BRM Reviews the 3/22/2017 NXT (great)

[Big Red Machine]

ONEY LORCAN vs. ANDRADE “CIEN” ALMAS- 7.5/10
And just like that, with one completely clean wrestling match, we’ve now elevated two guys to the point where they actually feel like relevant players.

DIY PROMO- I didn’t like it. There was something about it that was a bit too cartoonish. Like they were being possessed by 3.0 while they were cutting it.

RECAP OF BILLIE KAY BEING KNOCKED OUT BY THE ECLIPSE- they did this and one or two other things to really put that move over big.

ASUKA vs. PRISCILLA ZUNIGA- AWESOME squash.
Before the match Asuka grabbed a mic and said “Ember Moon: this is your fate.” (well… actually she said “hate” instead of “fate” but English isn’t her first language). Then she utterly DESTROYED her opponent. Then she cut a promo on Ember in Japanese before switching over to English to say “No Eclipse.”

REVIVAL PROMO- awesome.

ROODE-NAKAMURA VIDEO PACKAGE- AWESOME!

KAYLA INTERVIEWS RODERICK STRONG, TYE DILLINGER, & NO WAY JOSE- good

HEAVY MACHINERY VIDEO PACKAGE- good.

KASSIUS OHNO’S INTERVIEW IS INTERRUPTED BY THE F*CKING DRIFTER- I was hoping Ohno would just knock The Drifter out, but what we got was even better: it’s going to be Ohno vs. Drifter… in a Loser Leaves NXT match!

ANDRADE CIEN ALMAS PROMO- fine.
He’s taking on Aleister Black at Takeover: Orlando.

RODERICK STRONG, NO WAY JOSE, & TYE DILLINGER vs. SAnitY (w/Nikki Cross)- 5.5/10
We go to a DQ for the match turning into a schmoz. Heidi Lovelace shows up to even things up for the babyfaces, who now have someone who will actually be allowed to hit Nikki Storm.

A great episode of NXT.

[KILLdozer]

I'm really not excited in any way for this Aleister Black character. I mean he just seems like "Bray Wyatt meets Random MMA fighter gimmick'

Plus, I've had way more than enough dark guy type of character's.

[cero2k]

I'm really not excited in any way for this Aleister Black character. I mean he just seems like "Bray Wyatt meets Random MMA fighter gimmick'

Plus, I've had way more than enough dark guy type of character's.

just wondering, have you ever seen any Tommy End or Sumerian Death Squad matches?

[KILLdozer]

I'm really not excited in any way for this Aleister Black character. I mean he just seems like "Bray Wyatt meets Random MMA fighter gimmick'

Plus, I've had way more than enough dark guy type of character's.

just wondering, have you ever seen any Tommy End or Sumerian Death Squad matches?

Never​ ever. So I'm not sure what to expect really, so I'm just going off of what they've shown. Which with that knowledge, isn't much to give a crap about lol.

[XIV]

You look at NXT. You look at what it produces, the match qualities (whether they're two or twelve minutes) and you just realise... it's high time the creative forces here oversaw WWE as a whole. The character booking is much better.

[cero2k]

You look at NXT. You look at what it produces, the match qualities (whether they're two or twelve minutes) and you just realise... it's high time the creative forces here oversaw WWE as a whole. The character booking is much better.

why do you think Smackdown since the draft and NXT got kinda lame? they took the old NXT booker and gave him Smackdown

[Big Red Machine]

You look at NXT. You look at what it produces, the match qualities (whether they're two or twelve minutes) and you just realise... it's high time the creative forces here oversaw WWE as a whole. The character booking is much better.

why do you think Smackdown since the draft and NXT got kinda lame? they took the old NXT booker and gave him Smackdown

NXT's problem has been talent drain. And Smackdown was terrible for months. It's not until, like (asd very late December that it got good (aside from the Cena-AJ stuff and Dolph vs. Miz stuff, which was always great).

