BRM Reviews the 7/29/2020 NXT

[Big Red Machine]

DAKOTA KAI & CANDICE LERAE vs. IO SHIRAI & TEGAN NOX- 6.5/10
Io came out and first and was attacked from behind during her entrance by Dakota. The others then ran out, jump-starting the match. This was a good tag team match. Dakota abandoned Candice. Io pinned Candice.


ADAM COLE/PAT MCAFEE RECAP- GREAT!
I think this is the beginning of a babyface turn for Cole.

Due to bickering on social media after both losing last week’s three-way, Regal has signed…

RODERICK STRONG vs. JOHNNY GARGANO- 7.25/10
Gargano wins clean in an excellent match for the time it got.

MCKENZIE MITCHELL INTERVIEWS DAKOTA KAI- fine
She asks Dakota why she walked out on her tag partner earlier. Dakota responds that she’s “not a team player anymore.” I have a feeling that quote might come back to bite her with Raquel Gonzalez.
She further says that she’s done jumping through hoops for a title shot; she is now demanding one. Rhea Ripley shows up and says that she, not Dakota, should be the #1 contender. I assume a match with come soon, and that worries me. Rhea is clearly the choice for the big TakeOver XXX spot and it’d be great to get her rematch out of the way so that Io can move on to others, but at the same time, Dakota is doing so well right now that having her lose to Rhea would make her feel like she’s stuck in that second-highest tier (along with Tegan, Candice, and maybe Mia Yim), while Rhea and Io are the “real stars” in a Cena and Orton vs. Bryan/Ziggler/Del Rio type of dynamic that we got in the early 2010s in WWE (I guess Punk and Sheamus kind of screw up my comparison a bit, but you get what I’m saying).

NXT AIRS A VERY DESPERATE-LOOKING VIDEO PACKAGE FULL OF MEDIA QUOTES CALLING THEM THE BEST PRO WRESTLING SHOW ON TELEVISION- I don’t think this is a false statement, but I do think it comes off as very desperate.
(The “watch NXT at 8pm on Wednesday on USA” ending makes it possible that this was a commercial created by the network, but airing a commercial for NXT during NXT is kind of silly, so I think it’s more likely that either WWE made this themselves and are trying to disguise it, or that they asked for that network spot to air as a bumper. I know that’s a little more conspiratorial than I usually get, but it just struck me as so weird that I felt it needed to be commented on).

MCKENZIE MITCHELL INTERVIEWS TIMOTHY THATCHER- fine
Thatcher cut a fine promo hyping up the main event. He actually came off like a babyface here to me. He’s just so earnest.
Dexter Lumis appeared in the background, over Thatcher’s shoulder.

UNDISPUTED ERA HAS A MEETING BACKSTAGE- good
Kyle gives the other three a pep talk and tells them that he’s tired of the excuses. This was a good segment, but it was an extremely rare example of an NXT segment where we have no explanation for why the camera is there. You’ve got to stay consistent.

SHOTZI BLACKHEART vs. MERCEDES MARTINEZ (w/Robert Stone & Aliyah)- 4/10
“F*CK HER UP MERCEDES, F*CK HER UP!” *clap! clap!*
That’s me right now, not the crowd… though I can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t feel the same way.
They gave Shotzi enough offense to seem like a credible undercard wrestler, but Mercedes dominated this little twerp, as she should. As if destroying Shotzi wasn’t enough to make her a favorite of mine, she also used one of my favorite underused moves in all of wrestling, the Spider Suplex!

RDIGE HOLLAND VIDEO PACKAGE- decent
He debuts next week, so I guess they got him over here from the UK. I wonder what that says about the possibilities of others coming over, too.

KEITH LEE PROMO/NXT TITLE SEGMENT- averages out to being pretty good
Doing it in the Cole thing with McAfee and airing that was one thing because that was a worked shoot. Lee getting to say a bleeped-out word here feels like an attempt to be edgier in response to AEW being allowed to use the words. The fact that they saved it for a special situation makes me think that maybe it isn’t, but both this promo and the Cole thing airing on the same show has to make me consider the possibility that it is.
Lee’s promo was very good. I HATED Grimes being the guy to come out and be the goof who gets beaten up. He’s too good for that and pushed too hard for that. Scarlett coming out as the silent harbinger of Kross’ promo is feeling more effective for me as time goes on and get to know the act. Kross’ promo from the Tron was excellent. He wants title shot or else “everyone will suffer.” Lee told him to name the time and place. And then Scarlett left. They really have done a great job incorporating the idea of a flair for the dramatic into the Kross/Scarlett act, which allows something like that to feel more… well… “organic” might not be exactly the right word, because it is forced drama, but it’s drama being forced by the character rather than by the needs of the story.

EVER-RISE vs. IMPERIUM (Marcel Barthel & Fabian Aichner)- squash
Ever-Rise have apparently had off-screen character development, which is the worst kind. If they’ve had a revelation that they need to change their attitude, SHOW US THAT/LET US HEAR IT FROM THEIR OWN MOUTHS! “Show; don’t tell.”
Yeah… I’m also not buying that Ever-Rise have potential. They got squashed here.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- decent
Barthel’s attempt at a post-match promo is interrupted by Undisputed Era coming out and assaulting them. So much for what I said about Cole turning babyface. It’s also going to be hard to take Imperium as babyfaces right now, though, so we could be headed for a heel vs. heel match at the PPV.

