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Please click through to enjoy the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for October 2, 2013. BOOOOP boopadoop boop boop boop boop …
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Renee for main commentator/backstage interviewer/ring announcer/everything from now on, PLZ THNKU.
Sami Zayn’s indie history continues to be the most wink-wink-nudge-nudge-y thing in WWE. I don’t think they’ve gone a taping yet without making ever-firmer allusions to it. During his debut weeks, they talked about how he worked a lot of his globe-trotting adventures in a mask. In the lead up to Zayn/Cesaro III, Zeb Coulter basically accused him of being a secret Mexican. This week, he literally comes to the ring as ersatz El Generico.
By the end of the year someone on the announce table is going to utter the word “Chikara” during one of Zayn’s matches and the entire state of Florida will be instantly swallowed by the sea.
Don’t know why the part about Florida being swallowed into the sea made me laugh as hard as it did but I’m not complaining.
Riley’s “I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THIS IS” comment was especially stupid since we’ve seen El Local so recently. Even if it was obvious who it was, I still loved the reveal.
Wasn’t last week El Locals first televised NXT match? Last week Tony Dawson had William Regal at his side, and kayfabe that was “one week ago”, so Riley not knowing who “El Local” was isn’t a goof per se.
Not really, I already saw at least a couple of El Local matches since I’ve started watching NXT consistently (sometime last year), but you’re probably right that Alex Riley never commentated any one of his matches, and since you can’t expect a guy who is consistently featured on a show to actually watch it even when he’s not on it, yeah, Alex Riley might legit not know who El Local really is, or hell, that it was Sami Zayn imitating him.
First off, hope things get better for you, bro.
Second: holy shit. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they fired Tony Dawson for this episode alone. He was S-A-W-F-U-L… sawful? wait, no. Just awful. Maybe soft too. Probably soft. Anyway, he’s been commentating NXT for how long, and he acts like he’s never seen the show before. I hope this leads to a Regal/Renee pairing and Riley just flies into the sun and perishes.
Regal/Renee being the regular announce team would signal the beginning of a golden age of mankind.
I would also be happy with a Renee/Brad Maddox announce team. I think they’d have good chemistry. Renee as face play-by-play, Brad as heel colour.
In the RAW live discussion, someone mentioned listening to the radio broadcast of NFL games with the tv muted because the tv crews are, by and large, awful. Then he/she posed the question as to who your dream “WWE Radio Announce Team” would be, and I listed off Regal/Maddox, with Renee in the sideline reporter role.
How does NXT manage to get comedy so RIGHT when Raw/Smackdown get it so WRONG every time? I honestly can’t remember the last time I laughed at intentional (key word there) WWE comedy, but the Emma/Santino match honestly made me laugh a good 10-15 times. I read the match listing ahead of time and when I saw that Emma and Santino were gonna fight Fandango/Summer I knew it would be pure entertainment and I was right. The sequence with them high fiving after every tag and unintentionally tagging back out shows that you can still do new/original comedy in a wrestling match and have it work.
Between that and the “This Guy” chants, last night was the most I’ve laughed at wrestling in years
Yup. I’ve realized that NXT is basically everything fun about WWE distilled into a weekly hourlong show, with basically none of the nonsense we see on Raw/SD.
NXT is the perpetual opposite day RAW/SmackDown. A magical place where Antonio Cesaro is The Boss of the World, Swagger doesn’t shoot injure people, comedy is actually funny, and women have feuds that aren’t based on “bitch”.
I feel like it’s kind of the opposite, with NXT being the full product and the big shows being distilled. Despite having 5 hours of TV to go around, nearly everything outside the main ~5 people on the show never get to breathe or do anything other than one or two tried and true things to get a reaction (see: kofi kingston), but on NXT, everyone’s allowed to showcase themselves. So now Fandango gets to do more than his entrance, Santino gets to do more than put on a sock, and so on. I realize that’s the point, but it’s also something they barely even do on Main Event and Superstars.
this match made me so happy, I enjoyed everything after it (including corey by god graves) and am still feeling the after effects until now !
also, wwe needs to aknowledge NXT on their main shows and promote it double the time they promote total divas and the wwe app cobined if only just to make the crowds learn how to have fun !
