BRM Reviews the 4/26/2017 NXT

[Big Red Machine]

NIKKI CROSS CALLS OUT RUBY RIOT- no rating, excellent segment.
One extremely important thing to note here was the way Nikki did everything she did. She didn’t come down the ramp with her music playing like a normal person. She came out from the crowd with no fanfare while the regular NXT opening music was still playing and slid into the ring. She didn’t ask for a microphone like a normal person and she didn’t even go grab one herself and cut her promo in the ring. She slid out of the ring then went over to the ring announcer, bent over in her lap and spoke into the microphone that the (thoroughly uncomfortable) ring announcer was holding. All of these things contribute to making Nikki Cross (and, by extension, SAnitY) feel different from everyone else. She did the complete opposite of what a normal person would do while the announcers sat there, doing their jobs but with an air of tension around because they didn’t know why this crazy lady was doing anything she was doing until she actually opened her mouth and spoke. THIS is how you do a gimmick like SAnitY right. How many times have we seen someone who is supposed to be crazy and dangerous act like a completely normal person aside from the fact that they scream angrily where they talk, while the announcers endlessly tell us that they are “crazy” or “unpredictable” or “unbalanced” so some other such synonym, while we all sit there feeling no different than usual (i.e. every Eric Young promo from the beginning of 2015 until he left TNA)? This, my friends, is a perfect example of the principle of “show, don’t tell” in action.
Anyway, Nikki Cross calls out Ruby Riot and Ruby comes out and they get into the ring and have a stare-down and Ruby mouths “do you want to fight?” several times and cross just laughs and starts to walk away but then turns around and charges at Ruby and a brawl breaks out until some referees and security show up to try to break it up, failing several times before they finally overwhelm the two combatants. Two touches that I really liked here were the lack of music, which gave it a bit of a “sh*t is about to go down” atmosphere, and how long they focused on the referees and security fighting to drag Nikki Cross to the back.

KAYLA BRAXTON INTERVIEWS BOBBY ROODE- good
He says that if Itami wants a shot at the NXT Title, he’ll have to earn it.

ANDRADE “CIEN” ALMAS vs. DREW MCINTYRE- 5.5/10
A perfectly fine match for what it was meant to do, which was to be more of a clash of personalities than a wrestling match, intended to establish Drew’s no-nonsense attitude.

REGAL ANNOUNCES RUBY RIOT VS. NIKKI CROSS FOR LATER TONIGHT- cool.

WHO IS RODERICK STRONG- This was kind of weird, simply because it all felt soooo… un-Roddy-like. It was definitely humanizing (although I of course didn’t like them showing his shoot last name)… but it just so completely conflicts with the Roderick Strong I’ve been watching for well over a decade. They did sort of acknowledge that fact by saying that he hasn’t let a lot of people in and built kind of a façade around himself, which I’m sure is the shoot truth of the matter, but I just… I don’t think this was needed. I’ve grown so used to the fictional Roderick Strong who is that “perfect kid who was good at everything,” who ranges from a hard, determined worker and a badass as a babyface to a preppy douchebag frat boy as a heel (while still being a hard worker and a tough S.O.B.) and what was wrong with that? You know? He was likable as a babyface and detestable as a heel and always had exciting matches so what more did you really need? They told me that this was “Roderick Strong” but as someone who has been watching Roddy for a long time this didn’t feel like a video about Roderick Strong: it felt like a video about Chris Lindsey, the real person who plays the fictional Roderick Strong character and that created a big disconnect. I’d be curious to see how someone who hadn’t seen much or any of Roddy before he came to WWE thought of this video package.
I’m sure their endgame here is going to be focusing on Roddy now wanting to give his newly-born son a better childhood than he had so he needs to win the NXT Title etc. etc. and this definitely does set up to build to that so this could certainly fit the narrative they want (plus we all know how much they love to get Roddy’s fiancée’s good friend Ronda on their TV), it’s just… it probably would have worked a lot better for me with just about anyone else in the world.

KONA REEVES vs. ALEISTER BLACK- no rating, great squash.
I was certain that we were going to get the same thing we got in the previous squash with the patient waiting until the squashee charges in and Black hits the Black Mass for the one-hit finish, but instead they had Reeves try the exact opposite by charging in on Black right away and had the announcers point out that he learned from what happened to the last guy. Excellent. Reeves got some offense in but Black made a quick comeback and hit his stuff for the win.

CHRISTY ST. CLOUD INTERVIEWS RUBY RIOT- This was definitely Christy’s first time on WWE TV and you could tell just by the way her words were carefully scripted. That being said, it didn’t feel like the usual main roster bad scripting, but it definitely felt like she was an actress reciting rehearsed lines rather than an interviewer performing an interview. Ruby’s promo was good.

KAYLA TRIES TO INTERVIEW ANDRADE “CIEN” ALMAS- he is on his way out of the building to party with hot chicks. Rather than answer her question he invites her to come along with them (and the other women were encouraging her to come along, too). This was very well done, punctuated by the announcers saying that “Andrade doesn’t seem very bothered by his loss to Drew McIntyre earlier tonight.”

RUBY RIOT vs. NIKKI CROSS- no rating, good segment.
Cross jumps Ruby during her entrance and they brawl all around the ramp, never making it to the ring. Referees and security showed up to stop their fighting so that they could go to the ring and fight each other there instead. This was a (shorter) repeat of the earlier segment, but it worked.
REGAL & ASUKA BACKSTAGE- we’re getting a #1 contendership battle royale next week. Asuka had an odd reaction to this. I think the idea was that she didn’t think anyone would be worthy, but she did this kind of odd snort thing, like she tried to sigh but had to sneeze in the middle of it.

