Kevin Owens

Wrestling Review: WWE NXT (5/27/15)

May 29, 2015 by Colette Arrand Leave a Comment

Last week, NXT aired another live Takeover special, which means that this week was used to hit pause and take a deep breath before soldering on to the next two-hour event that convinces the bored, jaded folks constantly threatening to cancel their subscription to the WWE Network to keep hanging in there for more of that good stuff. Considering that two out of five of Triple H’s prized NXT stars—Sami Zayn and Hideo Itami—are out of action with injuries for awhile, that pause is warranted. But if anybody tuning into a regular episode of NXT for the first time after Takeover was expecting the same kind of breakneck-paced action of that show, then this week’s show is a lesson in tempered expectations. It’s not so much that anything about NXT this week was bad. It’s always a solid hour of wrestling, able to tell its stories in clear, concise, and (mostly) compelling fashion, featuring at least one match that’s worth remembering, but when NXT pumps the breaks, it really pumps the breaks.

Kevin Owens is, of course, preparing for his first match on the main roster, which is, as you may or may not have heard, against John Cena. After putting Sami Zayn out of action last week and crushing John Cena with another pop-up powerbomb, he’s got a lot of momentum on his side and he knows it. He hits the ring to begin the show, entering to Zayn’s music, which he says will never be played again. I don’t envy Owens in this spot at all, as he has to address a lot of moving parts in this promo: Zayn, John Cena, Samoa Joe—and that’s before NXT General Manager William Regal comes to the ring to make clear that he doesn’t appreciate what Owens has done as champion. Their brief exchange is great—I love Owens’ character, a bad man who really believes that his actions are good, and Regal is one of my favorite wrestlers and personalities ever. The NXT General Manager is a thankless role, one that doesn’t get a lot of airtime (which means that it’s honestly a waste of Regal), but this week William Regal makes it count. He’s tired of watching Owens beat his roster up to the point that they have to take a stretcher out of the arena. Last week they teased Regal vs. Owens and brought out Samoa Joe. This week their disagreement brings out Solomon Crowe. Crowe is still newish to NXT but is no stranger to Owens, the two having met in the indies, but their rivalry is considerably less storied than the one between Owens and Zayn, so Owens plays Crowe like a nobody. Crowe’s gimmick is that he’s a computer hacker, but in the ring with Owens he is all nebbish babyface, mad about what Owens did to Zayn. He questions Owens’ moral turpitude and “earns” a main event match against the champion. Owens vows that, just like his other rivals, Crowe will leave the NXT Arena on a stretcher.

With Kevin Owens being pulled in so many directions, NXT has also been focusing on its strong women’s division in a way that no other wrestling promotion on television has proven themselves capable of. After a match of the year candidate against Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch was the subject of NXT‘s best video package, spotlighting her journey from a young woman with a dream to her show-stealing match last week. Alexa Bliss’ sudden allegiance with NXT Tag Team Champions Blake and Murphy means that Carmella will be physically involved in the issue surrounding those titles, and Bliss has an edge to her character beyond the default girl-next-door bubbliness she debuted with. It’s a vaguely defined edge, though, as Blake and Murphy, despite being an able team, don’t really have characters themselves beyond being kind of dirty and maybe into dubstep. That’s been one of NXT’s major failings for me, is how beyond former indie darlings and high concept characters like Tyler Breeze, most of the roster is interchangeable. The point, I suppose, is whether or not they can go in the ring, but it’s nice when NXT provides a template for the lazy, downtrodden Raw and SmackDown! writers so that a call-up isn’t forced to stand around pumping their fists in silence like the Lucha Dragons.

The strongest work this week was put in by Emma, who has taken NXT’s other female cliché (a “change in attitude”) and run with it much farther than I would have expected given her goofy, dance-centered character. That she flopped so hard on Raw and was at the center of a weird shoplifting saga that resulted in her being fired and rehired in short order, so it’s within the realm of believability that her change of attitude is motivated by something real. She’s been saddled with Dana Brooke, who is super green. I wasn’t particularly impressed with her at Unstoppable, and, standing ringside, all she really has to do is flex her rather impressive muscles. Her role, like most roles women play on WWE program, is not unfamiliar to anybody watching Raw or SmackDown!, as Tamina Snuka has been playing it since her debut, for the Usos, A.J. Lee, and now Naomi. While it’s a good idea, a sneaky, bitter heel looking for help in their crusade against another woman, the lady version of the Shawn Michaels/Diesel relationship has yet to really play itself out. There’s no denying that NXT is a much more satisfying experience when it comes to women’s wrestling, but a sketch of an idea is still a sketch of an idea. Why does Dana Brooke do the things Dana Brooke does? Who is she? For that matter, who is Alexa Bliss and why is she hanging with a pair of mean dudes after spending so much time as a bubbly cheerleader who called her moves things like “the sparkle splash?” I appreciate how much NXT focuses on women, but beyond those who’ve had careers outside of NXT or who came to it attached to their father’s legacy, that “focus” often means just being on screen while something else happens.