NXT is the only WWE program I can honestly enjoy these days, and it is for the reasons you’ve mentioned above. It is amazing comfort food and occasionally a good match comes out of it!
RAW is too long, full of filler and has HHH/Stephanie all over it now. Smackdown is a big nothing. Main Event might as be Superstars and SMS no longer exists.
I really think WWE is in big trouble these days despite some fans thinking it’s been the best in years, but I’ll have NXT to watch in the meantime.
My favourite part of the Emma/Santino tag in/high five bit was that it ended with the crowd successfully reminding them not to tag with a big “NOOO!” right before they did it again. That crowd helps make a lot of fun stuff possible.
I’m perfectly happy with NXT being off in its own little world (although I don’t hate Raw as much as some of you guys, if only because of Bryan and the Shield). That’s the charm of it.
NXT is the good crystal blue shit; RAW is that whiteish crap Todd cooks.
The best part of the Tag title match for me was after Corey Graves makes the save and drags Neville to the corner for the tag. Naturally at this point you’re expecting a bit of “fired-up babyface” routine on Graves’ part coming off the hot tag. But nope, he gets in exactly ZERO offense. Rick Victor drops him like a rock, sets him up for the finish and game over. Laughed my ass off.
I did like that Graves just dragged Pac over to the corner for the tag. I always wondered why more people don’t do that. It’s like it is against some sort of unwritten tag team rule.
Then again he dragged him a foot too short and had to tag him in dramatically. So, every silver lining has a cloud there.
I was laughing so hard that I had to repeat it a second time. then, I saw rick victor breaking out daniel bryan’s knee to the face ! and I had to repeat it a third time to see it again !!
It reminded me of the end of this match, which may be my favorite thing involving Cryme Tyme ever:
[www.youtube.com]
jeri-show was THE best thing in wwe back then.
The most depressing moment: The TNA Wolves doing a backstage promo and the video cutting to them using AWESOME OFFENSIVE MANEUVERS and it’s them kicking a guy in the turnbuckle.
That’s literally the most exciting footage they could find of the TNA Wolves.
Los Matadores’ finisher is better than “TNA Wolves”‘ finisher.
I haven’t liked Santino since the I saw him live at Wresltemania. He dropped character whenever the camera wasn’t pointed at him. But this match was amazing. The ridiculous tagging in high fives, the multiple roll aways from Fandango’s finisher, the kip up on the third try, etc. I would really like to see Santino and Emma wrestle Bayley and Colt Cabana.
actually, santino dropped the stupid foriegn guy gimmick a lot for breif seconds before, and he turns out to be pretty smooth and cool guy to be around. I like him both ways.
I hope things start looking better for you and as someone with an equally shitty past few weeks, that opening tag did have a similar effect.
On a lighter note, can we put Renee on Main event in place of Riley so we can get the slightly larger audience adjusted to a female voice in the booth? Because that would be the first step in making the E not the worst when it comes to its understanding of women.
if anyone can make the wwe universe respect women as equal individuals to men in the world of wrestling, I agree that it’s renee young.
So you can add Santino to the way too large list of guys that should only ever be on NXT.
Dude, honestly, the list is “everyone With Leather likes” on NXT (replacing SmackDown and brand split) and everyone else on RAW (which would never be covered again).
When the mixed-tag match was announced I was sure Emma’s partner would be Xavier Woods and everyone would clap politely and forget the match even happened a minute after everyone left the ring. Instead, after Fandango gets his pop, Emma reveals Santino and NXT explodes with excitement. Such a perfect choice (they both have funny dances and knife hands!).
Also loved the main events progression. First a jobber to prove that the NXT audience will literally cheer anyone over Bo Dallas (‘cept for Scott Dawson), then bringing back the fallen heroes of Kruger and Cesaro, then bringing in Zayn (the hero NXT deserves) for the finish. It’s like the story of Bo Dallas in under 10 minutes (he even used his spear finisher from FCW and the early days of NXT).
