taking the place of the coin flip that decides whether the heels or the faces get the timing advantage in the War Games match this Sunday. If you’ve ever seen a War Games match or have any idea how pro wrestling storytelling works, you know that heels always have the advantage in War Games. If they don’t, what’s the point? There’s no drama if the guys you’re cheering for have the advantage the entire time.
Undisputed Era sends dirtbag henchman Kyle O’Reilly to represent them. The good guys can’t decide who should wrestle for them and argue amongst themselves until wAr BeArD Hanson announces HE’S doing it, and everyone accepts it. Which, I mean, objectively yeah, he’s your biggest guy, but objectively he’s also your worst guy, and you’re doing this to yourselves.
The match is really good, of course, because Kyle O’Reilly is a magician right now. We forget sometimes that he’s a former Ring of Honor World Champion because he’s so great as the best-worst member of a tag team, but in an NXT environment where the nearfalls and leg-slapping are reined in a bit, he really excels. Watching him take Hanson apart was a lot of fun, especially that armbar counter into an ankle lock because he couldn’t get the arm. I love that Undisputed Era are actually really good wrestlers, they’re just such awful people that they could never be as good as they think they are.
The finish is great because it gets everyone involved without causing a DQ, O’Reilly only wins because he gets to cheat without the referee seeing it, and now Pete Dunne’s leg is hurt, giving Undisputed Era a target for when it’s time to win The Match Beyond. Again, War Games is going to be fucking excellent, you guys. Four matches in three hours, and all of them could be the match of the year. GIVE IT TO ME NOW.