Actually, that’s become something of a noticeable problem on NXT as time passes and certain stars get called up to the main show: Beyond Triple H’s acclaimed, no-brainer “leaders of the new school” signings and those who had a character before their arrival, the show is almost shockingly bereft of depth. So many of the WWE-bred NXT regulars, like poor Tye Dillenger, look and wrestle in this beyond flavorless manner that suggests there’s little more to them than being dropkick fodder for Finn Bálor. Solomon Crowe represents something of an experiment, a hybrid of WWE’s predilection towards hiring buzzed about indie wrestlers who wouldn’t have stood a chance of signing even two years ago and their penchant for goofy gimmicks. Looking at Crowe, it’s more than a little hard to buy him as some cyberpunk hacker on the fringes of society, and that character did not mesh well with the ancient babyface fire he was meant to channel in the opening segment of the night. As Sami Callihan, he wrestled main events on the indies against Kevin Owens (née Steen), so tonight’s NXT main event is another that’s happened before, but not under the WWE’s bright lights, and not in the WWE’s gadget-heavy ring.

In one sense, it was actually kind of refreshing to see a formerly big match-up turned into a tune-up for Owens as he heads into the biggest match of his life at Elimination Chamber. 1.3 million or so people subscribe to the WWE Network, and Owens/Cena is an exclusive to that platform, but over the past two weeks he has brought his unlikely presence to the largest possible audience for wrestling in 2015, and is, in fact, being billed as the next big thing for it. And it’s not just Owens’ career that’s in the balance here, but the perception of NXT as a brand. WWE has tried and failed to market outsider offshoots of itself for a long time now—Shotgun Saturday Night, the revival of the ECW brand, and the original concept for NXT were failures because, despite branding, they felt a lot like WWE, just with the lights dimmed down a bit. NXT as it is now does not have that problem, as WWE has succeeded in building a bubble universe, an arena full of people whose fervor for what they’re seeing would rival the crowds at an ROH, PWG, AIW, Chikara, or Beyond Wrestling show if there wasn’t such an overbearing sense of mandatory fun at the NXT Arena. Moments like the confrontation between Owens and Samoa Joe are cool, but I think it’s time to recognize that they’re not cool because of anything the WWE is doing, unless we want to say (to admit?) that what WWE is doing is piling money onto a product whose presentation has been mastered by other promotions for a decade plus, and at an operating budget that would make Triple H laugh. It’s not enough to put Samoa Joe and Kevin Owens in the same ring together—the rest of the show, for it really be that much better than the main roster, needs to be clicking at the same level as its indie stars. If that seems like an unrealistic expectation, well, that kind of comes with the territory of booking an indie promotion on a million dollar budget.

WWE NXT: 5/27/15, Tampa, Florida

Emma (w/Dana Brooke) def. Bayley via submission. GRADE: B-
Blake and Murphy (w/Alexa Bliss) def. Elias Samson & Mike Rollins via pinfall. GRADE: C+
Finn Balor def. Tye Dillenger via pinfall. GRADE: C
Kevin Owens def. Solomon Crowe via pinfall. GRADE: B-

Wrestling Review: WWE Raw 5/25/15

May 26, 2015 by Colette Arrand Leave a Comment

I know, I know. I haven’t reviewed an episode of Raw since February. In truth, I just haven’t watched that much wrestling since the build into and great release of WrestleMania. I can’t afford the indies like I used to, and beyond NXT and Lucha Underground, everything I watch (even New Japan Pro-Wrestling) seems content to remain in a post-big show holding pattern that isn’t going to cure me of the fact that, for whatever reason, I’m just flat burnt out on the stuff. World Wrestling Entertainment’s main programming has been stuck in this holding pattern since Survivor Series, for whatever that’s worth, and, heading into this Sunday’s surprise Elimination Chamber special, the company is only capable of manufacturing one or two moments or matches that pique my interest. This Sunday, that match is Kevin Owens vs. John Cena, a dude I stumped hard for when he was on the independents against a guy who I think ranks among the all-time greatest. So, wearily, I turned on Raw to see how that program would build, and was greeted by the WWE roster reciting a speech by Ronald Reagan, who is this (and every) year’s hot president for Vince McMahon, beacon not only of that shining city on a hill, but for the last time McMahon’s now incredibly dated concept of narrative storytelling worked without anybody wondering why nobody on his staff had the guts to tell him “no.”

