Samoa Joe comes out and calls out Karrion Kross. William Regal comes out and scolds him that he shouldn’t be doing this, but Joe rightly points out that Kross’ actions last week clearly constitute provocation. Regal says that Kross put his hands on “Samoa Joe the referee, not Samoa Joe the enforce,” and Joe again rightfully points out that Regal’s argument marinated in the weakest of weak-sauce. And really! If Regal is going to say that Kross put his hands on the referee, shouldn’t that constitute some sort of major punishment (especially with a post-match attack like this was)?
Regal tells Joe that Kross is on his way here, and that this had better “end peacefully.” Joe says that it will end tonight… but not peacefully.
As you’d expect, the intensity here was off the charts, and segment did a tremendous job of getting me hyped to see Joe get his hands on Kross. I wasn’t thrilled with now morally weak Regal came across, but it certainly fits in with the Regal we saw about to abdicate his position a few weeks ago because he was worried that he couldn’t control things. This was that Regal about to lose control again, just when it seemed like he had been able to regain it.
XIA LI PRE-TAPED PROMO- great!
She can’t cut a long promo in English, so they did it pre-taped so that she could just speak Chinese and they could subtitle it and also add some music in to help up the intensity. She didn’t say anything particularly interesting (it’s the biggest match of her life, she’s going to knock Raquel Gonzalez out like she did Mercedes Martinez and become the first Chinese NXT Women’s Champion), but her delivery was intense enough that she didn’t have to say anything interesting. She just had to say something on message and let her intensity do the rest.
BOBBY FISH & KUSHIDA vs. DIAMOND MINE (Tyler Rust & Roderick Strong (w/Malcol Bivens & Hachiman)- 8/10
Fish and KUSHIDA jumped the heels from behind during their entrance as revenge for the heels having previously jumped them from behind. The match was just plain great professional wrestling for fifteen minutes. Fish was an excellent babyface in peril, and KUSHIDA’s comeback was great. I was really liking how they were allowing Rust to look like Fish’s equal during the match, but I hated him taking the loss in the end. He’s an unestablished up-and-comer getting his first real spotlight. Having him do the job here (especially after not having the best record coming in) makes him feel like he’s just here to take the falls for Roddy. I love Bobby Fish, but the dude’s almost forty-five. He should be taking the losses to help build a guy like Rust up.
EARLIER TODAY, L.A. KNIGHT AND CAMERON GRIMES ARRIVE AT THE ARENA- WONDERFUL!
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m actually starting to find it endearing the way that Grimes is insisting on adhering to the stipulation in a completely honest and honorable way. Drake Maverick played his role very well, protesting Grimes’ treatment and offering to help him out like babyface should, and setting Grimes up to earn even more respect from the viewer by insisting that Maverick not help him carry Knight’s bags, once again living up to the stipulation he agreed to like a grown adult should. Knight was also great, as always, and the result of this is a challenge to a Knight vs. Maverick match later on, which was accepted.
ODYSSEY JONES VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO- very good
JACY JANE vs. FRANKY MONET (w/Jessi Kamea)- 3/10
Jacy Jane is the former Avery Taylor. Her new name is terrible. This match was WAY more even than it should have been, but at least Monet won cleanly in the end.
Robert Stone came out early on. He cheered for Franky while she was paying attention, but seemed to be trying to convince Kamea to leave with him when her back was turned. Towards the end of the match, Mandy Rose came out through the crowd and laid out on the announcers’ desk while watching the match. She left afterwards. Monet invited Kamea into the ring. Stone came, too. Monet didn’t react to this.
EARLIER TODAY, MCKENZIE MITCHELL INTERVIEWS JOHNNY GARGANO & AUSTIN THEORY- bad
Theory’s new facial hair makes him look like an idiot. He usually just acts like one (including here). Whatever they were trying to have Kyle do mostly didn’t work for. I know Kyle can be bland, but bland Kyle is going to be better than the “trying out different ways to sound cool” Kyle O’Reilly we’ve gotten recently.
WADE BARRETT’S SIT-DOWN INTERVIEW WITH BRONSON REED- great
Good babyface character stuff and good build for his match against Adam Cole next week.
AUSTIN THEORY vs. KYLE O’REILLY- 7.25/10
It was nice to see Theory not look like a joke for once. The big spot here was Theory taking the steps apart, which caused Kyle to “snap” and going into vicious killer mode, completely dominating Theory from that point on and winning not to long afterwards with a kneebar. It took the ref quite a while to pull Kyle off of Theory afterwards. The announcers speculated that Kyle reacted this way as essentially a sort of PTSD from Adam Cole giving him that brainbuster on the steps at the beginning of the year.
Karrion Kross still isn’t here yet. How far away is this guy coming from?
MCKENZIE MITCHELL INTERVIEWS RAQUEL GONZALEZ & DAKOTA KAI- great
Raquel cut the typical “I’m not worried about his challenger” promo, but her delivery of it was great. Dakota’s promo was this wonderful little hint of self-centeredness, complaining that Xia Li “stole the spotlight” from her after her big win over Ember Moon last week and insisting that Raquel would make Xia pay for that tonight.
