BRM Reviews the 8/10/2021 NXT

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 8/10/2021 NXT

Post by Big Red Machine » Aug 13th, '21, 16:13

Beth Phoenix is on vacation this week, so that should reduce the platitudes and incomprehensible word soup coming from commentary to nearly zero. Hooray!
Also not here is Ember Moon, who isn’t medically cleared so she can’t wrestle Sarray tonight.

DAKOTA KAI PROMO- good
She’s going to defeat the undefeated Sarray to prove that she is “no one’s sidekick.”

DAKOTA KAI vs. SARRAY- 7.5/10
Thankfully they let Dakota win clean. Raquel Gonzalez arrived at the building towards the end of the match, so I was worried we were going to get a distraction finish or a DQ.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
Gonzalez came out so Dakota ran away. Raquel was close enough to her that deciding not to chase her felt forced, which was most of what I didn’t like this too much. Raquel then cut a solid promo saying she would tear Dakota apart at TakeOver.

GARGANOS SILLINESS AS INDI HARTWELL PREPARES FOR HER FIRST DATE WITH DEXTER LUMIS-
They’re grown adults pretending Indi, Austin, and Dexter are teenagers.
The Garganos are now allowing Indi go to on a date with Dexter. Then why did you have Gargano win last week?
Dexter is doing his stoic thing while Gargano is trying to be the dad from a sitcom. To continue the sitcom plot, Johnny and Candice and going to follow them secretly.

AN AEW RAMPAGE COMMERCIAL AIRS- good move

HIT ROW PROMO- EXCELLENT!
Using that oil-drum fire to burn a Lucha mask (as revenge for disrespecting their culture last week by pulling Swerve’s grill out) took this from a promo in an over-the-top setting for artistic purposes that (most) wrestlers shouldn’t even think about in kayfabe to something that made sense and just happened to have a little more of an artsy feel incidentally.

ILJA DRAGUNOV’S PROMO IS INTERRUPTED BY PETE DUNNE- good
Ilja cut a very good promo vowing to beat WALTER for the NXT UK Title. Dunne cut a typical heel promo taking credit for all of NXT UK’s success. Ilja disagreed. They will have a match later.

MCKENZIE MITCHELL INTERVIEWS L.A. KNIGHT AND CAMERON GRIMES- good heel stuff from Knight, belittling Grimes and blaming him for last week’s loss.

ANDRE CHASE vs. L.A KNIGHT (w/Cameron Grimes)- squash
Once again, someone who was just in the Breakout Tournament gets squashed, which makes the still-ongoing tournament look bad.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- snore
Ted Dibiase comes out and tries to convince Grimes that he doesn’t have to be a butler. No, Ted. He signed the contract for the match, then lost fair and square. He’s a f*cking butler. He was the one who was dumb enough to agree to the match without a term-limit.
Ted tries to goad Knight into giving Grimes a title shot. Instead of just ignoring the old codger, Knight agrees to give Grimes another title match, but this time if Knight loses, Ted Dibiase must be Knight’s butler, too. Why would Knight say yes to this? What would he need with two butlers?

SOME REDHEAD I DON’T RECOGNIZE CUTS A PROMO- good, I guess?
She says she will run through every top woman in the promotion, and won’t do it alone. She says she fights to survive.
Oh. That’s… Gigi Dolan, apparently. She was one of the women talking with Mandy Rose last week.

AMARI MILLER vs. GIGI DOLAN (w/Jacey Jane)- squash
Oh, wait! Gigi Dolan is Priscilla Kelly! No wonder I didn’t recognize her. She isn’t dressed like a Goth. She won with what I can only describe as a Code Red version of an Abdominal Stretch.

MORE INDEX AND GARGANO IDIOCY- Indi is annoying. Dexter is just eating. The Garganos are spying on them in a completely cartoonish manner, including with impossibly loud walkie-talkies. Indi finds them out and tells them to leave.