In a month, it’ll have been four years since C.M. Punk dropped his famous “pipe bomb” promo, the worked shoot where he went off on John Cena and Vince McMahon and Triple H and anybody else he perceived as having held him back despite being the best in the ring, on the microphone, and so on. This ushered in what Grantland‘s The Masked Man dubbed “The Reality Era,” but that’s never really panned out. If anything, what Punk’s sudden ascent marked was the beginning of WWE’s Indie Era, which, like the much maligned WWF New Generation era that launched with the departure of Hulk Hogan in 1993, has had its share of ups and downs. At no other point in wrestling history was it possible for someone like CM Punk to become a star on mainstream television, or Daniel Bryan, or Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose, or, if the Internet has its way, Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens. All of these wrestlers had careers, great careers, before they came to World Wrestling Entertainment, but the fact that they don’t exactly build wrestlers like Hulk Hogan anymore means that it’s possible for somebody who used to toil in an Indiana barn for a bunch of hillbillies who paid $10 to see some blood to rub elbows with Jon Stewart or main event a WrestleMania despite the clear wishes of those writing the show. Punk has, obviously, since left wrestling, disgruntled to the point that he’d rather get wrecked in the UFC and write comic books. Daniel Bryan, who will go down as the biggest success story of the Indie Era, has injured his neck to the extent that he probably shouldn’t wrestle again. NXT is currently a warehouse for former indie darlings to keep wrestling while waiting for a call-up to the main roster, a WWE-built alternative to WWE that, giving credit where credit is due, has largely convinced folks that the WWE, finally, is on the road to something that looks like real, substantive change. That, or everybody is so pleased with NXT that they actively hope that their favorites won’t get the call, because the main roster might take a good thing like Kevin Owens and ruin him.

Those fears are perhaps unfounded, as Owens is showing up on Raw in basketball shorts destroying Cena with his wicked pop-up powerbomb like he’s not a 15-time WWE Champion, but, then again, looking at Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose as they head into a WWE Championship match at Elimination Chamber, perhaps not. This Raw was booked around that match, made unofficial last week when Ambrose threatened to crush Rollins’ head on a pile of cinderblocks—a nice callback to last year’s goofy angle that took the beyond-hot Ambrose out of action for a few months so he could film a movie nobody is going to see. The Authority, which, by now, is Rollins and a bunch of old dudes in suits, opened the show by giving Ambrose the evening to put his name on a contract to make the match official, first inviting him to an obvious ambush (spoiled by Ambrose’s running buddy Roman Reigns), then conspiring to have him arrested for accidentally assaulting a camera man. With Ambrose in jail, all Raw had to do was kill time until the end of the night, when he would obviously be freed and sign the contract. Saved at the last minute by a WWE staff member uploading a video to YouTube (reality!), Ambrose either stole or was allowed to borrow an NYPD van and officer’s uniform, whereupon he returned triumphant to the Nassau Colosseum to rescue Reigns and ink his name on the contract. It was an angle straight out of the Attitude Era, Stone Cold Steve Austin commandeering a zamboni or a beer truck or his own skull-festooned pick-up to ruin Vince McMahon’s night, but the Austin character (and the McMahon one, for that matter) was able to command “reality” in a way the Ambrose one isn’t, or isn’t allowed to. Of all the ex-Shield members, Dean Ambrose has unquestionably been the worst-written since that unit’s dissolution last year, but he’s the one that fans have most latched on to. He’s teflon-coated, whether he’s rolling a hot dog cart to the ring or threatening to make J&J Security work barefooted, like Hobbits. His continued popularity is a testament to the sort of connection that WWE’s indie-bred stars are able to foster with an audience that likely isn’t aware that indie wrestling exists, but it’s a complete mystery to me after a year of goofy, go-nowhere promos that are way too light on the fact that his ex-friend Seth Rollins tried to end his career once.

That said, assuming the goofy garbage of a marquee Dean Ambrose match is left to the side, the in-ring quality of this Sunday’s match will be hard for anything else on the card to live up to. In Raw‘s opening contest, a tag match that saw Ambrose joined by Reigns and Rollins by Kane, the two brought a lot of flash to the now beyond-tired Roman Reigns vs. Kane formula, going so far as to exchange the signature moves of Kazuchika Okada and Hiroshi Tanahashi, two of New Japan Pro Wrestling’s ace performers who are also, more often than not, rivals. And that Ambrose won the match with a backslide and not his finishing maneuver or through disqualification suggests that his match against Rollins, however uninspired Raw‘s storyline was, won’t just be a throwaway title defense on a show otherwise devoted to Cena vs. Owens and the titular Elimination Chamber match.

