His first singles match on the B-show might be a wee bit immature to declare his career over.
Also, this was his second main roster match - he teamed up with Neville to beat Tyson and Tyler Breeze on Raw back a few days before Takeover 2 - Electric Boogaloo.
Even if Sami winds up being a JTTS (Jobber to the Stars), he’ll be making tons more money than in NXT. Those who start from the ground up make about $25K/year, while those recruited from the indies (like Steen) make $45K and up.
At least he’s not going to wind up like Fandango, who was pure gimmick. Once his schtick got tiresome, he just faded away…
The Temple is located in Boyle Heights, a barrio on the east side of LA with a 94% Latino population (from what I can tell, the actual location is only divulged to ticketholders) and it looks the part. It definitely feels gritty and underground, as opposed to the bright and clean WWE image. I liked the fact that Dario Cueto’s office is just a plywood hut next to the ring area - besides fitting the motif, it puts him right there near the action instead of in some vaguely defined place backstage.
They clearly have a lot of confidence in their women wrestlers that they let them work with the men and even take chair shots. I did notice that after the chair shot, Sexy Star had her hands covering her face - I think she got busted open and didn’t want to be seen bleeding on camera. Vampiro explicitly calling out “other promotions” that don’t allow intergender matches was a nice touch.
Chavo’s heel turn was well executed and had a good storyline built up - he blew it in the first match and wants to get back in Dario’s good graces, so he goes after Dario’s enemy to prove he’s just as good as the man Dario brought in to deal with them. I’m not sure how I feel about Mil Muertes - they seem to be going for an Undertaker/Bray Wyatt type supernatural heel, but he’s kinda doughy and didn’t have much of a moveset compared to the lighter guys. Wikipedia informs me that he’s a former AAA world champion and that he’s worked in TNA as Judas Mesias, but I’ve never seen him before and I’ll need to see where they go with him before making a judgment.
One thing I noticed that stuck out - during Konnan’s promo, he mentioned that Prince Puma was introduced to him by “an old friend of mine you might know”. That seems to be their code for saying that they’re talking about an ex-WWE performer whose name they can’t use due to trademarks, so I wonder who Konnan’s anonymous friend might be and if he might show up at some point soon. Alberto Del Rio, perhaps? Ultimo Dragon? The original Sin Cara? Someone else?
Yeah, this is my dilemma with NXT guys. I’m invested in these guys; I get to watch them develop from green to confident, capable professional wrestlers. I want them to do well, and I know that financially, if nothing else, the main roster is far more lucrative. But when you compare the quality of storylines/character development, it’s hard not to feel that a move to the main roster would be far less satisfying professionally. It’s even worse with the women–I cannot see someone like Charlotte being in any hurry at all to get to the main roster, other than for the cash.
Anyway, I’m aware of the earlier tag team match promoting Takeover II, but I didn’t really count it as a main roster debut, as it was clearly just a promotional match for NXT. I’m honestly not sure if this was really a “debut” either–the roster’s thin due to the European tour, and they brought him out w/ an NXT logo on the screen. I’m not sure if Main Event plays on regular TV in the UK, but if so, it could be another bit of marketing for the Network. Even if not, I’m thinking this was more just a necessity to fill time on the show rather than a proper debut.
But like I said, this is why I’m generally taking a break from the main roster product other than the PPVs right now. I’ve gotten really cynical from the last few months’ worth of shit programming. In the meanwhile, I’ll get my fix with RoH and NXT, and check out the Lucha Underground thing if I can remember to put it on the DVR.
Now THAT was an episode of NXT. If it weren’t for that debut, I’d say the ladies stole the show–but there wasn’t a dull moment tonight, other than perhaps the Kidd match, which was heavy on the rest holds–but did have a killer fisherman’s neckbreaker.
Ahem.
Dear WWE A-holes,
It is really really really…really bad what you’re doing to Bayley. She is a sweet hawt girl who wrestles really really really…really good. By having her constantly lose to the likes of Charlotte (OK), Becky Lynch (who?) and Sasha Banks (no!) you are ruining her person and make her cry.