[cero2k]

NXT's problem has been talent drain. And Smackdown was terrible for months. It's not until, like (asd very late December that it got good (aside from the Cena-AJ stuff and Dolph vs. Miz stuff, which was always great).

it's been almost half a year since the talent drain (that included many non-talented wrestlers), and because WWE raids, NXT now has as much talent as ever, but the show is still boring and he booking really underwhelming, look at Nakamura, or Roddy, or Andrade, they're just guys from the bunch, the aura of greatness is gone. Good booking by now would have built all those new guys up to cover for missing Balor and Joe? who else is missed? maybe American Alpha, but DIY already covered that spot

obviously Smackdown wasn't going to be good from one day to another, but it has improved tons from what we had before

[Big Red Machine]

NXT's problem has been talent drain. And Smackdown was terrible for months. It's not until, like (asd very late December that it got good (aside from the Cena-AJ stuff and Dolph vs. Miz stuff, which was always great).

it's been almost half a year since the talent drain (that included many non-talented wrestlers), and because WWE raids, NXT now has as much talent as ever, but the show is still boring and he booking really underwhelming, look at Nakamura, or Roddy, or Andrade, they're just guys from the bunch, the aura of greatness is gone. Good booking by now would have built all those new guys up to cover for missing Balor and Joe? who else is missed? maybe American Alpha, but DIY already covered that spot

]

In six months they lost:
The tag division had the easiest road to recovery because of 1) the built-in mechanism of the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic and 2) the fact that they only lost American Alpha and Enzo & Cass (oh, and the Vaudevillains, who I literally forgot existed until this very moment).
The other divisions- especially the women's division- didn't just lose their top stars, they also lost the guys and gals who were at that level where they could have been pushed to quickly replace the top stars when they were called up. It wasn't just losing Zayn, Balor, Bayley, Charlotte, Emma, and Sasha. It was that in that same one year period they also lost Corbin, Swann, Crews, Aries, Dana Brooke, Alexa Bliss!, and Nia Jax. They took almost everyone who could believably step into a the spots the top guys and gals had to vacate. And while WWE has been doing quite a bit of raiding, most of that raiding hasn't been NXT-focused. It's been Cruiserweights (i.e. everyone from Evolve, plus Kendrick and overseas guys), plus some recent focus on women, of which Heidi is the first one to show up on TV. The only guys I can think of who weren't Cruiserweights who they signed were Roode, EY, Damo, Roddy, Andrade, Nikki Cross, Tommy End, Andrea, and Hero, who are all on TV now aside from Andrea. Yes, Almas has been booked poorly but they're now finding a role for him. Aside from him, I'm not really sure what people were expecting. NXT is, after all, a developmental territory. You could definitely argue that the fact that they were doing their best to save Ember Moon vs. Asuka for WM weekend has hurt the women's division, but you can't really blame them too much for that when you're asking them to be a promotion that has to sell tickets in big buildings.

obviously Smackdown wasn't going to be good from one day to another, but it has improved tons from what we had before

But it took a lot longer than it should have. The problem with Smackdown wasn't that it was "booked poorly" as in there were no stars and things didn't make sense. The problem with SD was that it was booked poorly in relation to Raw- it was booked in such a way that watching Raw (either the preceding Raw or the following one) would make watching Smackdown either unimportant or redundant. It would essentially turn it into a waste of your time. This isn't one of those problems where it will take months to turn things around because they didn't have stars and/or needed to repair their reputation. The draft insured that they would have the stars and that the reputation would be repaired because the concept necessitated that the show be different from Raw. They had, like, two months to figure out what they were going to do on Smackdown, and aside from Dolph vs. Miz and the World Title picture, they had NOTHING other than the dumb Heath Slater story. Other than that it was Randy vs. Bray, the women's division, and the tag team division all completely spinning their wheels for MONTHS. Corbin vs. Kalisto can be added to that list, too, in the weeks they actually decided to feature it rather than running idiotic Curt Hawkins promos.
Oh. And then they did the Ellsworth thing, which also sucked. And now we've got this Ziggler, Ambrose, and Kalisto clusterf*ck.

Smackdown could have- hell, should have- been great right away, but typical lazy WWE booking prevented that from happening.

[cero2k]