P.S.: Minor nitpick I wanted to mention on the RAW column, but Dolph never actually called AJ a slut or insinuated it. He actually insinuated that he himself is a slut and more made fun of AJ for thinking that they were monogamous (pretty much the opposite of calling her a slut).
actually, that made me MORE mad on ziggler ! why would men doing things like that and rubbing it in their ex’s face be ok and everyone cheer it, and then when the girl moves to another guy she’s accused of being crazy every night ?
Yeah, it still sucks. Double standards and all that.
I saw it as Ziggler telling AJ she was replaceable, not that actually cheated on her. And he did call her a lot of things when she was with Cena. (Even though it was more a cruel talking too that incidentally might have started their relationship.)
Actually, in WWE it’s mostly just the commentators who have tried (and mostly failed) to slut-shame her. Her opponents are more often than not calling her crazy because she manipulate people (especially her boyfriends) and have massive anger managment problems.
agreed. it’s mostly the commentators rather than ziggler …
This show right here……man, this show lol.
This is why wrestling is in my heart. This was the most fun I had watching Santino since the English Tea Party with Sheamus and Kozlov. If him and Fandango could do this once a month I would be happy.
The tag match wasn’t awful…..much. But I am glad The Ascension are wearing the titles. At least they changed up the finisher, but a massive man like O’Brien shouldn’t be doing a leg sweep.
Enzo is the man…..nuff said.
The B.D.T was about as entertaining as it should’ve been. Cesaro coming out was a plus too.
Overall a still well put together show.
I wanna see Pat “HYPE or DIE” Barry (Formerly “Get Hype”) and Mojo “Stay Hype” Rawley hang out and do HYPE things together*
* – caveat that i wanna see Pat Barry doing HYPE stuff with or without anyone else.
Pat Barry only does HYPE stuff. If he doesn’t he will literally die!
I’m really glad you mentioned the shoulderblocks thing, because something similar to that really bothered me in that match: Graves being able to knock down O’Brien with slaps. bull fuckin’ shit, pal, he’s like three times bigger than you
If anyone’s interested, here’s Mojo Rawley wrestling Sami Zayn.
[www.youtube.com]
How much does This Guy weigh?
first of all, shouldn’t he be “that guy” when we talk about him here ?
A buck fifty, soaking wet.
It should be, thermo, if that was his name. But it isn’t. It’s This Guy. So shush your mush.
Art Donovan would probably be an improvement over Jerry Lawler at this point, wouldn’t he?
This is the type of Santino stuff I enjoy. Though I would have marked ultra-hard if Emma had done the Emma Lock with the Cobra. Now that Saturday Morning Slam is effectively no longer a thing, perhaps Santino should just do this with Emma every few weeks or so. It’s better than Cesaro having to job to him on a regular basis. :(
I’m also happy the Graves/Neville reign is over, because both need to do something else. Neville needs to find a gimmick and learn how to cut a promo and Graves…needs to die on the way back to his home planet. (Though I did like, as mentioned above, his smart move of dragging his dead partner to the turnbuckle for the tag) As bad as a team as Ascension is, at least we’ll get some quality squashes from them for the next few weeks.
A-Ry is awful. Just awful. STOP USING SPORTS METAPHORS MY GOD STOP IT HOW STUPID ARE YOU? Renee, on the other hand, is still really awesome and my comments from last week still stand.
Luke Harper (and Bray Wyatt, to an extent) deserves so much better. Great, stiff match. I have no idea how he suddenly just showed up and became really, really good.
The crowd is too smarky to a fault. “Let’s go this guy!” and doing the Ole! chants all of five seconds after masked Zayn came out is great…but chanting “You can’t wrestle!” to anyone is bad. Don’t do that.
Great show this week! Thanks again for the column, Brandon…and make things get better for you as well. Best wishes.
Someone told me they were actually saying “you can’t rest hold” which would explain why the chant sounded so weird.
If I had a dime for every time I laughed at an Enzo and Big Cass promo I’d have MANY dimes.
