This week's NXT was always going to
struggle to live up to last week's episode, after Sami Zayn and
Antonio Cesaro put together a classic two out of three falls match,
and it was no surprise when it didn't. By no means was this bad show,
with a lot to like, including the newly heel NXT Champion Bo Dallas
and a decent enough main event between Conor O'Brian and Adrian
Neville, but it's going to be a while before a match on NXT even
comes close to Zayn vs. Cesaro.
NXT Tag Team Champion
Adrian Neville
vs.
Conor O'Brian
with Rick Victor
The main event of
the show pitted NXT Tag Team Champion Adrian Neville against The
Ascension's Conor O'Brian. The match was put together following the
pre-titles sequence of the show that featured Neville's partner and
fellow NXT Tag Team Champion Corey Graves speaking to Renee Young
only to be interupted by The Ascension's Rick Victor. Victor cut an
average and cliched promo about how the time of The Ascension was
now, I guess he means in terms of the NXT Tag Team Championship but
that was specifically stated. With Graves' showing his trademark
attitude he was ambushed by O'Brian with a punch to the back of the
head. O'Brian then proceded to hit Graves in the chest with a metal
girder that was part of the NXT interview room set. This didn't
really work for me, as whilst the attack looked brutal and the girder
looked genuinely painful, it didn't really fit with the Ascension's
dark gimmick, with O'Brian spurting the words “Stay down, Graves”
in a ridiculously over the top voice removing any ounces of darkness
from The Ascension in this opening segment.
The bout took on a
simple dynamic, with Neville using his speed early on to take control
of the match, but once Victor had caused the distraction, O'Brian
dominated from that point. O'Brian looks very good when in control,
he has a great look and works the gimmick well when in the ring. He
feels like a bit of a diamond in the rough for me, I think if WWE
protect the character and allow him to develop and improve as a
wrestler, which he will if he continues to go up against the likes of
Adrian Neville, then he could work very well for the company, however
if they follow the trend of how they've been using most bigger built
wrestler over the last few years, he'll be a comedy face dancing
around the ring in lingerie before you can say Giant Bernard.
The bout was
pretty short only about five minutes of the television time, which
isn't really enough for a main event match on television, but they
did manage to fit in a nice faux comeback for Neville and a near fall
for each man before they went to the finish. After Neville had moved
out of the way of a charging O'Brian sending the bigger man into the
turnbuckle, Neville hit a back suplex for a two count, with the
footage looking badly cut together for some reason. Neville then went
to the top rope and hit Red Arrow for the pinfall victory. It was a
very strange ending and felt very sudden, I'm really not quite sure
what happened, but obviously there was a botch somewhere down the
line that caused them to cut the match, but at the same time Neville
still went straight from a near fall to his finisher which isn't
something you see a lot of in WWE. Personally, I would have like to
see this bout go another five minutes or so, which I think both men
are capable off, and certainly needed a more satisfying finish.
After the bout,
Victor came back in the ring and The Ascension began to double team
Neville. Graves tried to make the save, now complete with bandaged
ribs, before The Ascension destroyed him too, finishing him off with
their Spinning Elbow/Sweep Kick combination finisher. With The
Ascension finishing the show standing tall in the ring, it looks like
they have to be next in line for an NXT Tag Team Championship match,
which can surely be only a few weeks away. NXT is pretty low on tag
teams at the moment, since The Wyatt Family were moved to the main
roster and they split Scott Dawson & Garrett Dylan up, they could
really do with creating a couple of new pairing to make the division
look competitive. It can also only be a matter of time before they
split Neville and Graves up and have them feud, seeing as their team
was born more out of neccesity than anything else and they seem to
protect each other out of obligation rather than an actual like for
each other.
Best of the Rest (In The World)
Elsewhere on NXT,
Renee Young conducted an in ring interview with Sami Zayn. After last
week's epic Two out of Three Falls encounter with Antonio Cesaro I
was interested to see what Zayn had to say and where WWE would be
moving with him from here. Zayn did a good job with his promo,
getting himself over as a humble and extremely likeable guy, I think
it is literally impossible not too like Sami Zayn, his character at
times feels like it has been plucked straight from a Rom-Com, with
his interaction with Young typifying that feel. Zayn mentioned the
possibility of receiving a NXT Championship shot, something which
I've talked about a few times in my NXT reviews with Zayn seeming
like the logical option for the next NXT Champion after his
impressive run of matches with Cesaro, as well as bringing a lot of
attention to the show with the feud.
