BRM Reviews the 8/19/2020 NXT (TERRIBLE!)

[Big Red Machine]

NORTH AMERICAN CHAMPIONSHIP LADDER MATCH LAST CHANCE QUALIFIER: Ridge Holland vs. Johnny Gargano (w/Candice LeRae)- 5/10
Gargano fell/was dropped on his head in a really scary way but still finished the match. He won dirty after a distraction from Candice and a low blow. I assume this was the intended finish, as why else would Candice be out here. In terms of the way this played out, her presence was a good fortune, as cheating to win does temper the inherent admirability of Gargano continuing the match despite an injury, but also worries me that NXT just doesn’t seem willing to put heels over clean anymore.
Sure, Holland is new and you want to protect him, but if you wanted to protect him, why did you put him in this situation where he would have to lose? I don’t know if the Lumis injury is a work or not so maybe this wasn’t part of the original plan for him and in that case I’m willing to be forgiving, but if not, this is part of a worrying trend where they think they can just protect everyone, but as we’ve seen on the main roster, all that leads to is frustration from a lack of clean finishes in big- or even just medium- matches, and nobody feeling like they’re really getting over (especially on the heel side) because their wins are always tainted.

DAKOTA KAI vs. JESSI KAMEA- 0.5/10
So we’ve got a heel vs. heel match here? Okay.
As someone who has seen Kamea in both NXT and EVOLVE, all of that stuff Beth said about Kamea being “creative” and “adapting her style” came off as total bullsh*t to me.
The match went A LOT longer than it should have and Kamea got in WAY too much offense.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- hated it
Dakota cut a promo on Io which brought Io out and they brawled. Io was winning the brawl until she made the mistake of letting Dakota lead her to where Raquel Gonzalez was laying in wait. Raquel then beat up Io. She took her back to the ring to get Dakota get some shots in, but Io managed to best Dakota again, forcing Gonzalez to step in. This made Dakota look like total sh*t. If she gets her ass kicked every time she goes up against Io and Raquel gets the better of Io every time they face off, then why am I supposed to be interested in Dakota challenging Io for the title?
As bad as that was, there was an even bigger problem in this segment, and that was the message the commentators pushed. Said message was that Dakota had spent weeks talking about how she was going to “to it all by herself” and Raquel had disappeared, but now here is Raquel, helping Dakota again, and Dakota must have been lying all along when she said she was going to “do it all by herself,” and we should be outraged at this.
The problem with this is that the whole premise is flawed. Yeah, lying is bad, but she’s a freakin’ heel! We had no real reason to trust her, so there isn’t really much of a sense of betrayal, and it’s not like she was someone we held in particularly high regard, so there isn’t much room for her to move down on our likability meter.
This feels like a completely manufactured reason for us to be angry at Dakota, not just in terms of why we’re supposed to be upset with her, but also in terms of why she would do it in the first place. What did she gain by doing this? She got the drop on Io in one fight that she had no way of making sure would happen? And the trade-off she was willing to make for this was not having her enforcer on the outside for multiple matches, including a #1 contendership match? That really doesn’t seem worth it to me. This feels like something Dakota did so that fans would have a supposed reason to be angry at her, and anytime you’ve got a character doing something for no reason other than to help accomplish your non-kayfabe goal of building up a match, you’ve failed as a storyteller.

SARAH SCHREIBER INTERVIEWS TEGAN NOX- bad
She’s upset by the things Candice said about her last week, because apparently they’ve been friends for a long time, and she wants to sit down with Candice over wine to repair their friendship. A few things:
1. They need to stop this “my friend turned on me” thing in the women’s division. It feels like the only undercard story they have. We got it with Io and Candice, Dakota and Tegan, and now Tegan and Candice… and that’s just NXT. That’s not counting Alexa and Mickie James, Alexa and Nia Jax, Mandy and Sonya (though at least that rbeak-up had a reason behind it that wasn’t “you decided to attack me”) and the YEARS of teasing it with Sasha and Bayley.
2. Following from #1, this is now the second time someone has done this to Tegan in under a year. There is only so many times this can happen before everyone puts on their snark hats and says- semi-seriously, perhaps- “well maybe you’re the problem, Tegan.” To quote Steven Corino after the second time ROH did an angle where Davey Richards supposedly had a best friend turn on him, “you know what that means: Davey Richards is an awful friend.”
3. And, in this particular case, I do think a chunk of the blame has to fall on Tegan’s shoulders. If I remember correctly, Candice originally got angry at her because she appeared in that promo Keith Lee and Mia Yim did where they mocked the Garganos’ dinner promo. Your friend is in a bad place, and you think it’s a good idea to help people make fun of her? No wonder she’s angry at you, moron!