In six months they lost:
The tag division had the easiest road to recovery because of 1) the built-in mechanism of the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic and 2) the fact that they only lost American Alpha and Enzo & Cass (oh, and the Vaudevillains, who I literally forgot existed until this very moment).
The other divisions- especially the women's division- didn't just lose their top stars, they also lost the guys and gals who were at that level where they could have been pushed to quickly replace the top stars when they were called up. It wasn't just losing Zayn, Balor, Bayley, Charlotte, Emma, and Sasha. It was that in that same one year period they also lost Corbin, Swann, Crews, Aries, Dana Brooke, Alexa Bliss!, and Nia Jax. They took almost everyone who could believably step into a the spots the top guys and gals had to vacate. And while WWE has been doing quite a bit of raiding, most of that raiding hasn't been NXT-focused. It's been Cruiserweights (i.e. everyone from Evolve, plus Kendrick and overseas guys), plus some recent focus on women, of which Heidi is the first one to show up on TV. The only guys I can think of who weren't Cruiserweights who they signed were Roode, EY, Damo, Roddy, Andrade, Nikki Cross, Tommy End, Andrea, and Hero, who are all on TV now aside from Andrea. Yes, Almas has been booked poorly but they're now finding a role for him. Aside from him, I'm not really sure what people were expecting. NXT is, after all, a developmental territory. You could definitely argue that the fact that they were doing their best to save Ember Moon vs. Asuka for WM weekend has hurt the women's division, but you can't really blame them too much for that when you're asking them to be a promotion that has to sell tickets in big buildings.

Zayn, Charlotte, Emma, Sasha all left long time ago, I don't think we can use them to excuse current NXT. Aries and Swann weren't big loses because they were only there for a little bit, they weren't main event scene.

it's not developmental, Hunter made it clear "we're a brand" blah blah. it still sells out big arenas, because of the name and the wrestling is still good, but you compare the upcoming Takeover to last years and it is worlds apart of hype, at this point a Southpaw Regional Wrestling show would sell the same amount of tickets. I'm not gonna disagree that they lost tons of people, but again tag and males main event shouldn't have suffered because they had people there to replace them. But now after WM, what are we getting? They didn't bother to properly build more teams and we're gonna do AOP v DIY again and again?

Women i'll give you because they did take the girls that were going to be the in-between the housewomen and the ones from today, but still, it doesn't excuse the terrible booking of Royce/Kay/Cross, and in reality, neither Alexa, Dana, or Nia were going to get the title away from Asuka anyway. They spent months with that stupid morgan/allyah vs royce/kay feud that didn't do anything, then Asuka squashed every single woman in the roster. Asuka should be wrestling her last NXT match this week and Lovelave/Kimberlee/Moon/Cross/the MMA chick/Royce/Kay should be sufficient to keep that division going for at least the next 6 months before the Women's tournament raid.

But it took a lot longer than it should have. The problem with Smackdown wasn't that it was "booked poorly" as in there were no stars and things didn't make sense. The problem with SD was that it was booked poorly in relation to Raw- it was booked in such a way that watching Raw (either the preceding Raw or the following one) would make watching Smackdown either unimportant or redundant. It would essentially turn it into a waste of your time. This isn't one of those problems where it will take months to turn things around because they didn't have stars and/or needed to repair their reputation. The draft insured that they would have the stars and that the reputation would be repaired because the concept necessitated that the show be different from Raw. They had, like, two months to figure out what they were going to do on Smackdown, and aside from Dolph vs. Miz and the World Title picture, they had NOTHING other than the dumb Heath Slater story. Other than that it was Randy vs. Bray, the women's division, and the tag team division all completely spinning their wheels for MONTHS. Corbin vs. Kalisto can be added to that list, too, in the weeks they actually decided to feature it rather than running idiotic Curt Hawkins promos.
Oh. And then they did the Ellsworth thing, which also sucked. And now we've got this Ziggler, Ambrose, and Kalisto clusterf*ck.

Smackdown could have- hell, should have- been great right away, but typical lazy WWE booking prevented that from happening.

But just because you have stars doesn't mean they're doing interesting stuff. I don't think it was the lack of star power, but rather the lack of relevancy, whether small or big names, nothing that happened in Smackdown was really relevant to the main story, that's why people didn't care to watch it, now Smackdown has their own stories and you can only see them there, and it happens to be better stories than RAW, yeah, there's been bad stories, but the good ones are great. That Slater one, it was a good underdog story, it just happened to be a comedy one. The Ellsworth story could have had a better finish, but Mr Cena needed to tie Flair's record, but overall, it wasn't a bad story.