ADAM COLE & KYLE O’REILLY FACE TO FACE- meh
Regal is in the ring with a bunch of security and calls them out. They’re doing 3 Stages of Hell at TakeOver. Kyle picks fall one (regular), Cole picks fall two (street fight), and Rega picks fall three (cage). They cut promos on each other. Kyle was trying WAY too hard to sound too cool for school. Also, some fighting happened.

TOMMASO CIAMPA (& TIMOTHY THATCHER) PROMO- TREMENDOUS!
There was a hell of a lot of emotion here from Ciampa. He said that he and Thatcher are everything good and pure about professional wrestling, even though the industry “chooses people like Ridge Holland” who are “young and big.” It sounds like he’s talking about something in particular, but I just can’t figure out what it might be.

MSK PROMO- They’re extremely annoying

NXT BREAKOUT TOURNAMENT SEMIFINAL MATCH: Odessey Jones vs. Trey Baxter- 5/10
Baxter tries to stick and move but gets overpowered by the large guy. The crowd was very into Jones, which I don’t remember them being the last time we saw him.

SAMANTHA IRVIN INTERVIEWS ODESSEY JONES- fine
Jones was a fine happy-go-lucky babyface.

MCKENZIE MITCHELL STANDS SO REGAL CAN DELIVER SOME BIG NEWS- Next week we’re getting Imperium challenging MSK for the tag titles and Roderick Strong challenging KUSHIDA for the Cruiserweight Title. The Cruiserweight Title match is fine. The tag title match… well… on the bright side, Imperium are 3-1 in their last four matches, but that is stretching back to April. I’m giving NXT a little bit of slack because of the cuts, but they really should have given them some quick squashes these past few weeks.

WE ARE SHOWN A TWEET FROM MANDY ROSE PUTTING OVER GIGI DOLAN’S WIN AND CREDITING IT TO THE ADVICE THAT MANDY GAVE HER- good

DRAKE MAVERICK vs. BOA (w/Mae Ying)- 4.5/10
Tian Sha’s entrance has gotten even fancier. Mae Ying walks now, by the way. She blew mist in Maverick’s face to help Boa get the win.

THERE WAS A COMMERCIAL FOR A WRESTLING-BASED DRAMA CALLED “HEELS” ON STARZ- Does anyone know anything about this?

MORE DUMB SH*T- Gargano dressed up as a waiter to bring them a cake. His disguise was not clever. He tired to take the cake away and it wound up in Dexter’s face when Indi tried to stop him from taking it. Dexter didn’t react. Gargano left. Indi and Dexter kissed. This was terrible.

SAMOA JOE VS. KARRION KROSS VIDEO PACKAGE- awesome
They’ll be doing a face-to-face next week.

ILJA DRAGUNOV vs. PETE DUNNE- 8.75/10
This was an awesome match marred by a distraction finish with the surprise appearance of WALTER. I can excuse if they’re going to give Dunne the next title shot (especially if Ilja wins), but otherwise, there was no reason for it.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
WALTER attacks Ilja but Ilja fights him off and hits Torpedo Moscow to put WALTER down. Ilja poses with the belt.


This show was quite the mixed bag. It felt like for every great thing, there was something on the other side of the scale to counterbalance it. Awesome main event? Gargano bullsh*t. Amazing promo by Ciampa? Meh segment to build up Cole vs. O’Reilly. Great match between Kai and Sarray? Dumb segment with Knight, Grimes, and Dibiase. Great Joe vs. Kross video package? Terrible MSK promo. I will give them some credit for building up next week’s show as a big one without making TakeOver feel diminished, but the show feels like it could be so much better if they just cut out the clowny bullsh*t and focused on great wrestling and characters.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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cero2k
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Re: BRM Reviews the 8/10/2021 NXT

Post by cero2k » Aug 13th, '21, 17:00

Listening to Bryan and Vinny this morning, this was the episode that made Vinny react like an old TNA review, to the point that Bryan brought up that he and Lance have dropped some of WWE's programming for Impact and proposed it could be good to replace NXT for Impact too.
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