FINN BALOR PROMO- great
Oh yeah. That’s right. We were supposed to get a match between these two but it never happened because Balor got attacked in the locker room. This was very good build for his match with The Velveteen Dream later.

LEGADO DEL FANTASMA vs. ISAIAH “SWERVE” SCOTT & BREEZANGO- 6.5/10
Fandango was the babyface in peril and got his injured arm worked over. I thought the spot with Scott not realizing that he wasn’t the legal man was a great way to get him a visual pinfall on Escobar without doing any shenanigans with the referee. Whoever thought of that whole spot deserves many kudos. Even more if they use this to start a little feud between Scott and Breeze while they finish up Escobar vs. Maverick before moving back to Scott vs. Escobar.
On the whole, this was good for eight and a half minutes, but it’s the type of match that if I were booking, would have gone fourteen. If you want to be a top-notch wrestling show, you’ve got to make sure you’re putting matches on every week with a chance to really deliver. It gets attention from fans, it builds a reputation, and it gets people over. I can’t imagine that there weren’t five and a half minutes elsewhere on this show that would take better been spent on this match (I’m not even half way through yet, and I’ve already found two of them in that Dakota Kai match).

A #1 contendership match was announced for TakeOver XXX pitting Danny Burch & Oney Lorcan vs. Breezango vs. Ledago Del Fantasma. I’m not really sure what either of those first two teams have done to earn this opportunity.

UNDSIPUTED ERA CALLS OUT PAT MCAFEE & HIS FOOTBALL FRIENDS- FANTASTIC!
Wow. They’re having the crowd boo Undisputed Era REALLY hard. They can’t possibly think anyone would think McAfee is the babyface in this situation, can they?
The seconds went to the outside so that the principals could cut promos on each other. McAfee cut a TREMENDOUS promo on Cole. This rivaled anything Taz or MVP have been doing. Then he threw the mic at Cole’s legs so it bounced out of the ring and Cole couldn’t talk. Amazing!
Cole started moving towards McAfee but security jumped in the way. Cole kicked their asses, while McAfee stood there, looking tough… but just a little scared. When Cole got to McAfee’s corner, the football friends jumped up on the apron, so the rest of UE got into the ring, too, and challenged them to a fight, but they wouldn’t. Cole then got right up to McAfee so that he didn’t need a mic, and calmly told McAfee “this Saturday at TakeOver, I’m gonna make you my bitch.” Then UE’s music played and they left. This was FANTASTIC!

RHEA RIPLEY & SHOTZI BLACKHEART vs. THE ROBERT STONE BRAND (Mercedes Martinez & Aliyah) (w/Robert Stone)- 5/10
The match was fine. Not only did Shotzi pin Aliyah, but Ripley took Mercedes out with a HUGE powerbomb onto the floor, which they played like it knocked Mercedes out cold. That last part shocked me, as it seems like it kills the heat. I guess it could be the set-up for Mercedes t come back and do something even bigger to Rhea before they eventually meet (maybe it even sets up some sort of gimmick match), but I’m quite shocked that we’re not getting a match between these two at TakeOver: XXX, or even as the main event of the fallout show next Wednesday.


They’re pushing this “ThunderDome” thing so hard that they’re not even hyping up Raw as the SummerSlam fallout show. It’s all “come see the ThunderDome!”


KEITH LEE VS. KARRION KROSS VIDEO PACKAGE- awesome, but a little too long


NORTH AMERICAN CHAMPIONSHIP LADDER MATCH LAST CHANCE QUALIFIER: The Velveteen Dream vs. Finn Balor- 4/10
This started off very good, but unfortunately it turned into a perfect example of what not to do.
It’s WWE and therefore we’ve got the ladders set up and we’ve got the belt hanging there. Fine. It’s silly, but that’s what they do. This time, however, instead of being centered over the ring, the belt is by the aisle. This was done so that Cameron Grimes could stroll out in the middle of this match climb the ladder, get the belt, and then sit on the ladder.
There was NO F*CKING REASON FOR HIM TO DO THIS. ABSOLUTELY NONE! And he’s sitting up there yapping away like this obnoxious hillbilly Snidely Whiplash, and as bad as all off that is, it’s made even worse by the fact that you know he’s going to wind up getting involved somehow so we’re not going to get a clean finish. At that point I just can’t get into the match because I’ve got this asshole sitting on top of this ladder like the Sword of Damocles but worse because at least the Sword of Damocles had the courtesy to shut the f*ck up.
He eventually winds up distracting both guys at various points. Eventually Johnny Gargano decides to come out, too. I would have said that Johnny came out for “no reason,” but he did at least try to hurt Grimes by tipping the ladder over. Unfortunately, he decided to lip the ladder over into the ring instead of going the other way where Grimes would have fell even further, and down to the floor or ramp, so he’s an idiot, too. And, of course, when he falls, Grimes takes out the referee.
Gargano picks up the belt and starts f*cking admiring it. Bronson Reed comes out also for no reason to chase Gargano. Gargano winds up in the ring and I guess Damian Priest must have come out while I was looking up at the heavens and screaming in anger, because he was right behind Gargano. We get the comical Gargano feeling around behind him and getting scared, followed by a bunch of pointless fighting over the belt that belongs to no one and winding up with it at the end won’t matter one bit.
Stuff happened. Timothy Thatcher came out and attacked Balor because why not. Dream hit the diving elbow and won. More fighting over the belt happened. F*ck this show.