Given the decidedly low-stakes of both Chamber matches, that’s good. I’m generally not a fan of WWE booking pay-per-views around specific match genres beyond the Royal Rumble—in a medium that requires the occasional bit of surprise spectacle, calling an event Hell in a Cell and giving us three Hell in a Cell matches on it robs us of both—and the return of the Elimination Chamber for a Tag Team Title match and to decide the once-again vacant Intercontinental Championship only reveals how weak the tag team division is beyond the champions and their primary challengers, and how low the current writer’s rooms energies are ebbing. The Intercontinental Championship was just decided in a multi-man ladder match at WrestleMania, and, with June’s Money in the Bank approaching, yet another multi-man ladder match, likely involving a fair number of the men featured in the Elimination Chamber, will take center stage. Thus the build for the Chamber isn’t on the danger of the match itself or the struggle to get into the match, but on the fallout of the John Cena vs. Rusev I Quit match from this month’s Payback, which saw Lana throw in the towel for her man when she heard him say “I quit” in his mother tongue. Their promo on Raw was half-amazing, half-train-wreck, a pile-up of cold war and sitcom marriage cliches largely sold by the fact that Rusev is one of wrestling’s more engaging characters on the microphone, and Lana a rare great managerial presence whose character, sadly, will not work with anybody but her now former charge. Once Rusev convinces Lana to come to the ring, he starts plying her with rhetoric so pig-headed that even the crowd knows they’re watching something sexist, saying that Lana clearly just wants Rusev’s attention, and that he is ready to give it to her. In what is unquestionably the best thing said on WWE TV since Nikki Bella said she wished her sister died in the womb, Rusev tells Lana “I know you want to crush America and the American spirit just as bad as I,” and he means it. The two embrace, and, just as I’m starting to get misty-eyed for this pair of crazy kids, Rusev asks Lana to admit that she was wrong. This, obviously, she does not do. Rusev goes off, saying that he’s done being nice and that, well, he owns Lana. Lana has none of this, says “I am no longer your victim,” and leaves. Here’s the thing. World Wrestling Entertainment has set the bar so low for female characters that this isn’t just a step in the right direction, it’s Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. But then Lana leaves the ring and makes out with Dolph Ziggler to “get back” at Rusev, and that fantasy is over right quick because it’s 2015 and women on Raw can only be defined by how much they hate other women (see every Diva’s Championship feud, including the current issue between Paige, Naomi, and the Bella Twins), or their relationship with a man. The small blessing here is that Rusev would later return fire by beating Ziggler up in front of Lana, putting him in the Accolade while screaming “KISS HIM NOW!” That ruled.

Raw didn’t cure what ails me when it comes to professional wrestling, and, in truth, I’m not sure Elimination Chamber will, either. I know that NXT is out there tearing it up (and yes, Unstoppable was another impressive live special from that crew), and my beloved indies soldier on though I am currently unable to pay for them. WWE thrives because it is the easiest wrestling program to access, and ease-of-access breeds complacency. For too long now, it feels like there’s been talk of “grabbing the brass ring” and little actual follow-through. Owens changes that, maybe, but then again, maybe not. His fellow NXT alum Neville is currently wrestling good-to-great matches on the main roster in near-silence because some idiot decided to call him “The New Sensation” instead of just letting him grow organically. Too much of Raw feels perfunctory, there in hopes that a familiar face or move will get the live crowd to pop, and, as such, it feels like I’m watching the most talented wrestlers in the world do battle in a pool of molasses. It’s gotten to the point that John Cena’s usual pandering to the WWE Universe now includes a caveat that it may, in fact, be time for something new. He was talking about the “LET’S GO CENA/CENA SUCKS” chant finally giving way to a name his detractors could believe in, but I’m not sure the solution is as drastic as having Kevin Owens come in and destroy an already barren planet. Nah. If the roster were doing half as much as Zack Ryder did in his match against John Cena, pushing his envelope way beyond what any reasonable person expected of him because he was wrestling his last match in the arena where he learned to love wrestling, we’d be doing just fine. Sure, Ryder ate shit on his 450 splash, but I’d rather watch a beautiful failure than a wrestling promotion in cruise control.

WWE RAW 5/25/15 – Long Island, New York

Dean Ambrose & Roman Reigns def. Seth Rollins & Kane via pinfall. GRADE: B
Rusev def. R-Truth via submssion. GRADE: N/A
Ryback def. Wade Barrett via pinfall. GRADE: B-
Neville def. Stardust via pinfall. GRADE: C
Dolph Ziggler def. Sheamus via pinfall. GRADE: C+
UNITED STATES CHAMPIONSHIP: John Cena (champion) def. Zack Ryder via pinfall. GRADE: B
Tamina def. Paige via pinfall. GRADE: D
10 VS. 3 HANDICAP MATCH: The New Day def. Tyson Kidd & Cesaro, The Ascension, Los Matadores, The Prime Time Players, and the Lucha Dragons via disqualification. GRADE: N/A

