Previously on the Best and Worst of NXT: Cowboy James Storm made his shocking NXT debut, but sadly did not shove anyone into the path of a moving train. We got to know Apollo Crews, Asuka decimated another opponent, and Baron Corbin formally ended his on-again off-again thing with Rhyno.
In case you missed it, we doubled up on reports this week, so make sure you’ve read the 10/21 edition before scrolling. You can click here to watch this episode on WWE Network. All good? Please enjoy the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for October 28, 2015.
Best: SHAZMAC POSE
I’m retroactively jealous of everyone who got to go to this set of tapings. I went to the 10/22 tapings (for the three episodes starting after this one) and got a damn Cameron match — sorry if that spoiled anything tremendously exciting for anyone — but the folks at this set got Evie, Kay Lee Ray (more on her in a second) and SHAZZA MCKENZIE. NXT tapings should always try to align with SHIMMER weekends so spectacularly talented women from around the world can show up and get fed to whoever. One of these days we’re gonna get Saraya Knight on the show and it’s gonna be f*cking fantastic.
Anyway, Shazza. Shazza is delightful. Here’s a hype video for her wrestling Emma way back in 2011 to give you some perspective. In a related note, that figure skater aesthetic is underrated in wrestling, for both men and women.
Best: Emma’s Heel Theme, And The Full Sail Remix
Shazza gets trounced (and rightfully so) by Evil Emma, and I wanted to take a second to say how much I love ‘Real Deal.’ The remix the Full Sail crowd gives it now where they go “hey! hey! hey!” through the middle makes it even better. There’s a whole dance that goes with it and everything. I’ve got a hate/hate/hate/hate/hate/love? relationship going with that crowd now — if you go to tapings, you’ll quickly notice that that one pocket of incessant chanters in the middle has gotten so lost in their own world they’ve stopped reacting to the wrestling or listening to the vibe of the rest of the crowd and just chant their own jokes on loop for three hours — but they’re still capable of magic.
Emma is absolutely my jam right now. Those leather half-gloves are the best. Why would you even wear those? WWE gear psychology is so funny sometimes. “I’m wrestling in shorts and a tank top. I should probably connect them via fabric belts. Ooh, I’ll put my name on them. Give me those O.J. Simpson gloves and a pair of scissors.”
Best: Chad Gable Is Doooope
Chad Gable matches are starting to feel like family gatherings. The guy’s gotten over as a beloved super hero without even having a character because he’s good at wrestling. “Good” is understating it. He can make a chatty crowd sit still for a second to watch him work through a wristlock on his way to a drop toehold, and then everybody stands up and APPLAUDS his BASIC, EARLY-MATCH HOLDS because they are SO GOOD. Motherf*cker is doing Tiger Spins at Full Sail. Watch him hit too perfect a bridge during his sequence with Tommaso Ciampa and then have to consciously walk it back so it looks more average and doesn’t make Ciampa look like a pile of sh*t. Watch Jason Jordan on the apron during ANY of this. He’s our window into the world of Chad Gable. He just smiles his ass off the entire time. He’s so happy to be in a Chad Gable match. He gets the hot tag and the straps come down like 11 seconds in.
Gable/Jordan vs. Ciampa/Johnny Gargano was great, even if it very blatantly illustrated the divide between the teams. I know you guys dig Ciampa and Gargano more than I do so I’m not gonna call them bad wrestlers — they aren’t, not at all — but they aren’t going to the places Jordan and Gable are. It’s just not the same. Gargano is Gargano, and he’s gonna clap his hands when he does a double stomp to the back even though there’s no way in f*cking Christ stomping a guy in the lower back would make a loud clapping sound. Ciampa is out of his league. That sounds like an insult, but it’s not. He’s good, but he’s also Christian Laettner on the Dream Team. He’s one of the best college players in the world, but when you put him in there with Magic Johnson he’s not the one that’s gonna get the ball.
This is the perfect use for the Evolve guys, though, assuming WWE’s partnership with WWN is competent jobber outsourcing. Again, not an insult. Pro wrestling’s been missing jobbers that can make stars look like stars. That’s an important part of the sport. If you can bring in “Hot Sauce” Tracy Williams to get 5 minutes out of Baron Corbin and make him look like a world killer, do it. Keep doing that, and we’ll be fine when you decide you really like one of them — again, Williams, because come on — and decide to keep them. Give more indie guys the Evie/Shazza type spot and stop making me watch Angelo Dawkins every time you need someone to lose.
Best/Worst: Nia Jax Is Getting The Baron Corbin Trajectory
Someone asked me if Nia Jax could work, and you know? I don’t know.
It’s a smart place to put someone like Jax, if you think about it. She gets to get her presence over and establish herself as dominant, whether she’s ready for it yet or not. Corbin did that. He had a cool finish and some werewolf lights, and spent like an entire year milking them. We didn’t get sh*t from Corbin. Then, when he started working longer matches, whoops, he’d had an extra year of training to support him. The stuff on TV isn’t the only time they ever practice, right? So I think that’s where Nia is.
Right now, she’s pretty cool, but not anything special. She’s special looking, and she hypothetically fills like three roles WWE desperately needs — more successful women of color, women who aren’t cut from the typical “muscular gymnasts with hair extensions” mold for the sake of variety if nothing else, and an “unstoppable force” for the Divas division — but I feel like it’s gonna be a while before we see her do anything. When it’s time for her to really shine, she’ll (hopefully) be ready. Unfortunately, that may mean several more months of this one match.
