Review: WWE NXT (10-8-2024)
NXT is LIVE from (near) St. Louis!
I’m doing the first half of this show live and the second half after the special Tuesday Dynamite, so if you notice a change in my approach somewhere in the middle, that’s why.
Here’s Trick Williams: He’s now “Two-Time” Trick. This is a neat looking little venue in “St. Louis.”1 Raised entrance platform with seats up there, small hall concert venue type of place. Oh, call him “Tricky Two Times.” I won’t be doing that, personally, but it’s fine for the rest of you. I still don’t think “Whoop That Trick” works as a chant for a person named Trick. Up in the balcony seats, it’s Wes Lee. Great. Terrific. Just who I wanted. Trick calls Wes “light-skin,” and Wes says Trick “ain’t it.” And now it’s … Jey Uso. People are flipping the fuck out. They will BOTH “whoop that Trick” if someone tries to take their titles from them! Jey Uso says and does absolutely nothing out here lmao. “What a moment!” In what sense, fellas?
Fatal Influence vs Bianca Blair, Jade Cargill & Kelani Jordan
Fatal Influence have the most elaborately choreographed entrance I’ve ever seen for a group that hasn’t actually done a single thing of note in this amount of time. Kelani and the Main Roster Stars are color coordinated, which is nice.
Babyfaces dominate early. Nyx and Henley distract the ref and the tag champs while Jacy dives on Kelani on the floor. Now here’s a commercial for that repulsive looking Chick-fil-A sandwich2.
Cargill gets a hot tag and continues to move like it’s week two of wrestling school. Everything is just weirdly that little bit off, but I also think she’s starting to get a handle on how to make that look unique and cool on some things. Not on her Stinger Splashes, though. She just can’t jump. She should cut that move out.
Fatal Influence are also really great bumping around in this match for Jade and Bianca in particular. Nyx in there getting a chance to hold her own with Bianca, a legitimate WWE women’s GOAT contender who is still right in her prime. Belair and Cargill get to show off some fun double team offense, Kelani gets the final shine with the split-legged moonsault, Nyx takes the pin.
Brother, this was a hoot, and it’s the most fun a Bianca/Jade match has been in quite a while. Fun energy, fun crowd, fun heels with a ton of enthusiasm. Nyx’s best performance to date. ***¼
Backstage: Randy Orton sits on a chair so you can only see his top half and he is so much bigger than “Fraxiom” standing by him and having one of their terrible little skits. Orton observes, mainly. Says cornpone fan service-y shit.
Backstage: Giulia is going to do an interview, but then there is a knock at a “door” and she greets an “old friend” and leaves. Basically the question was how she’d be dealing with Roxanne Perez and the returning Cora Jade. WHO IS HER FRIEND!! TELL ME NOW!!!! IS IT MAIKA????
In the Ring: Here’s Roxanne Perez. Promo delivery is still so-so but she’s built up so much credibility that it matters less all the time. Now here’s Cora Jade. Never mind, Roxanne’s delivery seems better now. Holy fuck this promo is awful. Giulia finally interrupts. And now Giulia’s friend is here and it is Stephanie Vaquer. They clear the ring pretty fast. Vic “cannot believe what we just witnessed.” I don’t know why, it’s a pretty common thing that happens in wrestling. Vaquer and Giulia both hold Roxanne’s belt.
Backstage: Wren Sinclair! Finally someone who can fucking talk. And the rest of these guys. Wren plans to face Stephanie Vaquer next week. The group walks up on Lexis King. Chuck makes up some British-sounding shit for King to challenge Oro Mensah. Seeing the sons together made me think of this bit from William Regal’s book:
Oba Femi (c) vs Tony D’Angelo
NXT North American Championship
Has Tony D regained his confidence? Or lost his fear, at least? Oba dominating early with simple stuff, just holding Tony D in a side headlock, physically controlling him. D’Angelo gets a little comeback, tries to dive, but gets caught and chokeslammed spine-first into the apron.
And the middle of this match is where I leave off to go do Dynamite live.
Alright! A day later here we are, Oba Femi going for Fall From Grace but D’Angelo backdrops him over. One of the stereotypes slides D’Angelo a TAHR AHRN but the Don will not use it because he is honorable. This is the worst bunch of Mafioso I have ever seen. D’Angelo wants his spinebuster but Vic thinks his “back went out”; in reality, Oba Femi very clearly hit him on the back on the lift up. Watch the show, Victor.
