NXT Takeover 31 - 2020.10.04
NXT Takeover began very similarly to when WWE revealed its Thunderdome for Smackdown/RAW, by showing off the brand new Capitol Wrestling Center, but thankfully not constantly talking about it excessively like they still do about the Thunderdome. It's crafted very similarly to the Thunderdome, but has a singular wall of screens as opposed to several tiered rows. Either way, it's alright.
The first match was Damien Priest (champ) having to carry Johnny Gargano in a halfway decent title defense match. Priest really has improved a lot since his debut and I went from finding him not that interesting to looking forward to what he's going to do next. Gargano on the other hand was never interesting to be and continues to be less so as they continue their I wish I was the Miz angle with Candice LeRae. In that sense they are a perfect couple because they are equally as uninteresting. Onto the match; they make mention at the beginning that if Gargano were to win he would be a two time North American champ which had me praying the whole time that that didn't happen. Priest had a few really good spots, especially showing off decent athleticism for being a larger guy. His biggest slip up was a very awkward looking moment where he tried to do some sort of move off the second rope that just became a very bad looking elbow, but he still out wrestled Gargano the whole time. This match did one of my cardinal sins of wrestling which is 5 too many kickouts as I find these kind of cheap false finishes hardly ever work unless it's done by two great workers in a future classic match. At one point during the match Gargano gets the chance to give a low blow to Priest when the referee is distracted which leads to a more acceptable false finish because I also hate the overused heel victory by concealed low blow to also be far overused. Instead Priest ends up entering a flurry of moves and pins Gargano to retain his belt. Hopefully he moves onto a feud with someone who can actually test his talents or he'll forever be midcard.
Next up was Kushida vs. alleged sex offender and known bad wrestler, Velveteen Dream which ended up being more of a nightmare as this match was absolutely boring. Dream is one of the most uninteresting wrestlers and Kushida is one of the more boring Japanese wrestlers I've seen who brings nothing to the table to stay interesting (like some of the better smaller wrestlers in the past) outside of submissions I've seen hundreds of wrestlers do. This also doesn't help that it seems like they are trying to make Kushida a tough guy heel which most definitely does not work. At one point Kushida kicks the ring steps which crushes Dream's hand, to which Barret on commentary claims broke his arm, which makes no sense because at most Dream's fingers were barely even in the way of the steps. When the match ends, Kushida gets Dream in a submission hold for no reason other than to be a tough guy heel and the ref starts to count to five as if Kushida would give a shit since the match is over. In the end Dream is crying in pain and we're supposed to feel bad, but we can't because Dream is an alleged sex offender and possible pedophile.
The next segment is a surprise announcement that after 20 years, WWE will be bringing back WCW's Halloween Havoc event, that I used to love, and even better will be giving it to NXT so it might even be good! The issue is that the promo itself was a bit cringey and features forever midcard Shotzi Blackheart howling and being an edgelord and will apparently be hosting the event. If they really wanted to scare the audience, they could have just shown footage of Blackheart's early NXT matches. Now that's true horror.
Then came a match I really could care less for and I did zone out several time and even literally fell asleep for a couple of minutes towards the end; Escobar vs. Swerve. The match was alright, I think or at least more entertaining than Kushida and Dream. Swerve had a few decent high flying spots as Vic Joseph over emphasized was Swerve using luchadore tradition to be a luchadore. Escobar's cronies tried to interfere and were randomly stopped by Ashante Adonis because reasons, I guess. In the end after some nonsense, Escobar won I think. I was half asleep for real and I recall that's what happened anyway. Oh yeah, this was also for Escobar's Cruserweight championship, which obviously he defended since he won.
Oh my god, next was Shirai (champ) and LeRae. I remember after almost passing out during the last match I got up before this match started to walk around and get something with caffeine to wake up. Anyway, this championship match seemed to drag on for a while, primarily because it was very repetitive and LeRae is no good in the ring or as a hell. I laughed really hard when Shirai no sold LeRae's power bomb from the turnbuckle and immediately started picking up steam for her finish. Or so I thought, what actually happened (and is pretty rare at least for WWE) is that LeRae accidentally bonked the ref and then he got bonked again as the first one certainly didn't seem convincing. During this period LeRae could have won, but didn't since the ref was rolling around outside like he was on fire. Then Gargano comes in suited up as a ref, as if that would count even if he did count to 3 but still didn't. Shirai kicks out and gets a lot of time to recover as Gargano and LeRae over act how much they can't believe it. During this time the ref recovers and sees Gargano dressed up as a ref and they get into an awkward screaming match where the ref repeatedly yells You get out of here, that's my shirt which was odd because I don't know how the ref recognized that was actually a shirt he owned since all the refs shirts look exactly the same. Gargano just kept yelling you get out of here with zero grounds as to why the actual ref should. Anyway, after all that Shirai does a Spanish Fly and a moonsault and wins. Thankfully her and Priest were both able to escape losing to generic heel cheating ends.
As Shirai celebrates by awkwardly struggling to figure out what poses to do and what faces to make towards the camera, Toni Storm appears on the screen and announces she's coming back. I have no idea who this is, as she must have been a thing during the 4 year rehab break I took from wrestling, so I had no emotional reaction or opinion other than her saying Io-chan sounded extremely cringey. And then comes some awkwardly spliced in footage of someone on a motorcycle driving around and its not clear whether this is a commercial or not and then all of a sudden the motorcycle person is in the building and its Ember Moon, who is also back just because. WWE is just like let's just shoehorn two random comebacks now because EPIC!
Some quick commentary on the commentators; Vic Joseph seems like he has potential to be alright but he keeps trying too hard to sound like Mauro in my opinion and it doesn't really have the same effect and he also is awkward sometimes doing things like saying the wrong move name or saying things like is that three, did he/she get them?! like seconds after the wrestler has already kicked out. It's very robotic and stiff when he does that. Wade Barret just sounds annoying and is just no good on commentary in my opinion, Mr. MOO-AYYY THAI. Beth Phoenix is alright, nothing stand out and makes minimal mistakes and that already more than over qualifies her for being a WWE commentator.
Ashante Adonis cuts an awkward (this word is appropriately used a lot in this review for a reason) and bad promo and we're on to the main event; Balor (champ) vs. O-o-o-O'Reily for the NXT championship! There isn't much I can say about the match, but in this instance I say that because it was overall pretty good. Balor is truly one of the best workers in the business right now and I haven't really seen much of O'Reily before, but he was pretty good too. The match went on maybe 5 minutes longer than I found fun, but I get it it's the main event and a long match means it was good, to some people anyway. Regardless, it was a good match and Balor got to retain while still putting O'Reily over and that's really what you want to do for a main event match like that with someone really established and someone getting there. Then there was some big guy holding a beat up Adam Cole for some reason and the other members of Undisputed ask Balor and O'Reily if they know what happened as if the two of them hadn't just been in a 20 minute match.
NXT Takeover 31 was pretty much a turd sandwich, it started off with the heel of the bread which is not great, but edible and okay (Priest vs. Gargano), was filled with a bunch of crap (Dream vs. Kushida all the way to Shirai vs. LeRae), and ended with an actual piece of delicious bread on the other side to close it off (Balor and O'Reily), and garnish it with a tiny turd (the awkward ending with a beat up Adam Cole and that big guy) on top like a little olive on a toothpick.
Comments
Post a Comment