If you do not make her better I will be forced to take legal action and sue you for Eleventy Billion Pesos for damage to a sweet young girls personality.
Love,
Teacups
Smapti: If Alberto Del Rio shows up on LU, that would rock. I didn’t like him in WWE, but I think he’d fit in perfectly with LU. I agree Mil Muertas was kind of “eh,” but he’s got a hot valet. Maybe they’ll do something heinous like throw him in a dog pit if he fails to impress.
LawMonkey: Definitely check out LU. Their young guys are top notch, their veterans bring historical and cultural gravitas, and their storylines don’t insult your intelligence as much as WWE’s.
T-Cups: Here’s a hanky. 
Seriously, they’re handling Bayley exactly right. Everybody loves her now, and she’s completely over, so losing doesn’t draw any heat off her. Sasha’s a perfect adversary, and when Bayley beats her at NXT: Secret of the Ooze, there will be much rejoicing.
Oh I know.
It probably didn’t translate, but my snarky parody letter was the exact response that they want. There’s nothing worse (better?) than a sympathetic character losing by the bad guys, and it makes people pine for the victory.
I know she’ll get her revenge at Takeover 3: Take Two: The Third, and I will rejoice.
I also desperately want her to get called up to The Show and end up as the first female Wyatt and have her do a heel turn and wear all black and…I’ll…uh…be in my bunk for a quick second
WWE made some pretty big announcements about their weekly schedule last night.
First is that Smackdown is moving to Thursdays in January, which will put it opposite Impact. Seems like adding insult to injury at this point since TNA is circling the drain anyway, but IMO it makes sense to air it closer to when it’s taped on Tuesdays; as it is, the delay makes watching it almost pointless since you can get detailed spoilers on line long before then, and consequently it almost feels like WWE goes out of their way to not have anything happen on Smackdown that matters.
Secondly, since Smackdown is taking its time slot, NXT will be moving to Wednesdays, which puts it opposite Lucha Underground. This is the more significant move IMO; it seems to indicate that WWE takes LU seriously as competition instead of just a niche market. (Of course, between DVRs and the Network, the dedicated fan can easily watch both.)
Impact actually moved to Wednesdays a couple months ago. This obviously made a huge impression on you…
And even that is kind of up in the air right now. They only have taped episodes for, I think, 2 more weeks. Spike is supposedly going to be airing “Best Of” episodes through December, which is when their current deal runs out, and there has been no newer deal announced.
It took me an hour to watch Smackdown as I ff’ed through all the RAW repeats and Soldier Socks. But there will still parts I liked.
Fact: Tyson Kidd’s douchebaggery is saving his career.
Peep show: Granted, the Bray-Wyatt-disappears-when-the-lights-are-out moments during the Dean Ambrose segment were cheesy, but still fun. They choreographed it well, timing Bray appearing behind Dean’s back and saying boo. Christian’s plugs for his appearances on Haven went over like a lead balloon, however.
Interesting booking for the Kane-Ziggler cagery. Kane slams the door into Zig’s nuts as he climbs out, and Zig in turn smacks him with the door when Kane tries to exit. Nobody can sell like Ziggler. He was hanging on top of the door like the toupee on Donald Trump’s head. He was staggering like a champ on the way out.
Poor Cesaro is getting buried again, which indicates WWE is putting TV presence over ring ability. So what else is new? Adam Rose vs the fucking bunny is getting better press.
I’d say Adam Rose has turned heel, but it’s even worse than that.
He’s become a lemon.
To be honest I don’t get the interest in NXT. Since I subscribed the the network I’ve tried watching it a few times, and every time I just think it’s wrestling with no storylines at all (all I see are straight matches) and mostly guys that don’t have that pro wrestler “look” and have mediocre skills mixed with a few guys who look like they belong in WWE. I’m always confused when people say NXT is the better product, it feels like an indy show (and I’ve been to those), and not in a good way.