Wrestling Review: WWE NXT (2/25/15)

February 26, 2015 by Colette Arrand Leave a Comment

Watching NXT this week, I was reminded of classic World Wrestling Federation style storytelling from the late 80s and early 90s, the Saturday to Monday cycle of somewhat competitive squash matches that exist to promote live shows, both on pay-per-view and in the Civic Centers and National Guard Armories of small town America. NXT is leaving Full Sail University for a series of untaped live shows in the midwest, and these hour-long episodes do build to live specials meant to be seen by the WWE Network’s one-million subscribers. The difference between NXT’s storytelling cycle and the old WWF’s is a matter of time and talent; NXT has less of the former and more of the latter.

As a compromise (a blessed, wonderful compromise), NXT begins with the announce team welcoming us to the show and entrances for the first match. This is a great formula. The wonderful miracle of NXT, even when the matches on the show aren’t in the indie dream match format of the Takeover specials, is that so much of its character work is done in the ring. The first match, Hideo Itami vs. Bull Dempsey, doesn’t have much of that, though it does reestablish a diminished Bull as a physical threat. Itami, still adjusting to the WWE style, is coming along quite nicely. Beyond his match against Tyler Breeze, this is my favorite effort of his under the WWE banner. Dempsey, when he’s not being asked to feed into Baron Corbin’s horrible-looking big dude offense, is convincingly tough, and he spends the whole match beating up the man formerly known as KENTA. Itami, long used to the sort of punishing big dude offense that is quite popular in Japan, makes Dempsey look like a monster at times, particularly when the two collide head-on. Itami only needs a tiny opening to get his kicks in, though, so all of Dempsey’s bullying is for nothing. Itami’s dropkick variations are enough to win him the match. Celebrating on the ramp, though, Itami is ambushed by Tyler Breeze. Not happy with his loss to Itami at Takeover, Breeze tries to embarrass the Japanese superstar by taking a selfie of himself with Itami’s prone body in the background. But he can’t get the angle right, even with the aid of his selfie stick, and Itami comes right back on him. Breeze is able to escape Itami’s wrath before taking too many kicks, and it looks like we’ve got a real issue between the two. In my fantasy booking scenario, Breeze recruits Dempsey in his effort to derail Itami’s career, promising him a makeover in return for his protection. That’s what I want—a queer HBK/chubby Diesel team-up scenario. Chop chop, NXT.

There’s a promo video for The Brian Kendrick, who is this week’s special return. It’d be great if, instead of spoiling the fact that Kendrick is tonight’s return (something they did because, when taping four weeks of television at once, a big return like this will be spoiled online), they had him meet backstage with NXT General Manager William Regal, perhaps set up a reason why Kendrick is immediately wrestling the #1 Contender to the NXT Championship. The one thing I don’t quite understand about NXT is its aversion to promos that last longer than thirty seconds. Not that the show isn’t good without them, but as a developmental space it seems worthwhile to see how well these characters do in longer skits and angles. Also, I want more William Regal, especially if he’s no longer part of the announce team. As tired as I am of the General Manager gimmick, Regal is a big exception.

The Lucha Dragons, looking to regain their Tag Team Championship form, wrestle against the blue-chip team of Tye Dillenger and Jason Jordan. Before the bell rings, however, the WWE Network feed is hacked by Solomon Crowe. He does every former indie darling’s debut NXT promo, which is to say that he’s all about that NXT Championship. He mashes one of his hot dog colored fingers to the screen of his tablet computer and we’re back to the ring. That’s not a good advertisement for the security of the Network, but I’ll flip if he threatens to release the credit card information of everybody who subscribes if Regal doesn’t give him a title shot. In the ring, Jason Jordan is able to handle the speed and agility of Kalisto and Sin Cara quite handily. He’s pretty clearly the breakout member of this tag team that nobody cares about. He tags to his partner, who is pretty sure he’s got things even though the Dragons are able to quickly overwhelm him. Jordan calls for a tag, but Dillenger tells him to relax. When Dillenger finally goes for a tag, Jordan is done with him. He drops from the ring apron and bails, leaving Dillenger to fend for himself. He very quickly loses. After a commercial break, Tye Dillenger is still in the ring. He is really, really mad at Jason Jordan and demands he come to the ring so they can settle this 45-second long rivalry. Instead, he gets Baron Corbin. The two have a match. It’s a Baron Corbin match, though, and Dillenger just got beat up by two dudes, so he eats Corbin’s finish and goes home. Later, in a 10 second promo, Jason Jordan says that he did what he did because he did what he did, and he’ll explain himself when he’s ready. It’s really weird how this tag team break-up angle is happening with a team that has never mattered to the overall fabric of the show.

