Peter Kostka
This week begins a series of tapings from a makeshift NXT Arena at Wrestlemania Axcess in Dallas, Texas. Your commentators are Tom Phillips and Corey Graves.
Last Week: A bunch of Takeover recap videos and a mundane match between Apollo Crews and The Drifter.
There, I’m caught up.
GM Regal welcomes us to this week’s episode and runs down the card. Tonight we’ll see Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa face off against the Vaudevillains, Bayley in action for the first time since losing her title and the NXT TV debut of Shinsuke Nakamura.
Austin Aries vs. Angelo Dawkins
Holy shit, Angelo Dawkins is still around?
This is a pretty dull squash for Aries as Dawkins is Jason Jordan if he ate Gable but had all the talent sucked out of him and didn’t absorb Gable’s in the process. He can’t even do the headband gimmick right because they fall off a minute into the match. Dawkins misses a charge and Aries plows through him with a missile dropkick before hitting a Roaring Elbow for the pin.
Samoa Joe says that the war between him and Finn Balor is not over even after Dallas, it’s just taking a detour to Apollo Crews next week.
Alexa Bliss vs. Tessa Blanchard
If the name didn’t give it away, Tessa is the daughter of Hall of Famer Tully Blanchard. Interestingly, Bliss is without her lackeys Blake and Murphy here.
They have a pretty decent little back and forth match as Tessa looks pretty solid, but Alexa puts the badmouth on her and steps on her back. Tessa seems to think selling means SCREECHING REALLY LOUDLY every time she is hit. Tessa blocks a slap and makes the comeback but Alexa SLAPS ON THE GOOZLE and gives her a wild-eyed look and I swear if she planted Tessa with a chokeslam Alexa Bliss would become my favorite wrestler of all time. Instead she shoves her down to the mat and hits the Bliss Flip kneedrop for the pin. I kind of really want Alexa/Asuka now just to see if someone loses a limb.
Finn Balor cuts another one of his kind of generic babyface promos as he is ready to fight whoever is next in line. That includes Shinsuke Nakamura, who he has been a fan of for a long time. I bet he has.
Johnny Gargano & Tommaso Ciampa vs. The Vaudevillains
Gargano and Gotch have a nice sequence to start and Gotch catches him with a forearm before making the tag, but Johnny avoids a charge and rolls English into a kick, tagging in Ciampa for a double kick in the corner. He knocks English to the outside and Gargano tags in so he can dive out onto both Vaudevillains, but English snaps his arm on the ropes to give the heels control for a bit but Johnny escapes and makes the hot tag. Ciampa runs wild and Gargano wipes English out with a rolling senton while Ciampa taps out Gotch with his bridging armbar. A fun TV tag match as they seem to be giving Ciampa and Gargano more of a push lately, probably in advance of the Cruiserweight Open this summer.
Alex Reyes talks to Tye Dillinger about facing Nakamura tonight and Tye vows to send Shinsuke back to Japan with a tale of how he lost to the Perfect 10. Then he gives Alex a 3. That’s just mean. He’s at least a 4.
2016 Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal Winner Baron Corbin vs. Tucker Knight
Pretty much a squash for Corbin but Knight does get to show off that, for a guy his size, the dude can move pretty well around the ring. Corbin eventually tires of him and hits the End of Days for the pin.
American Alpha stand in the same building they won the tag titles at Takeover and talk about how important it was, but are interrupted by Enzo and Cass. They give the champs props, but they point out that they’ve faced a bunch of great teams in NXT….except American Alpha. They don’t ask for a title shot, just a match and Gable and Jordan seem to be all for it.
Bayley vs. Liv Morgan
Bayley gets by far the biggest reaction so far tonight as somehow losing the title seems to have made her even more beloved. Seeing her without the title is kind of weird to see.
Liv shows some nice athleticism as she does the Trish Matrix dodge on a clothesline and hits a rotating headscissors but Bayley wears her down before hitting the Bayley to Belly for the pin. She grabs a mic and acknowledges that she lost at Takeover and that made her as upset as her fans, but the mark of a true champion is how many times they get up after being knocked down. She vows to be champion again and finds Izzy at ringside for a hug. Man, that’s gonna be a hell of a rematch.
Next Week: American Alpha vs. Enzo and Cass and Samoa Joe vs. Apollo Crews.
“The Perfect 10” Tye Dillinger vs. Shinsuke Nakamura
Naturally, Shinsuke gets a Bayley-like reaction. Tye brags about the fans chanting “10” at him only for them to chant “He’s 11” at Nakamura. Tye does his cartwheel and “10” hands which seems to just befuddle the hell out of Nakamura, but then Tye mocks his “come at me” pose which Nakamura understands perfectly. He kicks the piss out of Tye in response and Tye rakes the eyes and hits a superkick to take control. He hits the chinlock and badmouths Nakamura but Shinsuke breaks the grip and hits a spinkick, laying Tye on top for a knee to the gut before the Kinshasa finishes.
If anything, this match showed Nakamura’s versatility. He can have those hard-hitting MOTY candidates with the likes of Sami Zayn on Takeovers while also doing incredibly fun semi-comedy TV matches with highly entertaining characters like Tye Dillinger (who I hope gets a lot more TV time now that there are some slots to fill). Great stuff.
OVERALL: This was an incredibly fun and breezy episode. This week we saw perhaps a glimpse of things to come in the future (probably rematches for the top two singles titles) while giving some less-used talent a little time to shine so that they may start to fill some of the holes created by the call ups of the likes of Corbin, Crews and Enzo & Cass. NXT is full of younger, motivated talent waiting in the wings so it will be interesting to see who steps up over the next few months.
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