BRM Reviews the 10/14/2015 NXT

[Big Red Machine]

BAYLEY PROMO- she said the phrase “Divas Revolution,” which made me cry. I was hoping NXT was above this sort of heavy-handed obnoxiousness.
Alexa Bliss!, Blake, and Murphy show up and Alexa is a total babyface. She raises Bayley’s hand… and then snatches the belt away from her. Bayley starts to give chase but Blake and Murphy step up… so Bayley the ultra-babyface… just gives up and stands there while Alexa cuts her (very good) promo. I thought this made Bayley look terrible. She looked exactly as pathetic as Alexa told us she was. It would have been a lot better to have her try to charge through Blake and Murphy and have them catch her and restrain her while Alexa cut her promo, taunting Bayley and shoving the title belt in her face.

JOE BALOR & REGAL- bad. Joe says that he is undefeated and wants a title shot. Balor says okay. Then Regal shows up and says “While that may be true, instead, we’re going to have a Battle Royale with everyone in it for #1 contendership.” So right there, they just made EVERY MATCH JOE HAS HAD IN NXT MEAN ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

BATTLE ROYALE PROMOS- Crews was good. Dillinger is insufferable, Rhino was okay.

VAUDEVILLANS vs. ANGELO DAWKINS & SAWYER FULTON- 3/10
Did anyone even notice that the tag champs weren’t even on the Takeover special? I sure didn’t.

DEVIN TAYLOR INTERVIEWS SCOTT DAWSON & DASH WILDER- decent.

NIA JAX VIDEO PACKAGE- STOP WITH THE F*CKING VIDEO PACKAGES AND JUST DEBUT ALREADY! They’ve played these damn things for so long that if she is anything worse than “great” in the ring, it will feel like all of my time has been wasted.

ASUKA IS WEIRD BACKSTAGE WITH DANA AND EMMA- Weird.
Also, Dana is suffering from memory loss. This was played for a joke even though it seems like a sign of a concussion.

NIA JAX vs. EVIE- 0.5/10
The match was fine for what it was, but that wasn’t much.
Nia Jax is a large Samoan woman. They did a short version of a big person vs. small person match you’ve seen a million times before. They also did some hair-pulling spots that made Jax come across like a bully. She wasn’t impressive in any way.

WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH VIDEO PACKAGE- more talk of the “Divas Revolution” in NXT. Maybe it’s just my preconceived notions of her, but while Charlotte, Becky, and Hunter came off as real, Steph came off as completely full of sh*t.

BATTLE ROYALE PROMOS- Breeze and Corbin were both meh.

EVA MARIE IN PARIS- good heel stuff. At least I hope it was supposed to be heel stuff. If they think this is going to get her over as a babyface, they’re insane.

NXT TITLE #1 CONTENDERSHIP BATTLE ROYALE- 6.75/10
Very good as far as battle royales go. Important notes include Corbin double-crossing Rhyno and Breeze getting involved after he was already eliminated to eliminate Joe as revenge.
I was ready to get extremely pissed if Joe didn’t win, but the more I think about it, the more I like it. Let Finn get this challenge out of the way while Joe kills Breeze and gets built up for the Takeover special. That being said, I really didn’t like Crews winning. It seems WAY too fast. I assume Balor isn’t losing the belt, so what they are doing is essentially bringing him, beating him right away, and then let him flounder in NXT for a while except that building up to his next title shot won’t feel as important.
I think Corbin would have been a great choice here. It gives him the chance to prove that he can have a good one-on-one match with a top guy, it’s something he hasn’t done yet, and it opens up a whole bunch of interesting booking possibilities:
- You can have him lose clean to Finn and go on to do Finn vs. Joe and Corbin vs. Rhyno at Takeover.
- You can have Rhyno screw him out of the title match and build to Finn vs. Rhyno vs. Corbin at Takeover and extend Joe vs. Breeze until Takever.
- You can have Rhyno screw him out of the title match and build to Finn vs. Rhyno vs. Corbin vs. Joe at Takeover and have Finn retain by pinning someone who isn’t Joe to then build up to a singles match between those two at the next Takeover special.

A decent show from NXT, but it did a good job of setting direction, which was the important thing for the first post-Takeover show.

[cero2k]

BATTLE ROYALE PROMOS- Crews was good. Dillinger is insufferable, Rhino was okay.
i'm completely the other way around, Crews was terrible, Dillinger ok, and Rhino good

NIA JAX vs. EVIE- 0.5/10
The match was fine for what it was, but that wasn’t much.
Nia Jax is a large Samoan woman. They did a short version of a big person vs. small person match you’ve seen a million times before. They also did some hair-pulling spots that made Jax come across like a bully. She wasn’t impressive in any way.
i found it dumb to debut her against a smaller, fitter, prettier (IMO), better wrestler. I'm sure most of us left the show wanting more Evie than Nia Jax