In other promos, Charlotte, despite taking the loss at NXT Takeover: Rival, is confident going into her rematch with Sasha Banks, since Sasha has never beaten her one-on-one. Finn Bálor is ready for Kevin Owens, but can’t afford to look past The Brian Kendrick. Rhyno is backstage, looking like a tough old bastard over-burdened by his muscle and desire to cut people in half. He explains that he’s back because NXT inspired him to find the fire and drive he once had, and because he likes crushing fools with the Gore. Again, and particularly for the likes of Charlotte and Finn Bálor, it’d be great to see these run a little longer than one question and a 30-second reply. To return to the NXT/World Wrestling Federation comparison, feuds were frequently continued via backstage interviews that functioned like a conversation, and the interviewers themselves had identifiable personalities and ongoing relationships with the talent. “Let me tell you something, Mean Gene” is as much a part of the wrestling lexicon as Hulk Hogan’s three demandments, and the old WWF presentation style filtered over onto ESPN, where SportsCenter anchors had their own tics and catchphrases. It’s something that’s coming back into the main product through figures like Renee Young, but slowly. Similarly, I wouldn’t be averse to a full-time return of picture-in-picture promos during the early parts of matches. I like a lot of the characters on NXT, and any way I can see and hear them is good, both for me as a fan and them as a performer.

Despite any assertion to the contrary, the NXT women’s division is not booked as a response to what’s happening on Raw or SmackDown!, but the work being done in developmental does hint at some hope for the future. Bayley’s character wouldn’t be given the time of day on Raw, but here she’s been subtly progressing as an in-ring character for some time now, from her beginning as a hug-loving comedy character who made her way into the hearts of the NXT Universe to her current place as a skilled wrestler trying to achieve her dream of championship glory. Lynch, too, has adapted to her aggressive, grungy gimmick rather well, despite whatever misgivings Corey Graves has about the kind of music she listens to. I really like Bayley here, using old-school sledgehammer blows and keeping constant pressure on her opponent without looking to the crowd for approval. She goes for a belly-to-belly suplex off the turnbuckles but is shoved off and snaps her arm on the rope. She keeps fighting, but her weakened arm leaves her vulnerable. Lynch counters out of another belly-to-belly and catches Bayley in an armbar, which she transitions into a nastier-looking armbar for the win. This has been an interesting pattern in the women’s division of NXT, the use of submissions that become a more effective variant of the submission, and I really like it. It’s like when Kurt Angle started adding a leg grapevine to his ankle lock to trap his opponent, only here its not part of the wrestler’s normal routine. It’s an added bit of drama that makes Bayley look better for not tapping out to the initial permutation of the move, and makes Lynch look more sadistic for finding the next variant.

Though a significant amount of time on the show and online was spent building to The Bryan Kendrick’s re-debut, the opening half of his match against Finn Bálor is mostly about the unsettling presence of Kevin Owens, who provides guest commentary. The vibe of NXT when Owens is around is much different from when he’s not. While nobody on the commentary team doubts him when he says that he wrestles for his family, it’s his sadism that everybody is upset with, especially considering his friendship with Sami Zayn. Owens is actually pretty phenomenal in this role, adding a lot to a match that is worked slowly to accommodate the storyline at the commentary table. Kendrick tries to get back into the ring at one point by flipping up and over Bálor and tweaks his knee. When Bálor gives Kendrick some spact to recover, Owens tears into him. “That was a gift,” he says, which is true. “That’s why Finn Bálor won’t beat me.” It’s really good, both in establishing Bálor as a face and Owens as a bully, family or not. From there, Alex Riley, a man formerly known as the “Varsity Villain,” questions Owens’ methods and says that, as a man, he wouldn’t have done what Owens did to Sami Zayn. Owens decides to leave commentary. Just the way everybody at the table is blocked, shoulders slightly turned from Owens, does a great job of putting over how little the champion is liked by those covering his career. It takes away from what’s happening in the ring, as the camera stays with commentary during several audibly loud bumps.

That disconnect between in-ring action and Owens’ storyline aside, Kendrick and Bálor have a pretty good TV main event. Unlike Rhyno’s re-debut last week, which was all about the image of Rhyno as a returning monster, Kendrick is decidedly a guy on Finn Bálor’s level—if NXT existed in 2009, he would have been its unquestioned ruler. That Bálor didn’t take advantage of Kendrick’s knee comes back to haunt him for a bit, as Kendrick is able to work a slick tornado DDT and nasty-looking tiger suplex in around Bálor’s dropkick-heavy offense. He’s unable to hit his finisher (Sliced Bread or The Kendrick, depending on your level of familiarity with the guy), but turns around and takes a huge lariat from Bálor. That lets him hit his big dropkick into the corner and his double stomp, and Bálor is your winner. Kevin Owens is back out on the ramp, watching Bálor celebrate. Bálor wants the champion to get into the ring, but Owens has other ideas. He keeps eyeing Alex Riley, who can see doom approaching on his monitor. Owens grabs Riley by the lapels of his suit jacket and hurls him over the commentary table. It’s a good-looking bump Riley takes, perhaps the most impressive of his career, and it adds another layer to Owens’ status as a widely unliked champion. Bálor looks on as Owens makes his way to the back, content that his attack on the ex-wrestler sent a message to his next challenger.