[Big Red Machine]

In six months they lost:
The tag division had the easiest road to recovery because of 1) the built-in mechanism of the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic and 2) the fact that they only lost American Alpha and Enzo & Cass (oh, and the Vaudevillains, who I literally forgot existed until this very moment).
The other divisions- especially the women's division- didn't just lose their top stars, they also lost the guys and gals who were at that level where they could have been pushed to quickly replace the top stars when they were called up. It wasn't just losing Zayn, Balor, Bayley, Charlotte, Emma, and Sasha. It was that in that same one year period they also lost Corbin, Swann, Crews, Aries, Dana Brooke, Alexa Bliss!, and Nia Jax. They took almost everyone who could believably step into a the spots the top guys and gals had to vacate. And while WWE has been doing quite a bit of raiding, most of that raiding hasn't been NXT-focused. It's been Cruiserweights (i.e. everyone from Evolve, plus Kendrick and overseas guys), plus some recent focus on women, of which Heidi is the first one to show up on TV. The only guys I can think of who weren't Cruiserweights who they signed were Roode, EY, Damo, Roddy, Andrade, Nikki Cross, Tommy End, Andrea, and Hero, who are all on TV now aside from Andrea. Yes, Almas has been booked poorly but they're now finding a role for him. Aside from him, I'm not really sure what people were expecting. NXT is, after all, a developmental territory. You could definitely argue that the fact that they were doing their best to save Ember Moon vs. Asuka for WM weekend has hurt the women's division, but you can't really blame them too much for that when you're asking them to be a promotion that has to sell tickets in big buildings.

Zayn, Charlotte, Emma, Sasha all left long time ago, I don't think we can use them to excuse current NXT. Aries and Swann weren't big loses because they were only there for a little bit, they weren't main event scene.

it's not developmental, Hunter made it clear "we're a brand" blah blah. it still sells out big arenas, because of the name and the wrestling is still good, but you compare the upcoming Takeover to last years and it is worlds apart of hype, at this point a Southpaw Regional Wrestling show would sell the same amount of tickets. I'm not gonna disagree that they lost tons of people, but again tag and males main event shouldn't have suffered because they had people there to replace them. But now after WM, what are we getting? They didn't bother to properly build more teams and we're gonna do AOP v DIY again and again?

Women i'll give you because they did take the girls that were going to be the in-between the housewomen and the ones from today, but still, it doesn't excuse the terrible booking of Royce/Kay/Cross, and in reality, neither Alexa, Dana, or Nia were going to get the title away from Asuka anyway. They spent months with that stupid morgan/allyah vs royce/kay feud that didn't do anything, then Asuka squashed every single woman in the roster. Asuka should be wrestling her last NXT match this week and Lovelave/Kimberlee/Moon/Cross/the MMA chick/Royce/Kay should be sufficient to keep that division going for at least the next 6 months before the Women's tournament raid.

The first batch of Horsewomen and (especially) Zayn do matter because they are a loss of star power. It is going to be completely impossible to find anyone with the NXT “star power” to replace those women (especially Sasha and Charlotte). Emma was being put in a position where she could have helped in this role (and certainly helped increase the workrate) when she was snapped back up, too, around the time that Zayn was. Zayn matters both for starpower and because they were never given the chance to use him to build anyone up to replace him. Aries and Swann definitely mattered because they were in that next group of guys who were going to come up to replace Zayn and Balor and Owens. They weren’t in the main event scene because they never had the time to be.

Hunter can say that it’s not development but the fact of the matter is that it is. That’s why we Aliyah, Liv Morgan, Dario Berenato, Mandy Rose and others showing up and then disappearing for a while. When they think they’re ready they put them on TV, but when it becomes clear that they’re not they take them off until they think they’re ready again, and keep trying until they get it right. You can say the same about Oney Lorcan from a talking point of view.

Who did the tag division have to replace them? DIY and the AOP. Is the division really that much worse now with DIY, Revival, the AOP, & TM61 than it was with American Alpha, Revival, Enzo & Cass, & the Vaudevillains? Personally, I think the overall quality is a bit higher (or at least it will be when TMDK get off the shelf).
For the men I think they’ve made excellent use of stalling tactics to get a lot out of a little. They definitely run out of time after Mania, don’t get me wrong, but they definitely have guys they could move into spots to replace Joe and Nakamura (EY, Hero, Roddy, plus the possibility/probability of Cole Kyle, and Dijak). They could definitely be ramping up to push Almas up to this level as well… and keep in mind, this is even with them losing Aries, Crews, and Corbin to the main roster, and Itami getting injured over and over again.