WWE UK TITLE MATCH: Tyler Bate(c) vs. Jack Gallagher- 6.75/10
Other UK guys showed up to watch at one point. This was… well… it was a shortened versioned of the type of match I would really enjoy if it had been given time for them to develop the stories. Meanwhile, the announcers plug away at the UK WWE Network show that is “coming very soon.”

A good episode of NXT that set a lot of things up, but with a disappointing main event. Obviously they need to use NXT and other outlet to try to attract interest to the UK show, but it just feels so disconnected from everything else and- at this point, at least- so abstract that I have a lot of trouble caring about it. It’s very much like WWE’s version of the mistakes ROH has spent the past two years making with its latest attempt a Women of Honor division, except that at least WWE has an endgame in sight due to their ability to turn it into an actual TV show while ROH has just been putting one nine-minute match up on YouTube every Wednesday an then filling in space twice a year with “Women of Honor” TV specials that replace our regular weekly ROH show with a show taped months in advances featuring wrestlers and feuds that they have done nothing to make anyone care about.

[XIV]

SAnitY was something I was enjoying at first, but do you know what? It's growing on me.

It's different. It's a different kind of Stable to what we've seen before.

Nothing from their entrance music, to anything they do really makes sense, but that's the point and it's been done brilliantly up to this point. Yeah, they're meant to be crazy and unpredictable, but there is some subtle nuances in the performances that are just great, and they were right to have Eric Young lead this.

And it's good because whereas a lot of stables need Titles to feel relevant, I almost don't feel that SAnitY need that championship validation. Which is great for longevity. And another great thing about this stable is that they're unpredictable to the point where some of them falling out and having a small feud only to team up again without much of an explanation would feel ridiculous or out of place, which again, creates that longevity that you don't get with many stables in this era.

Haven't been this excited now about a stable since The Shield's early days.

[Big Red Machine]

SAnitY was something I was enjoying at first, but do you know what? It's growing on me.

It's different. It's a different kind of Stable to what we've seen before.

Nothing from their entrance music, to anything they do really makes sense, but that's the point and it's been done brilliantly up to this point. Yeah, they're meant to be crazy and unpredictable, but there is some subtle nuances in the performances that are just great, and they were right to have Eric Young lead this.

And it's good because whereas a lot of stables need Titles to feel relevant, I almost don't feel that SAnitY need that championship validation. Which is great for longevity. And another great thing about this stable is that they're unpredictable to the point where some of them falling out and having a small feud only to team up again without much of an explanation would feel ridiculous or out of place, which again, creates that longevity that you don't get with many stables in this era.

Haven't been this excited now about a stable since The Shield's early days.

Totally agree with everything you said.

[XIV]

SAnitY was something I was enjoying at first, but do you know what? It's growing on me.

It's different. It's a different kind of Stable to what we've seen before.

Nothing from their entrance music, to anything they do really makes sense, but that's the point and it's been done brilliantly up to this point. Yeah, they're meant to be crazy and unpredictable, but there is some subtle nuances in the performances that are just great, and they were right to have Eric Young lead this.

And it's good because whereas a lot of stables need Titles to feel relevant, I almost don't feel that SAnitY need that championship validation. Which is great for longevity. And another great thing about this stable is that they're unpredictable to the point where some of them falling out and having a small feud only to team up again without much of an explanation would feel ridiculous or out of place, which again, creates that longevity that you don't get with many stables in this era.

Haven't been this excited now about a stable since The Shield's early days.

Totally agree with everything you said.

Just noticed the first line was meant to say "I was not enjoying at first" but I think you got the jist.

Yeah, I don't know who is writing this stable. But it's so far so good. I would fear for it if it goes to the main roster though, because the person/people leading it backstage at the moment is clearly the right person/people to write for it full stop and it would probably just flop. Which worries me.

[Big Red Machine]

SAnitY was something I was enjoying at first, but do you know what? It's growing on me.

It's different. It's a different kind of Stable to what we've seen before.

Nothing from their entrance music, to anything they do really makes sense, but that's the point and it's been done brilliantly up to this point. Yeah, they're meant to be crazy and unpredictable, but there is some subtle nuances in the performances that are just great, and they were right to have Eric Young lead this.

And it's good because whereas a lot of stables need Titles to feel relevant, I almost don't feel that SAnitY need that championship validation. Which is great for longevity. And another great thing about this stable is that they're unpredictable to the point where some of them falling out and having a small feud only to team up again without much of an explanation would feel ridiculous or out of place, which again, creates that longevity that you don't get with many stables in this era.

Haven't been this excited now about a stable since The Shield's early days.

Totally agree with everything you said.

Yeah, I don't know who is writing this stable. But it's so far so good. I would fear for it if it goes to the main roster though, because the person/people leading it backstage at the moment is clearly the right person/people to write for it full stop and it would probably just flop. Which worries me.

My guess would be Jimmy Jacobs.

[XIV]

Totally agree with everything you said.

Yeah, I don't know who is writing this stable. But it's so far so good. I would fear for it if it goes to the main roster though, because the person/people leading it backstage at the moment is clearly the right person/people to write for it full stop and it would probably just flop. Which worries me.

My guess would be Jimmy Jacobs.

Probably.

Wasn't it Triple H that insisted he would debut the idea for the stable until he could get Eric Young on board.

I'm sure I read that somewhere.