Results

Hideo Itami def. Bull Dempsey via pinfall. GRADE: C+
The Lucha Dragons (Sin Cara & Kalisto) def. Tye Dillenger & Jason Jordan via pinfall. GRADE: C+
Baron Corbin def. Tye Dillenger via pinfall. GRADE: N/A
Becky Lynch def. Bayley via submission. GRADE: B
Finn Bálor def. The Brian Kendrick via pinfall. GRADE: B

Wrestling Review: WWE NXT (2/18/15)

February 19, 2015 by Colette Arrand Leave a Comment

After the excellence that was NXT Takeover: Rival, there’s nothing wrong with a show like this, a cooldown effort that exists largely to set the next month or two of storylines up. NXT General Manager William Regal (long may he reign) sets the tone early. Anybody concerned that Sami Zayn was cheated out of the NXT Championship at Rival should know that titles can change hands due to referee stoppage. Kevin Owens is well and truly the man, and tonight is a new era. To launch it, Kevin Owens will fight against the runner up in the NXT Championship #1 Contenders Tournament, Adrian Neville. Neville, still Zayn’s friend, is not happy with the (perfectly legal) way in which Owens won the belt, and is out for revenge. That’s a good match, and one that works with Regal’s declaration of a new era. Neville was the NXT Champion for a long time, from the origin of the WWE Network until Zayn was able to finally take it away. That’s an era. And Owens, whose brutality is unlike anything seen on NXT, represents a step up. Owens says as much when he tells the NXT Universe that Sami Zayn is in the past, and that the future is Finn Bálor. After stating once again that he fights for a better future for his family (what a mean dude!), he tells Bálor that he is ready whenever the #1 contender has a date in mind.

The first representative of NXT’s new era is…Rhyno, a guy who was last seen on WWE television in 2005, on the ECW throwback pay-per-view One Night Stand. Rhyno hasn’t entirely disappeared from wrestling, as his physique shows, but between stints on TNA’s Impact Wrestling, Ring of Honor, and other independent promotions, the shock of his return, unlike the shock of a novelty return during the Royal Rumble, is real. The crowd loses their collective minds when the word RHYNO pops up on the ‘Tron, and the dude acquits himself so well that he is spared the ignominy of a “YOU’VE STILL GOT IT” chant. Beyond a few poorly chosen tattoos, Rhyno looks really good squashing Elias Samson with a belly-to-belly suplex and a Gore, an the fact that he’s going to be around for awhile is quite interesting. The announcers put over how NXT is frequently considered the future of the WWE, but that it might also serve as a proving ground for old warhorses with something left. As Finn Bálor talks about his future opportunity against Kevin Owens, he is interrupted by Rhyno, and I guess that’s a match we’re going to get out of this. I’m all for it. This is subtly a really smart use of an old veteran, as beyond the nostalgia pop he’ll get from the crowd, Rhyno was actually one of the best mid-card performers the WWE had during what may have been their in-ring peak from 2001 to 2003. NXT continues to signal that the future of the main WWE product lies within the boundaries of a wrestling ring, so having somebody who excelled at that working with the next generation can only be a benefit.

The other indicator of a “new era” was the debut of Solomon Crowe, which has been hinted at through various small scale “hackings” of NXT’s promotional videos. He came out of nowhere to attack CJ Parker, the environmentalist character who takes a good beating and is frequently upset with how he is left off of NXT shows. He threatened to hijack NXT, to take over Takeover as it were, and went about stringing caution tape from post to post. Crowe blindsided him, put some of his aggro power moves on poor Parker, then allowed us to get back to our regularly scheduled programming. It was… not the best NXT debut I’ve ever seen? Crowe’s character is that he’s a hacker, and most of the pictures I’ve seen of him since he left the indies had him in a suit, toting around an iPad with a sticker on it. I’m glad that’s not how he looked here (he wore a scuzzy leather and pyramid-stud jacket and caveman singlet), but either Crowe is doing his hacking from a tanning bed and has gone mad from exposure, or somebody else is uploading his goofy graphics for him. Who knows if it will work, is what I’m saying. In front of this crowd? Probably. Beating up CJ Parker tells us absolutely nothing, though, so we’ll have to wait and see.