That promo was like Cotonelle…on a roll!
why did they just forget about JBL one week after he was the biggest news of the show ?
don’t get me wrong ! I’m glad they delayed it for this show in praticular actually.
also, I’ve been watching some old NXT shows, and I’ve discovered my favourite wrestling move that bo dallas does ! it’s when someone throws him into the corner or he just dashes at someone and misses and crashes into the ropes, and he does this : [4.bp.blogspot.com] or this [4.bp.blogspot.com] ! it can be his thing, like ric flair walking a couple of feet before fainting and falling face first.
That’s actually a pretty cool spot
Dude, did you get an alternate feed or something? They talked about JBL during EVERY. SINGLE. MATCH, be it JBL making the Fandango/Summer vs Emma/Mystery Partner match, or Harper’s lariat looking like JBL’s. Riley even worked him in while they were talking about Triple H’s tweet.
it may be because I’ve taught myself to NOT even listen to any announcer that annoys me while trying to enjoy my wrestling. but I’m glad they did it as you said.
Honestly, the only way this show could have been more perfect is if my boy Breeze made an appearance.
I seriously hope Vince, Steph or HHH was listening to Renee’s commentary and making them either show Lawler to step it up, or just straight up giving him his walking papers. I’d also be totally cool if the WWE put Renee as color commentator in place of JBL for a few weeks, where she finally snaps at Lawler and shoot squashes Lawler for being stuck in the 1950’s. Which would be the last time we ever see Lawler.
What I’m saying is, Lawler is like Mel Gibson’s character in What a Girl wants before he gets electrocuted and can read women’s mind. But not as funny, charming, or good at his job.
no renee young/jerry lawler (or any female/jerry lawler) combintaion on the commentators’ table ever, please. I’d be watching like this [cmi.memecdn.com] if it happens.
You’re really into decapitations this week, Brandon.
I really never have ANY disagreements with the B/W of NXT. Everything is so dead-on super great or awful that it’s almost like these are universal truths. Especially once I accepted the truth of “You are worse than a box of napkins, Corey Graves.”
Despite Renee Young only commentating on the Divas match and spending half of it talking about wrestlers hitting on her, she is EASILY my favourite commentator since not-yet-beaten-down-by-life Joey Styles.
It’s so simple too. She just sounds like she’s enjoying what she’s watching. Not in the awful “HO HO HO! THIS IS FUN TO WATCH, MAGGLE!” JBL way, not in the checking-the-script-mid-sentence “This match certainly has implications for, well, the Battleground Pay-per-view!” Michael Cole way, but in a genuine, easy on the ears way that has been missing from WWE since Vince started his campaign to turn the play-by-play guys into storytellers with a fixation on social media.
She’s only called two matches so far, but ILU Renee Young, please call ALL THE MATCHES.
steps on improving wwe product quality by 8000%, immediately:
1. fire jerry lawler
2. replace with renee young
i am deadly serious
It doesn’t matter what step number 1 is if step number 2 follows.
I agree.
so i’m like the 30th person to jump in here and ask why the f renee young isn’t commentating full-time. good.
I’d say something about this week’s episode of NXT, but enough of the talking, it’s BO TIME!!!
I have Emma’s theme song as my ring tone. Her and Bayley are two women in world I wish I could have as my friends, they just really seem to enjoy themselves. They’re also both VERY good at what they do. Furthermore, I would enjoy dating them, but they are both WAAAAAY to pretty and WAAAAAY to cool for this fella.
I already knew Enzo is awesome, but Big Cass is the shit too!
Multiple people have mentioned it, but is Saturday Morning Slam completely dead and never coming back?
no, it has seasons, so it will come back later.
Fuck yeah! Brandon has aligned himself with me in my battle with Sign Guys. Fuck those guys!
it has really become the top fued of wrestling on the internet !
we need a team name.
I seriously didn’t see any signs last episode. Have I blocked them out of my peripherals?
It looks as if he skipped this round of tapings. Which is good. Because, fuck NXT Sign Guy.
Why can’t Raw copy Nitro and let guys show off their wrestling skill for the first 90 minutes. I ended up liking Scott Norton, Juvi, La Parka, Sean O’Haire and so because I saw them weekly.