It’s a better product BECAUSE it’s wrestling with no storylines, or at least small storylines. Part of the annoyance with WWE is that they have about 2.5 hours of actual storytelling, but they have 5 hours a week to tell it (more if you include the network only house shows of Main Event and Superstars). This leads to tiring storylines and boring filler matches for people who are SUPPOSED to be the best.
From the NXT standpoint, they have a single hour to tell their storylines, so they aren’t deep and mostly just an excuse to have matches. We as viewers also have the opportunity to watch these guys from their beginning, and watch them grow. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Also, it’s the same reason why going to my local double or triple-A baseball game is more fun than seeing the pros. It’s a smaller more intimate environment where you can see the future of the business (or at least people who are trying really hard to do what they love)
plus, I mean, have you SEEN Bayley?!?!
Well we have to disagree about baseball, to me nothing beats a pro-game even though I love minor league games as well. The market reflects this too when you compare what the majors can get for tickets and concessions versus the minors.
I don’t like the fact that sometimes on Raw you’re 40 minutes into the show without a match, then some throw away match, then a Divas match no one cares about, then another 30 minute segment etc–I agree the balance between storyline/wrestling is not good on your typical raw. But good wrestling even back to the old school territory days built off of good story telling, which didn’t mean filling the card with promos or talking segments but it did mean you established a reason the two guys in the ring hated each other’s guts.
Let’s see. I’m sitting here at a bar trying to figure out how to approach this–but since I don’t really want to do an outline and stuff I’m just gonna try bullet points and we’ll see how that goes. I’ll start by responding to the specific points you raise, in no particular order.
[ul]
[li] You’re right: NXT doesn’t have the emphasis on that classic Vince McMahon wrestler “look”. If you want that, NXT is not the place to be. That said, NXT is the future, and for whatever reason, I think they’re shifting away from a focus on that look and into a world where there can be a variety of body types that work in the ring. Generally speaking, I like that–I like seeing guys like Kevin Steen, and Daniel Bryan, and Aleksandr Rusev, and Brock Lesnar all mixing it up on my wrestling show. Different body types, different styles, more variety for me. Sometimes this backfires–see Bull Dempsey for an example–but I think it works more than it doesn’t. [/li]
[li] Skill level will vary, since this is still developmental. You’re going to have guys who’ve been in the indies for years like Sami Zayn, and you’re going to have guys who more or less just walked into the Performance Center off the street (probably after some college athletic career, but not necessarily wrestling and certainly not pro wrestling). Part of the fun is watching them develop and grow into professional wrestlers–e.g., I’m a big fan of Alexa Bliss, and she’s greener than goose shit right now. (Which is probably also why she’s not been on the show lately.) Same goes for the Vaudevillains, though they’re not quite that green. In the months to come, I’m looking forward to seeing these guys build their game. On the other end of the scale, the top performers down there–Tyson Kidd, Sami Zayn, Tyler Breeze, Adrian Neville, Charlotte, Bayley, Sasha Banks–are IMO on a par with anyone on the main roster (to the point that we’ve been expecting/dreading them to move “up” for months now). YMMV, naturally. [/li]
[li] The one point where I think you’re just objectively wrong is the storytelling. No, NXT doesn’t have twenty minute promos, multiple backstage segments, and interminable recaps, but that doesn’t mean they’re not telling stories–it just means they need to be more efficient with their storytelling. You’ve got an hour each week, so the stories are going to be told in brief promos and, most importantly, in the ring. That said, those stories will be told over months–a benefit, I think, of both NXT’s shorter run time and its less demanding PPV schedule. It also means it’s going to be a little bit more difficult to get into those stories, perhaps, when you’re new to the show, but once you’re there every week, you’ll start to pick it up. Just off the top of my head for stories right now, we’ve got: 1) Sami Zayn’s “redemption” angle, which has more or less been brewing for years, if I understand it. 2) Bayley (basically the female Sami Zayn, but like a million times more adorbs)‘s journey to earn the respect of her former associate Charlotte, and Charlotte’s face turn in the process. 3) Sasha Banks somehow corrupting Becky Lynch. 