BRONSON REED VIDEO PACKAGE- very good

FINN BALOR WARMS UP AND GRABS HIS JACKET- Dexter Lumis is in the background. These aren’t doing anything for me.

WILLIAM REGAL RESPONDS TO THE EARLIER SEGMENT BETWEEN KARRION KROSS AND KEITH LEE- I’m fine with that he said about not being “bullied” into given title shots that haven’t been earned in principal, but I don’t think Kross is necessarily unworthy. He’s undefeated and aside from his squashes and the win over Bronson Reed, he has had two big wins including a huge one over Ciampa, and has been pretty dominant in all of his matches. I think he’s certainly more qualified than Brodie Lee was when he got his AEW World Title shot, and there weren’t too many complaints about Brodie’s worthiness other than that it crapped on AEW’s system of records (the other objections to it were that it was too soon for Brodie to lose and too soon for Moxley to lose the belt). My hope is that this statement will wind up somehow tying into Undisputed Era’s actions earlier, too (and arguably even Rhea Ripley’s recent attitude) so hopefully it will be more than just a statement to put off announcing this title shot for another week or two, but the mere fact that neither was mentioned here probably means I shouldn’t get my hopes up.

ISAIAH “SWERVE” SCOTT vs. JAKE ATLAS- 6/10
Mauro said that Swerve has said that he uses the fact that he is a “girl-dad” to motivate him. I’m not always the most up on all of the woke lingo, so does mean that Scott has a daughter, or does it mean that Scott both as a child and is trans?
Mauro said that Beth knew someone else who is a “girl-dad,” but if it’s the former, I can confirm that she knows a lot more than one (and, in fact, it’d be so common Beth knowing one wouldn’t even be worthy of comment) so I guess it’s got to be the latter then. Congrats for coming out, Swerve.
Atlas got to cut an in-set promo during his entrance. I liked that he told us that he hadn’t been medically cleared so as to explain why he hasn’t been wrestling recently despite having had the great showing he talked about against Escobar.
The match itself was tremendous for the time it got, which was, unfortunately, just 6:24. Why can’t these guys get more time?

MCKENZIE MITCHELL INTERVIEWS DAMIAN PRIEST- good
His qualifier next week is against Danny Burch and the debuting Ridge Holland. Seeds were sown for a potential match between him and Bronson Reed as well, with Priest insisting that next week, the favorite will win, not the underdog like what happened when Reed won. Once Priest drops these horribly forced catchphrases, he’ll be someone they can really push.

A RUN-DOWN OF NEXT WEEK’S CARD- Yeah, okay. You can erase all of my optimism about Regal’s statement maybe being something more than a stalling tactic. It now goes to actively bad, as in addition to the above-mentioned qualifier and the predicted Rhea vs. Dakota Kai #1 contendership match, Imperium are defending the tag titles against Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly of Undisputed Era. You can split hairs and say that we have no evidence that Regal was bulled into this, but the way I see it, there are two possibilities for what happened here:
1. Aichner & Barthel told Regal they wanted to defend their titles against UE to get revenge for what happened earlier tonight… which would essentially be the same situation as with Lee and Kross, in which case Regal would be applying different standards for too situations who differences do not seem to be big enough to warrant different treatments.
OR
2. Regal has decided to give UE a tag title match without anyone coming to him about it, which would be bad because I don’t recall them having done anything to earn one, and their storyline has been that they are on a losing streak (and even went back and checked to make sure that the specific combination of Fish & O’Reilly had gotten a rematch since losing the titles to Riddle & Dunne, and they actually did get one on the March 11, 2020 NXT)




NXT NORTH AMERICAN TITLE LADDER MATCH QUALIFIER: Timothy Thatcher vs. Finn Balor vs. Dexter Lumis)- 7.25/10
I was a little disappointed in this one, as I thought the radically different styles would lead to something interesting, but instead it wound up being a generic main event style. Lumis choked Thatcher out while Thatcher had Balor in an ankle lock. The way they set it up was very clever, but I’m getting worried that their falling too much in love with the idea of Lumis entering the frame in an unexpected and creepy manner, to the point that 1) they forget that “creepy guy who comes into the screen in a creepy way” isn’t actually a character, and 2) they push him more than they should because they like doing that in big spots (like we saw in his interferences in the Adam Cole vs. Velveteen Dream feud.


This was a pretty good episode of NXT, though I think it would have been much better if they had found a way to get an extra two or three minutes to the main event, Roddy vs. Gargano, and Scott vs. Atlas. Maybe cut two minutes off of the opener, cut the Trevor Lee bit, and instead of having Imeprium squash Ever-Rise, just have them come out and start to cut a promo about being the most dominant tag team in NXT and be quickly interrupted by Undisputed Era’s beat-down.

[Serujuunin]

I think Ridge has been in the States for a while now. I’ve seen him in the crowd at the PC for shows a bunch.

[Big Red Machine]

I think Ridge has been in the States for a while now. I’ve seen him in the crowd at the PC for shows a bunch.

Oh. I don't know if I could have even picked him out of a crowd.

Is there anyone else from NXT UK that you've noticed?

[Serujuunin]

I think Ridge has been in the States for a while now. I’ve seen him in the crowd at the PC for shows a bunch.

Oh. I don't know if I could have even picked him out of a crowd.

Is there anyone else from NXT UK that you've noticed?

Just him, and it was hard to notice at first because he had a mask on, but it's fairly easy to spot a jacked guy wearing that hat lol