Because Triple H and Steph need to take at least an hour of the program, and the majority of the rest is recaps, ads and commercial breaks. If RAW lasted 24 hours they’d still manage to squeeze only about 2 hours of actual wrestling out of it, tops. And I personally think the wrestling parts have improved a lot over the past year or so.
Was it just me or did Enzo seem like he was channeling Charlie from It’s Always Sunny during his promo?
I work at Taco Bell and I’m always going to smile when someone orders SAWFT tacos.
@wwenxt retweeted me for laughing at the “this guy” chants to tears.
The chants were the most fun I’ve had at not-live wrestling.
Just now getting a chance to watch the show, and here are my thoughts:
-That first match – wow. Just wow. I only wish NXT didn’t exist in an alternate reality where WWE writers never see it and see how good their main shows could be. But it does, so the best I can hope for now is that Emma gets called up in relatively short order so we can get Santino/Khali/Hornswoggle/Emma vs Los Matadores/El Torito/Rosa Mendes matches. You know Santino/Khali vs Los Matadores is coming (and probably soon), and the little fellas are going to mix it up as well, so at least the addition of Emma (and, to a much lesser extent, Rosa) could make it more enjoyable.
-I could watch Ohno fight Harper every day of the week and not get bored. And while I agree that Ohno probably should’ve beaten a guy who’s essentially Henchman #1, but, not unlike Brandon, I get weak in the knees when I see that boot/lariat combination.
-I thought Big Cass was the weaker link in Jersey Strong, especially when he was just repeating after Enzo at the start of the promo. But then he took the promo over and he was like Cottonelle – on a roll! But Enzo played his part perfectly too.
-I think my biggest problem with the tag title match (besides Corey Graves being his usual awful self) is that Graves/Neville are clearly not intended to be a tag team, have no chemistry, and just don’t make a believable duo, while the Ascension’s tag moves just…aren’t good. O’Brien picks the guy up and hangs him up there, and Victor (Viktor?) just kinda runs into him, and while I was a huge fan of the Eliminators, as someone else already mentioned, a guy as big as O’Brien needs to be something a little more devastating than a leg sweep. The one good tandem move I liked was the Victor takedown/O’Brien leg drop. If they want the commentators to invoke the Road Warriors, though, they need to get a team finisher with more “ooomph”. Also, every move done in the match up to the finish just looked like a transitional move – there was really nothing that made me think that the match would actually from it until I saw Total Ascension.
-Bo Dallas Invitational was pretty much what I expected. Really liked This Guy, and that was the first time I’d seen Bo’s spear, which was surprisingly nice (it’s still more Edge than Roman Reigns, but at least it’s not Christian). I think the Kruger/Cesaro part would’ve made more sense if they’d replaced Kruger with a face wrestler, but I realize that the only face in NXT that Cesaro has real beef with is Zayn, so unless they were going to bring Santino back out (which probably would’ve been more effective, in retrospect), it worked for what it was.
-Everything Brandon said about Bo/”El Local” was spot-on, but I’ll add that I think they’d have been further ahead to save Zayn’s reveal for AFTER he beats Bo. Sure, everyone knew it was Zayn as soon as he came out onto the ramp, but the promo potential for Bo would’ve been huge, saying he couldn’t BO-lieve El Local could beat him, perhaps even eventually wondering where Zayn has been. I mean, this way still gets us to where we want to go, but I just think they could’ve done a lot more with it.
I kinda like that move by Ascension where they hiptoss a guy, but catch him halfway and then raise him and drop him, almost looks like a powerbomb on impact.
Also, after losing to El Local, Bo should have been so devastated that he would have to make a pilgrimage to Bolivia as some kind of a soul-searching trip. Going to the mecca of all things BO should give him the answers on how not to lose to suspicious masked wrestlers.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen them do that move (or at least I don’t recall seeing it in this match), but that would be a significant upgrade over what I did see/remember from them.
“Graves/Neville are clearly not intended to be a tag team”
they don’t even have an entrance together ! no tag team name. no tag team finisher. they were the worst team possible to win the NXT titles.
nevielle should be fine alone later. graves should be fired, as simple as that.