+1 to the new gear, though, which is much better, and to KAY LEE RAY for showing up as kick the sh*t out of her for a minute and then get obliterated. If you aren’t familiar with Ray, she’s a Scottish wrestler who mostly works British independents and should’ve been a lay-up on TNA British Boot Camp II. Give me Ray and Nikki Storm over any imaginable use or incarnation of Velvet Sky.
Worst, But On Purpose: Voulez-vous Catcher Avec Moi Ce Soir?
If Eva’s going to stay in France, she should change “All Red Everything” to Three Colors: Red.
Man, if Eva Marie could wrestle, she’d be on some next-level heel sh*t. But I guess if she could wrestle, the crowds wouldn’t hate her like they do and wouldn’t think she was being undeservedly shoehorned into places she doesn’t belong for the sake of a tangential reality show. Still, lovingly condescending updates about how she can’t make NXT or be at training because she’s busy having drinks and getting into fights with her dingbat husband in PARIS are so evil. “Oh I wish I could make it to practice and do bump drills to maybe learn how to move around the ring like a human being almost 3 years into my job with the most seen wrestling promotion in the world, but I had to spend an entire month on drunken bikini vacation. Sorrryyyyy, love ya lots.”
I was really hoping this segment would end with her coughing, then dying of consumption while Ewan McGregor sobbed over her body. Hell, bring back Hornswoggle as Toulouse-Lautrec, I’d be into it.
Best: Smart Heels
On last week’s episode, Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder got overconfident during their 10-minute dissection of Enzo Amore’s leg and got caught with a small package for the loss. This week is the rematch, and Dawson and Wilder decide to forgo the opportunity in favor of punching Enzo and Cass in the backs of their heads during their long-winded ring introduction and hurt them some more. They take out Cass this time, and have effectively incapacitated one of their division’s top efforts.
I really love this. Dawson and Wilder are the real Vaudevillains. They’re relics from a bygone era in which average looking dudes in satin jackets would just hold you down and knee you in the leg until it broke, and that was their “gimmick.” Plus, they’re actually bad guys. Smart ones! If you’ve got an issue with Enzo and Big Cass, when’s the best time to attack them? When they’re waist-deep in that same speech they always give. Perfectly done. HURT EVERYBODY. WRESTLING!
Best: Samoa Joe Beats Tyler Breeze Out Of NXT
And now, we (assumedly) say goodbye to Tyler Breeze in the only way that fits him: an amazing match that he loses.
Breeze got bumped up to the main roster recently and doesn’t really have a reason to stick around. He doesn’t have a title or a title rematch to keep him tethered to the company like Kevin Owens or Bo Dallas did. He’s not as instrumental to the NXT narrative as a Sami Zayn. He can’t even feud with William Regal anymore and build to a match in the UK because Regal just had neck surgery. Breeze is just this dorky character made memorable and essential by a talented performer, looking to find a spot on Raw or Smackdown because NXT hit at the precisely wrong time for him and he kept getting passed over for The New Hotness. “Hey, Tyler Breeze is getting a push! Whoops, we signed Kevin Steen. Hang on. Okay now you’re getting a push! Wait, sorry, here’s KENTA and Prince Devitt. Lose to them, then we can do something. Oh no, here’s Samoa Joe. Okay, what about … well, let’s get Uhaa Nation over, and then we can-”
Breeze vs. Joe was AWESOME, which I was expecting because I saw the early version of the match at NXT Austin. These guys have incredible chemistry, especially since Joe’s on this Benjamin Button tip where he’s losing weight and speeding up and gradually becoming 2005 Samoa Joe again. That’s the under-the-radar best thing happening in NXT right now, I think. Joe is JOE again. Watch this match with Breeze, then go back and watch Joe’s first few NXT matches. It’s like a completely different person. He’s dynamic again. He moves with a snap like he used to, and he’s stopped looking tired and slick-as-a-seal 2 minutes into matches. I’m f*cking HYPE for this Joe.
The finish is what you’d expect, and the same as in Austin: Breeze goes for an O’Connor roll, Joe kicks out at two and catches him in the Coquina Clutch. Find this and watch it, because it’s really, really good.
Now we begin the quest to get Breeze over on the main roster. He’s got Summer Rae, who is kinda-sorta the female Tyler Breeze anyway, so we wish them the best. I hope he doesn’t get over in time for someone to say, “hang on, we have to bring up Sami Zayn now. Can you lose to him to put him over? Cool, thanks. Now we can push you for real! Actually, we’re bringing up Finn, would you mind …?”
Worst: The Vanishing Of Devin Taylor
This week’s main event (I’m kidding) is Devin Taylor interviewing Finn about his upcoming match with Apollo Crews, and it is, I believe, the final Devin appearance. What’s weird is that it features her literally vanishing. Watch it again. She asks Finn what he thinks, and Finn answers. The camera pans over to Finn, and he exits across her. When he does, she’s GONE. It’s like he absorbs her or something. Is that what happened? Did the Demon eat Devin Taylor? Is Finn gonna come out for his match with Crews with his head bobbing all weird? Is Finn suddenly susceptible to head pats?
We’ll listen for your voice on the wind, Devin.