4) Marcus Louis going insane after losing his hair in a hair vs. hair match w/ Enzo and Big Cass (in which his hair wasn’t actually on the line). 4) Carmella (this one is too new to really be one hundred percent sure what’s going on right now–possibly sowing dissention w/ Enzo and Big Cass). 5) Hideo Itami proving that evil always wins, because good is DUMB. Wait, no–Hideo and Finn Balor giving The Ascension their comeuppance because they fucked up Hideo’s debut. 6) Baron Corbin establishing himself as an unstoppable badass with some amazing ink who is also a werewolf or something? [del]7) Bull Dempsey being a fat man-baby with the world’s shittiest finisher.[/del] Anyway, I may have missed some, but there’s plenty of stories and storytelling, and almost every match contributes to a story–contra the main roster, where you can expect some meaningless midcard matches because of the need to burn time pretty much every week. [/li]
[li] You do, in fact, get some pretty solid matches with plenty of time to breathe almost every week. This last week could’ve almost been a triple main event–Zayn-Breeze, the women’s tag, and the Balor debut were all main event quality. Which is not to say you don’t get the occasional squash, and sometimes they try to force too many matches into a single show. But usually, matches get exactly as much time as they need. [/li]
[li] Women are treated with a modicum of respect. This is a world without Total Divas (other than Tyson and Nattie), and a world in which women regularly have storylines that have nothing to do with men, or with bitches bein’ crazy, or thinly veiled lesbianism. See, e.g., the present women’s storyline that’s going on, which is entirely contained within the relationships between Charlotte, Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch and Bayley. No dude has anything to do with it. Not only that, but their matches are full-blown, 15-20 minute affairs that focus on actual wrestling. You may or may not be into women’s stuff–god knows the main roster teaches us that it’s time to take a leak, make a sandwich and grab another beer. But there is no denying that the women are treated with a respect at Full Sail that’s difficult to imagine happening on the main roster. [/li]
[li] For the most part, babyfaces actually act like good guys, instead of dickfaces. There are exceptions here–Enzo and Big Cass are actually kinda jerks if you stop and think about it, and I probably wouldn’t want anything to do with them in RL, yet in NXT they’re faces. But to the best of my knowledge, Sami Zayn has pretty much always been a stand-up guy, and I’ll have to cut you if you try to tell me Bayley’s ever been mean to anyone. Contra John Cena dropping poop on people. For example. [/li]
[li] Finally, the Full Sail crowd. This is actually a bit of a problem for NXT as a developmental territory; Full Sail reacts differently than the crowd at your typical Raw or Smackdown, for a variety of reasons, and people who are over as hell w/ Full Sail, like Adam Rose and Bo Dallas, may crash and burn on the main roster. And yes, they’ll occasionally get too smarky for their own good, and when we’re on the last show of a taping (as we were this last week), they’ll be kinda dead–you can’t blame them for that, they’re going into their fourth hour of watching wrestling. But for the most part, they’re great, and they bring a whole other “it factor” to the NXT experience even for those of us watching at home. They’re smart, they’re often funny, I suspect a lot of them come to every taping. They give us moments of beauty like “Bayley’s gonna hug you!” chants and counting the seconds on a Baron Corbin squash match. [/li][/ul]
Anyway, that’s my thoughts. Other than the storylines, a lot of this stuff is probably YMMV; if NXT doesn’t work for you, it won’t work for you.
Adding (as I think I’ve missed my edit window by now):
Check out Takeover II if you have a couple hours to kill. I’m pretty sure they did an excellent job recapping the storylines leading up to the main event with video packages, so you can see the storytelling that’s been going on over months, condensed into a few five minute videos. And then the main event itself continues that storytelling, with a lovely little twist at the end that set up the next story perfectly.
(I think they also did a recap on the Charlotte-Bayley match, but can’t recall–but I know they had four separate video packages for the gentlemen in the 4-way.)
And I’ve honestly only come back since WM30 after missing most of the previous 10 years of wrestling. I signed up for the Network and tried NXT a few times and just didn’t like it, it sounds though like there may be longer term story telling that make it worth actually watching a few weeks consecutively to see what they’re doing (the handful of times I’ve watched it have never been consecutive weeks.)