LEGADO DEL FANTASMA’S MARIACHI MADNESS MUSICAL- bad
Santos Escobar dismissed the Mariachi band before they could start playing, saying that he had decided not to lower himself to entertaining the fans. He then buried Hit Row for doing so the other week and said he would take the North American Title.
Hit Row came out and some promos that were not very good. Top Dolla told Santos Escobar “you’ Escobar like Santos. I’m Escobar like Pablo.” That’s not the best person for a babyface to be comparing himself to. Scott was the only one of them who was remotely good.
Hit Row got into the ring. Escobar sent his guys at them but they got destroyed easily. Escobar tried to get the jump on Scott but Scott beat him up. Wilde eventually wound up eating a shot from a guitar (left by the mariachi band) that Escobar had been prevented from hitting Scott with by B-Fab earlier in the brawl.
THE WAY ARE CLOWNS BACKSTAGE- bad
Theory said “this family is falling apart” but no one paid attention to him, so he took his bag and left.
WILLIAM REGAL & SAMOA JOE BACKSTAGE- filler
Joe has been pacing around for over an hour waiting for Kross, and Kross isn’t here. Regal assures
NXT BREAKOUT TOURNAMENT QUATERFINAL MATCH: Andre Chase vs. Odyssey Jones- 4/10
Andre Chase is the former Harlem Bravado. This name is an upgrade. His gear on the other hand… UCH! That’s the sort of thing you only wear if you lost a bet.
Jones is quite green. Early on, he dropped Chase while trying to catch him on a dive and Chase almost landed on his head on the floor. Chase got to do a bunch of cool moves, then got destroyed by the large Jones.
MCKENZIE MITCHELL’S INTERVIEW WITH MSK IS INTERRUPTED VIA IMPERIUM INTRUDING ON THE FEED- bad
MSK were quite annoying, so the interruption was welcome. Imperium told zero lies while lamenting the state of the tag division. Making this even worse was the fact that the whole thing was turned into a joke. The interruption began right after McKenzie asked MSK what “MSK” stands for, and, in an amazing coincidence, it lasted just long enough for us to miss the entire explanation, coming back as one of the said “and that’s what MSK stands for” and McKenzie was impressed and said “wow. It all makes sense now.”
PETE DUNNE & ONEY LORCAN PROMO- fine
DRAKE MAVERICK vs. L.A. KNIGHT (w/Cameron Grimes)- no rating, great segment
Theyn got the butler thing over and did so in a way that set up GENIUS finish that I’m not going to spoil. It’s a short match. Go watch it.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- excellent!
Knight is beating up Maverick until Grimes finally pulls him off and tells him that the match is over and he doesn’t have to do this and goes to leave but Knight says that this is very necessary and then orders Grimes to hit Maverick. Grimes is all torn up over it but eventually gives in and does it because he’s going to honor the stipulation, but he was even more torn up afterwards. I realize that I’m going to stick in this major qualifier that I haven’t seen the post-MITB Raw, the post-BITW ROH, or this week’s Dynamite, and I’m one big show behind on wXw and haven’t seen any PROGRESS since the pandemic… but this might well be my favorite story in wrestling right now, and if you go back and read my reviews over the past few months and see how much go-away heat Cameron Grimes had with me, that’s quite the complement.
SAMOA JOE ATTACKS THE DRIVER OF KARIRON KROSS’ CAR- The driver says that Kross told him to let him in the front door and then pull around the back. Sneaky.
NXT WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH: Raquel Gonzalez(c) (w/Dakota Kai) vs. Xia Li- 6/10
This was going well until at the beginning of the comeback, Raquel hit a twisting Vader Bomb (which looked cool) but injured Xia and the medical staff was checking on her for quite a while before she got back up and ate a Towerbomb for the finish. I’m assuming this was worked as either a way to protect Xia or to reset her story by trying to show that she needs Tian Sha at ringside, and I don’t like either of those possibilities. If you’re going to try to protect her a bit, then have Dakota get involved or have her lose by stoppage. All doing it this way does is kill the momentum of the match.
SAMOA JOE CALLS OUT KARRION KROSS- GREAT!
Joe came out to the ring and called Kross out. Kross appeared on the Tron saying that being NXT Champion let him go- and do- whatever he wanted. He then revealed that he had beaten up Regal, which sent Joe running to the back to check on Regal was Kross sped away.
I thought this was a wonderfully elegant way to use Kross’ call-up on this week’s Raw (which I will be reviewing, but not until the weekend. Dynamite will hopefully be up later today) to tell a larger story about his exit and to get the belt on Joe while he still has some of the momentum of his big surprise return. The only problem I can foresee is that after doing something like attacking Regal, I don’t think they can wait a whole month until TakeOver to do the match… but if the plan is to do the match on TV then that’s not a problem.
I thought this was a great episode of NXT. I really liked the stuff I liked and really disliked the stuff I disliked, but there was a lot more of the former than the latter.