This was one of the most infuriating things I’ve seen in a wrestling ring all year. Whoever came up with this should be flogged, and so should everyone above him or her on the chain of command who failed to nix it.
I said that Bronson Reed came out for no reason, but the reality is that by the time Reed came out, it was quite clear why he was coming out, and “no reason” would have been preferable. By the time Reed came out, it felt like these guys were coming out specifically for the purpose of having all of them in the same spot in the main event segment of the go-home show so they could do a thing that plugged their match. I said it in the NXT Women’s Title match hype segment and it still stands here: Anytime you’ve got a character doing something for no reason other than to help accomplish your non-kayfabe goal of building up a match, you’ve failed as a storyteller.
On it’s own, that would piss me off, but here it’s even worse because just having these guys fight is a very poor way to hype up this match. This is a ladder match for a championship. See them just fighting isn’t the draw. The draw is seeing them hit each other with, fall off of, and do cool stuff with ladders, and hopefully they remember to tell a story, and the draw is seeing who wins the championship. Each guy trying to be the one to hold the physical belt doesn’t mean sh*t because they’re just going to have to give it back before the match. To hype this match up, you should show us clips of past ladder matches, and have the wrestlers cut promos telling us what winning the championship would mean to them. It’s not that f*cking hard!
But no. We had to get this. A frustrating hackneyed cliché that was not only completely pointless, but also robbed us of yet another clean finish in a highly anticipated match. Sure, you weren’t going to have a clean finish anyway because of Thatcher, but why is that? I don’t know about you, but Finn Balor sure as f*ck doesn’t come off as a babyface to me, so why do we need to heel Thatcher up against him? Why can’t Balor just lose clean and then Thatcher can come out and challenge him to a match? Yeah, this give you a little bit of heat, but not enough to justify yet another f*ck finish.
Also, as someone who LOVES Timothy Thatcher, I REALLY don’t want to see him wrestle Finn Balor right now, because Balor seems to always beat the guy on his way up, even though Balor gains nothing from it. It happened to Priest, it happened to Grimes, and now I’m worried that it’s about to happen to Thatcher, too. Between this and the pointless insider references, I’m getting the feeling that they’re having Balor beat guys like this when he probably should but at least one of them over and super-protecting him in an attempt to make him this sort of meta-heel who people get angry at like 2000-2003 Hunter, and if that’s what they’re actually doing, it’s a really f*cking stupid idea. You’d think they would have learned from the years-long Brock Lesnar fiasco that that doesn’t do sh*t for anyone, but apparently not.


This was a BAD show from NXT. Really bad. As a go-home show it did almost nothing to get me interested in TakeOver, and just as a general wrestling show it wasn’t good. When the “we’re trying to get attention by using this d-list celebrity” guy is in the best segment on the show by miles, you’ve got some problems. Hopefully after TakeOver this promotion will feel like it has some actual direction again.

[Serujuunin]

Am I the only person who is getting fed up with Finn using all this insider terminology and stuff? It was fun the first time but it's long since run its course.

[Big Red Machine]

Am I the only person who is getting fed up with Finn using all this insider terminology and stuff? It was fun the first time but it's long since run its course.

You are not.

I don't mind those words being worked into a promo if there is a kayfabe way that they also make sense, but that's not the case with Balor.

[Serujuunin]

Am I the only person who is getting fed up with Finn using all this insider terminology and stuff? It was fun the first time but it's long since run its course.

You are not.

I don't mind those words being worked into a promo if there is a kayfabe way that they also make sense, but that's not the case with Balor.

I feel like it’s a desperate ploy to be edgy and cool, when that’s totally not the vibe I’m getting.

[Big Red Machine]

Am I the only person who is getting fed up with Finn using all this insider terminology and stuff? It was fun the first time but it's long since run its course.

You are not.

I don't mind those words being worked into a promo if there is a kayfabe way that they also make sense, but that's not the case with Balor.

I feel like it’s a desperate ploy to be edgy and cool

That sounds accurate.