Of course neither Alexa, Dana, or Nia were going to win the belt from Asuka, but Takeover matches definitely could have been built around Alexa and Dana, and Nia could have been used to help others (like Ember Moon or Liv Morgan for example) get over (because she had already had her shot at Asuka). It’s having that midcard (and we’ll throw Carmella in, too) and Bayley ripped away from them that led to having to spend a lot of time on what was essentially a jobber feud between Royce & Kay and Liv & Aliayh because all the division was left with was the unbeatable Asuka, the just-debuted Ember Moon, and a bunch of jobbers.
The Royce & Kay vs. Liv & Aliyah feud didn’t do nothing. That’s the feud that set up Royce & Kay as a unit. Cross (and SAnitY as a whole) are being booked just fine. They’re taking time to establish personalities and group dynamics. The way you need to think of the current NXT product is like Cornette Era ROH: 99% of the things that happen make sense and are done in an effective manner, but are done at a much slower speed than fans have become accustomed to. I’m not saying it’s great booking, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that they have booked things poorly and not put forth their best effort to make new stars out of the materials they have been given/left with.

But it took a lot longer than it should have. The problem with Smackdown wasn't that it was "booked poorly" as in there were no stars and things didn't make sense. The problem with SD was that it was booked poorly in relation to Raw- it was booked in such a way that watching Raw (either the preceding Raw or the following one) would make watching Smackdown either unimportant or redundant. It would essentially turn it into a waste of your time. This isn't one of those problems where it will take months to turn things around because they didn't have stars and/or needed to repair their reputation. The draft insured that they would have the stars and that the reputation would be repaired because the concept necessitated that the show be different from Raw. They had, like, two months to figure out what they were going to do on Smackdown, and aside from Dolph vs. Miz and the World Title picture, they had NOTHING other than the dumb Heath Slater story. Other than that it was Randy vs. Bray, the women's division, and the tag team division all completely spinning their wheels for MONTHS. Corbin vs. Kalisto can be added to that list, too, in the weeks they actually decided to feature it rather than running idiotic Curt Hawkins promos.
Oh. And then they did the Ellsworth thing, which also sucked. And now we've got this Ziggler, Ambrose, and Kalisto clusterf*ck.

Smackdown could have- hell, should have- been great right away, but typical lazy WWE booking prevented that from happening.

But just because you have stars doesn't mean they're doing interesting stuff. I don't think it was the lack of star power, but rather the lack of relevancy, whether small or big names, nothing that happened in Smackdown was really relevant to the main story, that's why people didn't care to watch it, now Smackdown has their own stories and you can only see them there, and it happens to be better stories than RAW, yeah, there's been bad stories, but the good ones are great. That Slater one, it was a good underdog story, it just happened to be a comedy one. The Ellsworth story could have had a better finish, but Mr Cena needed to tie Flair's record, but overall, it wasn't a bad story.

But there was no reason that the good stories couldn't have started right away and they didn't. The only thing that happened in the women's division for the first three months was that Becky was crowed the first champion, and the build to that match was so lazy and the way they set up Alexa as her first challenger was equally lazy that those two matches were literally the only two matches in the first three months that mattered. Meanwhile, we had the tag division giving us the same story with American Alpha and the Usos over and over and over again while the tag belts were help by a comedy duo who were just keeping them warm so they could drop them to Randy Orton & Bray Waytt as part of a giant Russo Swerve months in the making.

The Slater story was the wrong kind of underdog story. He's not Daniel Bryan or Sami Zayn or DIY. Slater wasn't someone people got behind because they wanted to see Heath Slater win. He's someone people got behind because the insane intersection of Dave Meltzer putting over PWG crowds and WWE's emphasis on comedy created an atmosphere in NXT where people like to cheer for goofy things, and as NXT grew, that spilled onto the main roster, so the end result is that we've got people cheering for a loser (and I mean a literal LOSER. In every match) who is attempting to elicit sympathy from the company by committing what is essentially the first step in welfare fraud and people like to laugh at it so he got cheered. Same thing with Ellsworth. These were not "good" stories. They were bad stories that people cheered for because people will cheer for anything goofy nowadays. We live in a world where f*cking CHEESEBURGER is a mainstay on the ROH undercard while ACH left the company because it's not the place to be for young, up-and-coming wrestlers.

Even Cena needing to tie Flair's record wasn't built up very well, and if that's the story you're going with then why the hell isn't THAT happening at WrestleMania instead of Randy vs. Bray in a feud about magic and arson. I think Shane vs. Miz and AJ vs. Cena for the belt with Bray vs. Randy on the side would make a lot more sense than what we have now.

[KILLdozer]

Why does Kassius Ohno look like he's on the NBA all star team.... Seriously lol.