Oba stares down the dorks outside and shoves them all over in one push, with the worry mainly about Rizzo. “Inadvertent by Oba Femi” — not really? I mean he didn’t touch her personally, but he shoved Stacks right into her. This causes Tony D’Angelo to lose his mind and kick some ass. A spear! NOT a “super spear,” though, so it only gets two. Femi comes back on him with a Claymore (basically) and a big chokeslam, but it only gets two and now Oba Femi must make NXT Face, but he puts his own spin on it. Less “w-w-WHAAAA??” and more “I am tired and that was about the best shot I can throw.”
Awful Shawn Michaels-y spot where Oba tosses Tony but then “collapses” from exhaustion, which he’s not good enough at selling to pull off without looking like a kid taking a careful fall in a school play. But we move on and return to the floor, where the commentary desk is cleared off by Oba, but it’s Oba going through it with a “spinebuster.”
D’Angelo gets it back into the ring. “Spinebuster” again, only a two count. The SEEDS OF DOUBT on Tony’s face now. If that can’t do it, what can? And Oba COMES TO LIFE. Chokeslam is countered with a sunset flip for the D’Angelo win. So all of that story stuff and they half-puss out on the finish and Tony’s win, clean but not convincing. I did like the match a lot and I think it’s a nice reward for Tony D’Angelo, of whom I have become a big fan. ***½
Backstage: Since Monotone Lola and Jaida Parker can’t get along, Lola speaks with Ava, who doesn’t really want to talk to her. Ava is on her phone (very important person). And here is a returning Nikkita Lyons, whose whole karate Iggy Azalea deal is now even further removed from active pop culture relevance. Why is she standing like that lmao. Like, ma’am, yes, we see them, you don’t have to lean your shoulders back three feet. Lola threatens her but it goes nowhere and then they nicely fade out while Nikkita tries to talk more.
Backstage: Monotone Kelani and her partners celebrate their big win. Lash Legend and Jakara Jackson make a challenge for a tag title shot. They had one in late July and lost and have won exactly zero matches on TV since then but sure! Whatever. That’ll happen on Smackdown, because Bianca doesn’t want to come back to NXT again any time soon. Well hang on! We have to have Ava give Nick Aldis a call! This obsession wrestling has with this sort of thing these days is so annoying to me. Not ONE TIME has it ever resulted in a GM or whatever going “hmm. no.” Just make challenges and have them accepted, with the assumption that yes, the GM or Tony Khan or whatever has signed off on it. Have a commentator confirm it later if you insist, but stop having wrestlers go, “I want to have a match with you!” “Well I want to have one with you, too!” “Great! Let’s contact our middle manager! See what THEY say about it!” “Sounds terrific!” Also Jade dropped a “what we’re NOT gonna do” in here and I cannot handle anymore 2010s social media talk on these shows.
Time is trying to pass me by but I stick here regardless.
Axiom & Nathan Frazer (c) vs A-Town Down Under
NXT Tag Team Championship
Booker T urges people not to turn the TV off because we still have Randy Orton vs Je’Von Evans to come. I get it, though, usually that would just be Booker screaming stuff he’s heard before at times where it doesn’t work, but we’ve got “Fraxiom” and “A-Town Down Under” on here, it’s real easy to understand a fan’s desire to watch something else.
Vic: “Does it add fuel to their fire that they have never captured gold in NXT?”
Booker: “Of course it does, Vic, this is calculated, these guys being here in this matchup here on The CW for the tag team championship. Modus operandi, Vic, you’ve heard of that!”
This match is precisely what you expect it to be, a big-for-NXT act against a couple of graduates who are now a reliable midcard attraction on the big TV, with only one possible outcome, that “Fraxiom” retain the belts. Listen, if the action of that sounds like eight stars to you, then it’s eight stars. It delivers what you imagine it will be. There’s some clever stuff in here and everyone puts effort into making teh match something more than completely predictable. ATDU have a little miscommunication, but that’s not the reason they lose, they just lose. Vic thinks the Phoenix Splash has something to do with the city in Arizona. “A defining! MOMENT!” Calm down, Victor, it’s just A-Town Down Under. ***¼
Video: A replay of the Ridge Holland and Chase U deal that aired last week. It’s good! Still! Ridge is now backstage with … interviewer. I honestly forget her name. They don’t really get to have personalities for a while. Riley Osborne attacks Ridge but that gets broken up fast.
