BRM Reviews WWE Worlds Collide

[Big Red Machine]

WWE/NXT/NXT UK Worlds Collide (2/2/2019)- Phoenix, AZ
(Yes, I know this was taped on different dates, but I’m going with their kayfabe presentation of the whole thing.)

BATTLE ROYALE TO DETERMINE TOURNAMENT SEEDING: The Velveteen Dream vs. Mark Andrews vs. TJP vs. Drew Gulak vs. Adam Cole vs. Keith Lee vs. Jordan Devlin vs. Travis Banks vs. Humberto Carrillo vs. Zack Gibson vs. Tyler Bate vs. Tony Nese vs. Cedric Alexander vs. Dominic Dijakovic vs. Shane Thorne- 6.5/10
The first elimination was Gibson eliminating Carrillo. Gibson made fun of Carrillo, which allowed Keith Lee to come up behind him Gibson and eliminate him. Gibson and Carrillo then had a shoving match and were separated by referees. Vic Joseph immediately explained to us that the order of elimination meant that these two would mean in the first round. This worked fine as an angle, but if you tell me that the eliminations will be determining the seeding (and the winner gets a bye in the opening round), my assumption is that the first guy out will face the runner up in the first round, not the second guy out.
More people were eliminated. One of them was Travis Banks. Jordan Devlin slid out of the ring to stomp Banks’ knee into the ringsteps because he hates him. There was a bit of a story about TVD and TJP both barely managing to escape elimination (one of which actually made me think that his feet both probably did hit the ground by he was saved by a combination of editing and an out-of-position referee. They also did a decent job of building up to a Lee vs. Dijakovic match.
Once we got down to the final four- TVD, TJP, Nese, and Devlin- there was a bit of a story of Nese and TJP forming an alliance while TVD and Devlin failed to do so which allowed them to control things for a while until TVD eliminated TJP. He eventually eliminated Nese as well, only to immediately be dropkicked over the top rope by Jordan Devlin for the win. The match was fine but probably went a little longer than it needed to.

FIRST ROUND MATCH: Zack Gibson vs. Humberto Carrillo- 6/10
Gibson attacked Carrillo before the match for a quick advantage, but they shined Carrillo up a lot right away so the attacked didn’t really serve too much of a purpose.

FIRST ROUND MATCH: Drew Gulak vs. Mark Andrews- 5.5/10
Gulak tried to win with the Gu-Lock while Andrews used some of his aerial maneuvers to work on Gualk’s midsection. Gulak eventually got the clean pin via roll-up.

FIRST ROUND MATCH: Keith Lee vs. Travis Banks- 4.5/10
Having Lee face off against the injured Banks instead of a heel was an interesting call. They had Lee refuse to go after the injury to get him over as a very principled babyface. Banks didn’t take well to this coddling, which allowed Lee to get some good personality stuff in as well. They told a story with the size difference here, but the match was pretty short and Banks didn’t really do much to sell his knee aside from one big spot, so it made the whole injury feel weird and inconsequential.


FIRST ROUND MATCH: Adam Cole vs. Shane Thorne- 6.75/10
Cole was the babyface in this match, which I thought was smart, but also really odd. Then I remembered that the last time we saw Thorne he was actually a heel, at which point it became a lot less odd. Thorne worked over Cole’s arm the whole match and even got me to bite on a nearfall with a Backdrop Driver kind of thing. Cole eventually got the win with a superkick followed by a Shining Wizard to the back of the head.

FIRST ROUND MATCH: Dominic Dijakovic vs. TJP- 6.75/10
More of these two, please! This was nine minutes of great storytelling, utilizing both the size disparity between the two, TJP’s superiority in submission wrestling, and working a limb. I would LOVE to see these two go fifteen minutes someday.

FIRST ROUND MATCH: Tyler Bate vs. Cedric Alexander- 6.75/10
Very good, but certainly not the classic that both the crowd and the announcers seemed to think it was.

FIRST ROUND MATCH: Tony Nese vs. The Velveteen Dream- 6.75/10

QUARTERFINAL MATCH: Drew Gulak vs. Jordan Devlin- 6.75/10
A good, gritty wrestling match between two heels.

QUARTERFINAL MATCH: Adam Cole vs. Keith Lee- 6.5/10
During Cle’s entrance the announcers talked up his arm injury from the previous round. Lee would start off by working that injury over while Cole’s plan was to work over Lee’s knee to chop the tree down and then focus his attack on Lee’s head, which eventually worked.

QUARTERFINAL MATCH: Dominic Dijakovic vs. Tyler Bate- 7.5/10
Like with the previous match, the heel had an injured arm from the previous round that the babyface immediately went after. This time the heel took control with pure viciousness rather than working a limb, and these two went on to have a very exciting match.

QUARTERFINAL MATCH: The Velveteen Dream vs. Humberto Carrillo- 7.75/10
Seeing The Velveteen Dream play the heel role in a match feels so weird after the year he had in 2018, but he managed to make it work while still being the same Velveteen Dream we all know and love. Carrillo also looked fantastic here. I think Hunter has some big things planned for him.


SEMIFINAL MATCH: Adam Cole vs. Tyler Bate- 7.5/10
Nigel McGuinness replaced Byron Saxton on commentary at this point, which is obviously a major upgrade. Bate got the win. The story here was pretty much that they had scouted each other from previous matches and could counter each other’s big spots.

