Everything
Mason Rook vs. Grayson Waller didn’t happen this week. The official on-air reason said Mason wasn’t medically cleared to compete. That’s tough because Mason put himself in prime position to either knock off the champ or truly etch his name in the main event scene. Here’s hoping whatever is going on with him isn’t too serious and that he’ll make a speedy return.
With that out of the way, back to our regularly scheduled recap.
NXT continues to
perplex me. It’s a profoundly frustrating show because there are some bright spots. Take this week’s main event. EK Prosper stepped in for Mason Rook and delivered like an 80-lb. baby. I can see why cats like Shawn Michaels are high on him. He moves so crisply in the ring and handles every style well. The Moonsault he hit on Grayson outside of the ring on top of the announce table was gorgeous. I actually said “wow” loud enough to wake my neighbors.
The match construction made Grayson work for it. This wasn’t the cakewalk first title defense he assumed. It took two rolling stunners to put down the kid, which is one more than Grayson figured. He didn’t win this match so much as he escaped. I don’t know what they had in mind for Mason vs. Grayson, but this was a very fine substitute. As long as EK keeps delivering in big spots, this won’t be his last title shot.
Now on to the frustration. This Open Challenge was a literal foot race to the ring. It’s as if GM Stone imitated Gary Oldman from The Professionalfor kicks. This isn’t the first time NXT’s done this and I understand why. Shawn loves booking the Orlando territory as a place of chaos where anything can happen. It’s all about forward movement. Sometimes that desire for propulsion leads to the show looking more like a Looney Tunes imitation. A bunch of guys running to the ring, with at least one of them falling for “your shoes are untied” looks silly. I give them props for trying stuff; I always do. But there are often so many different things they’re trying that the show never establishes an identity.
What is NXT now? Is it the hardcore wrestling show it was in the Black and Gold days? Does it lean more to the “entertainment” side of the sports entertainment equation? It seems like it wants to be a hybrid but there’s a saying about trying to please everyone. The point of all these brands within WWE should be to produce different television shows. While Raw and SmackDown will probably always remain somewhat similar for obvious reasons, NXT should be more than a Temu version of those shows.
It’s neither fish nor fowl, which makes it a hard show to recap and, at times, an even harder show to understand. It’s still missing some of the firepower from just a few months ago let alone a few years ago. While they rebuild their deck, it might behoove Chef Shawn to lean into something he knows the roster can do well instead of asking them to do everything. The NXT 2.0 era doesn’t get the love from the faithful as the one that preceded it, but the direction was obvious: Attitude Era through an NXT lens. I don’t know if that worked for everyone and it didn’t always work for me, but I understood it and knew the barometer on which to gauge the show.
Becoming something different every week is the epitome of mixed messaging. That’s even worse when trying to establish stars to carry the brand.
B-Sides
- Thea Hail vs. Zaria? Not bad. The North American Championship match effectively established Thea as a credible threat and someone who might capture that title again one day. But one day is not today. I liked the match opening with Thea not hesitating on the Kimura Lock attempt only for Zaria to tell her “girl, please.” Her mouth didn’t say that but her actions did. It showed that Thea needed an actual strategy for this one while forcing her to immediately regroup. The match almost finished on that Kimura but she Zaria never let her completely lock in, thus the submission never came. It was academic at that point as Zaria found her second wind with a busted arm, and finished off Thea with the F5. Very hard-fought win for the champ that made the challenger look good in defeat.
- Bad night for BirthRight. They get upset in the Dusty Cup Tourney then Zilla Fatu manhandles each of them. The attempts to make this team a serious threat are always one step forward, 50 steps back. I know this was about positioning Zilla Grayson’s open challenge, but did he have to destroy everyone in the crew? It’s rare when the numbers game doesn’t work. And usually when it doesn’t it’s because the lone wrestler has an equalizer to repel people. A chair, a bat, a Red Sox jersey; something that keeps sane people at bay. This man went in there with nothing but his fists after Mini Vikingo & Starboy sent them home early. Call me crazy, but I don’t think this BirthRight thing is working.
- Guess what we’re getting next week? No, Halloween isn’t coming early. Instead, it’s a 20-woman Battle Royal to earn a shot at Kelani Jordan’s championship. As she said, she’s the standout not the handout; she didn’t believe there was anyone worthy of a championship match, but GM Stone set up a match featuring women from Raw, SmackDown, NXT, Evolve, AAA, and TNA. That’s right, party people, the TNA partnership isn’t dead! It might be a zombie at this point but that still counts for something. So long as no one shoots or stabs it in the head, WWE’s transfer portal is still alive.
- Back to the Dusty Cup, Fraxiom advanced over DarkState, another team in dire need of rehabilitation. This was a slower match than I’m used to for Nathan Frazer & Axiom, but that obviously leaned to DarkState’s strengths.
- We got more insight into Cruz Montana this week following everything that went down between him and Dion Lennox last week. He reclaimed the narrative about his mother’s past and dug into more of his family’s past. I dug it. It was simple and effective in telling me more about the man and what drives him. While rags to riches stories can certainly come off as cliche, he sells it because it’s real. I don’t know if this endears him more with the NXT faithful, but it worked for me.
- Myles Borne cut an effective heel promo. While he had some heat for Tavion Heights, he saved most of it for the fans. He never believed their love for them. He saw it was fans pitying him rather than rooting for him. He became a cause for Social Justice Warriors. Appreciated him shouting out Ethan Page because that makes this a long time coming rather than something sudden. For those who came in late, All Ego constantly pushed Myles to the dark side by telling him “truths” about the industry. It took a while but Myles finally came to believe those truths himself. The key to any turn, be it heel or face, is believability. I believed his motivation and his conviction. I’m sold on the destination despite not liking the journey.
- Kendal Grey is at a crossroads. I hope something fruitful comes from these therapy sessions. By that, I mean a reinvention for her character. She’s trying to establish a personality beyond someone who works extremely hard at wrestling. The therapy session revealed she has no hobbies, no friends, and no relationships. Which is funny considering Wren Sinclair is supposed to be her best friend. It’s even funnier since that same best friend is suspended because she wanted to avenge Kendal’s loss. But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good story?
- I always appreciate Vic Joseph’s Hip Hop references. He casually threw in lines from “Forgot About Dre” during the main event. I salute you, sir.
NXT in its current form has a ceiling. That ceiling always leaves me wanting and never satisfied. There were several nice matchups this week and an awesome main event. The problem is consistency; focusing on enough of the strengths to truly make me care about those characters. As a developmental territory, there are tons of people to get on TV and they only have but so many hours in the week. I’m very sympathetic to that. But they’re serving no one by trying to serve everyone, and that includes the wrestlers.
What say you, Cagesiders?