I think I also have a pretty mixed opinion on the wrestlers I see in WWE that emerged since I’ve come back that I knew were NXT guys:
-Bo Dallas - I understand he was the NXT Champion so I’m guessing was a big name there. I have mixed opinions on him (I know he’s Bray’s brother), the Bo-lieve stuff is somewhere in between “heh, pretty funny” and “this is dumb”, he seems to be pretty decent as an in-ring talent.
-Adam Rose - This guy has no redeeming qualities, I’ve never once seen a segment with him on RAW/Smackdown where I was happy to be seeing this guy on TV.
-Rusev - I actually really like Rusev, and I agree he’s a body type that would have been excluded from the old school days of Vince. He’s huge and a powerlifter, but on a 6’0" frame, which creates a big stocky look that wasn’t typical of guys Vince liked. I’ve seen Rusev and his gimmick get some flak, but to me he does a few things that are really important to me in a wrestler. One is that he sells really well, he’s a monster heel that has won almost all his matches since “moving to Moscow” (he’s lost a few by DQ) but he’s not a Goldberg type bad wrestler. He sells, and selling is wrestling (because without it, wrestling cannot exist.) He does have a formula he follows at the end with the big side kick–>stomp to the back–>accolade but other than that if you review his PPV matches against Big E, Mark Henry, Swagger, Big Show and then later his recent title win over Sheamus I think you see a guy that put together a string of matches where he does a lot of different stuff with workers of widely varying quality. Let’s be honest, guys like Swagger and Mark Henry are among the worst currently active pro-wrestlers (and Swagger’s continual injuring of other wrestlers hopefully sees him fired.)
The biggest thing I like about Rusev is he’s doing 100% what a heel needs to do (and credit for this goes to Lana/C.J. Perry), that guy is getting 100% legit heat anytime he comes to the ring. Guys that fans typically ignored, like Big E and Swagger, both got massive pops anytime they fought against Rusev and that’s solely because of the insane heat he’s generating.
Martin, everything’s a matter of taste, of course. NXT matches aren’t always awesome. There have been some duds. But we have to remember, it’s developmental. The art of creating a wrestling personality that will as Duty Rhodes says, puts asses in seats, combines many aspects: the wrestler’s got to have charisma as well as physical ability, the booker’s got to figure out ways to channel the wrestler’s strength and conceal their weaknesses, and everybody involved has to both stand up for themselves and make their ring opponents look good.
So, some of the matches and personalities involved are experimental, and the crowds can make a difference. It could be a crowd of smarks, like at Full Sail. It could be a high school gym with a crowd of twenty, and half of them are the people who work there. It could be an arena full of nice church-going families. Each type of crowd reacts differently, and the person sitting next to you might have an entirely different opinion than you.
If nothing else, NXT gives viewers the opportunity to be the guy who can brag about being the first to follow a particular wrestler who eventually makes it big. Sometimes their angles suck, but they learn their way around and improve and come up with something better, which can be the complete opposite of what they were before. Steve Austin used to be one of the Hollywood Blondes. Kane used to be Isaac Yankem, DDS. Ryback used to be Skip McGillicuddy. It’s just interesting to watch a wrestling personality grow and develop. If they come up with some gems along the way, that’s a bonus.
Well, here’s the deal with Bo Dallas.
First, he’s the heel who thinks he’s a face. The weasly cheating villain who thinks that he is the hero. Ok, so how does that work on the main roster? Hey. the whole ‘flukey winning streak’ thing is awesome for a while, but it has to end and you have to move on. Sure, they completely blew it the way they ended it, but there it is. So where does Bo go that keeps him on the main roster? Well, he’s the comedy lower mid-card heel, the anti-Santino, who regularly gets his come-upance so that the larger heels don’t have to so much. (Taking that position from Damien Sandow, who finally gets to move to better things.) He also gets fluke wins over bigger names out of the blue, so as to not make him a total jobber and keep people interested.