SEMIFINAL MATCH: Jordan Devlin vs. The Velveteen Dream- 8/10
TVD’s ribs are injured from the previous match. He tried to hide this fact from Devlin by wearing his ring robe during the match but the referee made him take it off. They worked the ribs the whole match and had some nice little spots in there to really help tell the story (like the stuff with the Dream Valley Driver). And awesome match that was really only hurt by the fact that the outcome felt rather obvious (despite the announcers pushing it, I never for a moment bought the idea that they would do an all-NXT UK finals.

WORLDS COLLIDE TOURNAMENT FINALS: Tyler Bate vs. The Velveteen Dream- 7.5/10
TVD was obviously still selling his ribs. The match was very exciting and TVD got the win, but after watching so much, they had some trouble holding my interest.

This was a pretty decent show from WWE… or, rather, from Triple H Promotions, a subsection of WWE. The wrestling was all solid and I liked the idea and despite how great I thought an angle where Murphy tried to convince Nese to go after someone else’s title and not the Cruiserweight Title would be if Nese had won, I think TVD winning is a good call.
That all being said, this was a hard show to sit through. Jumping back and forth between the WWE Network and YouTube was not fun (the battle royale and the first match from each of the first two rounds, plus the semifinals and finals were on the Network, everything else was on YouTube), and it went so long that it all blended together after a while. Like I said, I really like the concept, but I think this would fare better as a third alternative to the Mae Young Classic and Cruiserweight Classic. I think that this year’s MYC showed that doing it two years in a row (or at least the way WWE does such things) makes the tournament feel repetitive (a full quarter of the field were repeats from last year, and we had to listen to every one of them tell us in every promo that they are here to avenge last year’s loss) so I think something to swap it out with on a rotating cycle would be a good idea. The other thing you could do is swap the MYC and CWC every year, and then do a Worlds Collide show every year, but with the same (but shorter) weekly release format, which would avoid the two problems this show had, which were the length and the fact that most of the matches were taking place on the same day so the wrestlers weren’t as fresh and weren’t able to have matches that were as long as one would like (maybe tape the whole thing over a weekend, taping the battle royale on Friday night in conjunction with an NXT taping, then the first round two rounds on Saturday and the semifinals, finals, and some sort of cool other NXT vs. NXT UK vs. 205 Live match between the those rounds to give the wrestlers time to rest on Sunday.

[NWK2000]

Jumping back and forth between the WWE Network and YouTube was not fun (the battle royale and the first match from each of the first two rounds, plus the semifinals and finals were on the Network, everything else was on YouTube), and it went so long that it all blended together after a while.

I was actually going to review this but when I realized that this is what was going on I abandoned it. This kind of presentation is unacceptable in my eyes. In 2019 we shouldn't have to hunt down individual matches to piece shows together like we're looking for Baba-booked All Japan stuff or something. What makes this especially mind-blowing is that THEY EDITED MULTIPLE DAYS TOGETHER ANYWAY. Why not just do it all?

[cero2k]

Feels like they wasted a lot of first time dream matches for a throwaway WWE show. it's a cool concept, but the execution seems terrible.

[Big Red Machine]

Feels like they wasted a lot of first time dream matches for a throwaway WWE show. it's a cool concept, but the execution seems terrible.

I don't know if I'd really call any of these "dream matches" so it didn't bother me.

[NWK2000]

Feels like they wasted a lot of first time dream matches for a throwaway WWE show. it's a cool concept, but the execution seems terrible.

I think having a tournament in conjunction with a special event or a holiday gives it more of a pro sports presentation actually (see NFL games on Thanksgiving, or the Winter Classic in Hockey). Plus, it's not like they can't build a feud later with guys if they wanted to. Not everything has to have a hot storyline going into a match, but that certainly does help matters.

[cero2k]

I don't know if I'd really call any of these "dream matches" so it didn't bother me.

All of Tyler Bate's matches could had been a big deal, Cole vs Bate i'd call a dream match up

I think having a tournament in conjunction with a special event or a holiday gives it more of a pro sports presentation actually (see NFL games on Thanksgiving, or the Winter Classic in Hockey). Plus, it's not like they can't build a feud later with guys if they wanted to. Not everything has to have a hot storyline going into a match, but that certainly does help matters.

i don't mind the timing, but the whole thing didn't really get a lot of promotion, it was mostly something to have for WWE Axxess, and it ended up being overshadowed by Halftime Heat anyway. Like i said, i like the concept, but the execution wasn't great, and it's not even about storylines, a lot of these matches could have sold a lot of takeover tickets if we saw the tournament build up slower and on both NXT shows.

[Big Red Machine]

I think having a tournament in conjunction with a special event or a holiday gives it more of a pro sports presentation actually (see NFL games on Thanksgiving, or the Winter Classic in Hockey). Plus, it's not like they can't build a feud later with guys if they wanted to. Not everything has to have a hot storyline going into a match, but that certainly does help matters.

i don't mind the timing, but the whole thing didn't really get a lot of promotion, it was mostly something to have for WWE Axxess, and it ended up being overshadowed by Halftime Heat anyway. Like i said, i like the concept, but the execution wasn't great, and it's not even about storylines, a lot of these matches could have sold a lot of takeover tickets if we saw the tournament build up slower and on both NXT shows.

Or maybe not TakeOver tickets (those will sell out anyway), but at least could have drummed up some interest with a slower roll-out. Halftime Heat is definitely a good chunk of what killed this, though. Which is kind of ironic because despite having an actual angle and several storyline rivalries already in place, Halftime Heat felt like a random six-man at an indy show that was just moves and felt totally detached from any storylines.