NXT opened with news about Samoa Joe’s statement-making victory over Finn Balor. They then moved on to the first match of the night featuring Asuka and Eva Marie and it was refreshing to see the championship around her waist.
New stories were kicked off or at least looked very likely to have been planted this week in the women’s division and in the tag team division, though the NXT men’s championship zone looks pretty open-ended at the moment. The raging discussion right now is the when and where about Balor’s main roster debut.
Here are the 5 points to note from tonight’s episode of NXT
Mayhem in Massachusetts
That’s what NXT called it and going by the videos we’d seen of the event, it certainly earned that. Samoa Joe defeated Finn Balor fair and square in the middle of the ring in his third attempt at the NXT Championship. This was a result that propelled fans to believe that Balor is sooner or later going to make it to the main roster.
The beauty of it all was the unpredictability and the crowd went nuts for Joe’s victory. NXT had many social media snippets accompanying this show- stealing moment. They showed Joe backstage after the match and Joe, in all his eloquence on the mic simply exclaimed that while Balor survived the last two matches, he couldn’t do so in this one.
Opening Bout
The opening match of the episode saw NXT Women’s Champion Asuka walking down the ramp for her match against All Red Everything Eva Marie. In case you missed the news, Marie had stolen Asuka’s title at an NXT house show and thus began this torrid affair.
Despite being the most vilified performer on NXT, the crowd was a bit divided in the beginning and in the middle of the match, embellishing the match with ‘Let’s Go Eva’ and ‘Eva Sucks’ but the jeers obviously overpowered the little support Marie did have.
The Red Queen, as a very infatuated Corey Graves calls her, stumbled ringside before her friend Nia Jax arrived for this match. The next thing we know, after a commercial, Marie is in control of the match accompanied by some primal screams by Asuka.
Side note- both the competitors’ hair’s quite striking. And it’s all because of the colors involved. Marie talking to the crowd in monosyllables while having locked Asuka in a seated surfboard was a nice little touch.
Forearm exchanges, punches and kicks later Asuka won clean but then they set up a face-off between the champion and Jax. This signals a future feud. And to be honest, apart from Bayley only Jax stands a chance of being a legit threat to the champion.
The Revival in action
The Angriest NXT tag team, that’s how Tom Phillips addressed The Revival. Dash and Dawson were out to face Lee and Parker, two people Graves addressed as ‘Jamochs’. Despite being there as a jobber, Lee was quite entertaining being all frantic and exuberant even letting out an ‘I’m respecting the rules’ quip at Dawson.
But eventually, it was all a showcase for the former tag team champs. Arguably, the best heels in the tag team division. Dawson then had some promo time and he challenged every tag team in the world that they’re going to take all of them out on their journey to the tag team championship.
They later attacked the Hype Bros.
The Princess of Staten Island
Carmella made her way to the match. We can expect to see her in more singles’ matched now that she isn’t managing Amore and Big Cass as anymore whom Graves called ‘baggage’.She faced Aliyah. This was an average match with the highlights being the submission moves both women applied. Aliyah applied the Lotus Lock while Carmella used her modified figure four headlock which still hasn’t been given a name. The announcers kept calling it the triangle. While Carmella’s improving upon her wrestling skills and already has a burgeoning gimmick, Aliyah already has some decent ring work but needs to work more on her gimmick.
The Main Event
The main event had NXT’s newest MVP Shinsuke Nakamura take on Elias Samson whose gimmick has really not caught on the with the fans yet. The Drifter drifted towards an obvious loss but not before taking control of the match midway with a tremendous clothesline and some more stiff looking offence.
Though this was one of his best matches, this wasn’t one of the better main events that NXT has had to offer. Really don’t know how they’re going to use Nakamura’s character and if there’s ever going to be that dream match-up with Finn Balor on NXT but his charisma has surely caught on.