Sexyy Red concert: I do not care. I might as well be 116 years old for this. She gets interrupted by Ethan Page. That sucks, too, but thankfully doesn’t last too long before Je’Von’s entrance interrupts. Evans throws some of the worst punches in wrestling history at Ethan Page to chase him off.
Randy Orton vs Je’Von Evans
Orton’s second match in NXT ever, and first since Feb. 2013, when he went down to Full Sail and beat Damien Sandow. Booker has repeatedly called this a “dream match,” which I’m sure it is for Je’Von.
Vic wonders how Orton looks better after 20 years than he did his first day in WWE, which I guess he does in some ways, and Booker says “it’s called the gym, Vic, it’s called working out,” and that’s definitely part of it!
Vic also asks Booker to go back in time and remember getting in with guys like Ric Flair and Randy Savage, which is actually great commentary! Orton gets a look at the speed of the young Evans, who is doing his best to show Randy that the moment is not overcoming him, that he’s not intimidated by facing a legend, and Orton seems to respect it when he gets caught with a dropkick.
This is a really intriguing match to watch unfold, because you really are seeing very different generational styles trying to mesh, even more than just their ages would suggest, because today’s Orton works even more of an “old school” pace now than ever before, and Evans is very much a new school, post-Kenny Omega/Will Ospreay/Ricochet sort of wrestler, and while Randy has faced lots of younger guys over the years, and people who came in with “new” styles for the time, the separation between Orton’s current style and Evans’ style is massive.
I think the match is, from a star ratings standpoint, pretty good at best, mostly just OK. But there’s far more to take from it than a goddamn fucking motherfucking star rating. Orton gets hit with a modern children’s “cutter” maneuver and then they totally blow an ambitious RKO spot, but Orton just goes right into the RKO after and ends the match. Afterward he helps Evans up, raises his hand, all that jazz3. **¾
Backstage: Oh, good. More from Ava. She’s with Wes Lee and her excellent scene partner, Ethan Page. Obviously they both want shots at Trick Williams. She says they both have to EARN IT. They meet next week for a shot at Trick at the Halloween Havoc event. And she also throws Je’Von Evans because he did such an amazing job losing to Randy Orton. Makes loads of logical sense.
GRADE: B
Solid show! Loved the building they ran and would loooooooove love love love for both companies to run more venues like this; AEW can do it for most shows, if we’re all being honest, and NXT on the road at places like this would add so much weekly, and come on, man, WWE can afford that travel bill and stuff. They are not hurting for money. Enough with the warehouse, get these people out among actual fans and not local Funko collectors and find out who’s actually over and who isn’t. It’s valuable information!
Three Stars of the Show
Jazmyn Nyx: She had to be helped to it, of course — and we’ll get to that in a moment — but everyone needs to be helped early on, and she’s still very much “early on.” Either way, she held up her end in that match and had her best performance to date. The match was laid out pretty much perfectly.
Bianca Belair: Held that match together in a big way, not to take anything away from the reliably strong Jacy Jayne on the other side, either. But Bianca in particular really gave Nyx some good experience out there.
Oba Femi: Honestly, as much as I like Tony D, I came out of that still thinking it was Oba Femi who looked like a proper star. In fact, it felt more like getting that secondary belt off a guy so he can move on to bigger things, whether that be the NXT title by the end of the year or a move up.
Chesterfield, MO.
I understand what the shit on it is and I am sure it tastes good, what I am saying is it looks fuckin’ nasty.
I totally believe that he’s matured a lot but my gut feeling says Randy Knockout is probably holding back some frustration/anger/whatever you want to call it. If you have that sort of thing in you, you can, like, learn how to handle it better, but the urge never fully goes away. It makes me think of a season three episode of “Deadwood” where Wyatt and Morgan Earp show up in camp, and the Earps get themselves into the spotlight fast, with plenty of suspicion about their intentions. At one point, having learned Wyatt worked as a lawman but no longer does, Bullock relates to him a bit, saying, “I took the badge off myself once, without losing my impulse to beat on certain types,” to which Wyatt responds, “No, that seems never to go.” You can grow, you can mature, you can do your best to change, but your impulses will linger.