Of course, current
NXT Champion Bo Dallas had something to say about this and headed on
down to the ring himself. I know it's fashionable amongst wrestling
fans to be negative about Bo Dallas for a number of reasons, but his
heel promos actually quite good. Yes, he probably get's under a lot
of peoples skins, but he is supposed to, he is a heel. When he's
coming out saying people don't care about Zayn because he lost and
they want to watch a winner like him, you can just feel the internet
getting ready to reach for it's collective pen of rage and that's
great. WWE is really learning how to play the internet correctly,
which is something they've struggled to do for years with Daniel
Bryan's feud with The McMahon Family on Raw being the most obvious
example of that. With Dallas stealing from The Simpsons (Are you
saying Boo, or Boo-urns?), the pair were interrupted by Zeb Colter.
After some nice back and forth between Colter and Zayn, Colter's Real
American stablemate Jack Swagger attack Zayn from behind, before
hitting a Gutwrench Powerbomb. I'd expect a short feud between
Swagger and Zayn, just to allow a little extra time for the Dallas
and Zayn feud to truly build to a satisfying conclusion.
After Emma had
given a decent interview to Renee Young, she went on to face rival
Summer Rae. After both women had had great matches with Paige on NXT
in the past, I expected at least a decent match here. Unfortunately,
that wasn't what we got and the match felt like your average women's
match you might see on Raw or Smackdown. Whilst both played their
roles well, the bout was pretty sloppy, with a number of notable
botches, including a strange moment with Rae trying to set Emma up in
the ropes, only for Emma to fall off them. Emma went on to pick up
the victory via submission with the Emma-Lock. It wasn't a terrible
finish, but it would have been better to see the submission brought
into the match earlier on to really build to that finish. After the
match, Rae attacked Emma once again from behind, before throwing
“bubble solution” in her eyes, signalling that this feud might
not be over yet. However, backstage in a conversation with Sascha
Banks, Rae signalled that she was done with NXT, whilst also sowing
the seeds for a Sascha Banks heel turn in a nice little scene.
After a backstage
disagreement, a match was made between Sylvester LeFort's protege
Scott Dawson and the charismatic Enzo Amore, who would now appear to
be working as a face. Both LeFort and Amore, who was accompanied by
Colin Cassady, both cut good promos building up the match nicely.
Whilst the match didn't exactly set the world alight, it was a nice
foundation, especially considering Amore's limited wrestling
experience, with Dawson working him over nicely for most of the match
playing a good heel role, until Amore made a comeback with an
impressive head scissors takedown. It was here that Alexander Rusev,
who we saw last week against Dolph Ziggler, attack Cassady, causing
the distraction for Amore, and allowing Dawson to hit what looked
like a version of the Angle Slam to pick up the pinfall victory. It
would seem that Rusev will be joining LeFort's faction, and I think
he will be a nice addition to the group that was screaming out for
more members. I can only speculate that they will begin a build
toward a feud between Rusev and Mason Ryan.
CJ Parker and
Tyler Breeze finally locked it up in the ring, in what was a
disapointing contest. Parker's character is in desperate need of some
more mic time to help bring some flesh to the characters bones, and
Breeze isn't in a much better situation. There's potential in both
characters but without the extra dimension it's hard to get behind or
against either character. The match was focused almost entirely on
Breeze's phone, with the phone playing a big part in the finish.
Breeze used the positioning of the referee to hit Parker with the
phone and pick up the pinfall victory. The ending took too long to
set up, with the referee taking sometime to get into position. I
guess we'll be getting more from this feud in the future, but unless
we start seeing some dimension in the characters and more wrestling
it's going to be difficult to start feeling engaged by either Breeze
or Parker.
Finally...
My final thoughts on this week's NXT.
1. NXT still needs more tag teams.
2. Sami Zayn vs. Bo Dallas should be a red hot feud for NXT.
3. The only thing that would have made Zayn vs. Cesaro better last week? William Regal on commentary.
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