Squash matches are the order of the evening, as challengers to championships need to be established, and new champions need to establish their reign. The Vaudevillains, once a formidable tag team, are easy pickings for Enzo Amore and Colin Cassady, who are something of a Jersey scumbag upgrade of the New Age Outlaws. Enzo is one of NXT’s more talented smack-talkers (in fact, he once claimed that his Jedi name was “Smacktalker Skywalker”) and Colin Cassady is able backup (though the audience does not like their lady third, Carmella, presumably because attractive women hanging around Enzo and Big Cass doesn’t fit the slashfic headcanon the straight male dudes booing her have authored), but man will it be interesting to see them in a match that’s longer than three minutes. Also, while I’m hardly a fan, it’s worth mentioning that the Vaudevillains have worked pretty hard at establishing their tag team schtick, and that it’s something of a surprise to see them get crushed so handily. Less surprising is the fate of Ol’ Blue Pants, known on the indies as Leva Bates, the surprisingly popular jobber to the stars who pops up so regularly that she has a TitanTron, a theme song (sung by Big Cass), and an entrance. Leva is hardly the most talented woman working the independents, but she’s able enough when required to take a beating, which she does. Sasha takes her out quickly with her knee drop in the corner and the Banks Statement (which is not a good name for anything), then tells the NXT Universe that everybody, especially the women she beat for her title, need to respect her. Based on video testimony from Bayley and Becky Lynch, it appears that they do.

Oh, video testimony. At NXT Takeover: Rival, Sami Zayn was knocked out and declared unable to continue the match. It was a good, surprising finish to a great match, with the speculation being that Zayn would be “suffering from a concussion” while Owens made NXT his own. But the lead WWE Physician assures us that everything was fine with Sami after the match, just that things during the match made it seem like he was unable to defend himself. He’s off on the Abu Dhabi tour and will come back fine. That… hmm. I hate to review a wrestling show as if I’m counterbooking it, but saying that Zayn got powerbombed so hard that he pretty much went on vacation is much less effective than saying that he needs time to recover from nearly being beaten to death by a man he once thought of as his best friend. When Zayn comes back and is really angry about what Owens did (which was win a match legally), the question on my mind is going to be why he didn’t skip the Abu Dhabi tour to get him some revenge.

Were it not for the fact that Adrian Neville has reason to be mad at Kevin Owens, the whole revenge angle to this week’s main event would have been shot, too. But Neville had the evil put on him by Kevin Owens two months ago in a match that ended in a draw, and a victory over the newly crowned champion would put him in line for a title shot. In one of his best interviews to date, Neville said that he felt more like a hunter this time around than the hunted, and he puts that old cliché to work as he jumps Owens before the bell. The champion is able to get on track briefly, catching Neville with an early gutbuster, but after a second attempt at the move leads to him getting spiked on his head with a DDT, it’s all Adrian Neville. Owens, try as he might, is unable to put some distance between himself and his opponent, unable to find the time to recover. Neville is on top of his game tonight, too. He’s quick with his strikes. He’s reckless with his high-flying moves to the outside, particularly with a 450 splash from the ring apron to the floor. His ability to lift Owens up and dump him on his head is quite impressive, as he not only scores a quick German suplex with the momentum of the ropes, but manages to deadlift his much heavier opponent from the canvas. Owens is able to get back into the match by throwing his weight at Neville, but for a long time here it looks like he won’t be denied. Neville counters Owens’ corner cannonball into a superkick and a reverse rana, but the ensuing two count and the time it takes to drag the champion into the corner for the Red Arrow allows Owens to roll out of the way. Neville tries to charge in after he recovers from the landing, but Owens catches him with the pop-up powerbomb, and in two weeks Kevin Owens has secured victories over two men who, more than any other, have come to define NXT.

In its pre-taped, one hour iteration, NXT is a very good wrestling show. It has a number of stories to tell and is able to do so quickly and nimbly. But, like this week’s Raw, appreciating the way the pieces move on the board is not the same thing as enjoying the show. Rhyno’s return is worth watching in full, as is the main event. But unless squash matches or the characters in them are your thing, there is a lot about regular, weekly NXT that is inessential. Not that it isn’t good, because it very frequently is. But when a show ends with Kevin Owens thrusting his title in the air over a fallen ex-champion, I find myself wanting NXT to do that more than I want it to bum around with Blue Pants.

Results

Rhyno def. Elias Samson via pinfall. GRADE: C+
Enzo Amore & Colin Cassady (w/Carmella) def. The Vaudevillains (Simon Gotch & Aiden English) via pinfall. GRADE: C
Sasha Banks def. Ol’ Blue Pants via submission. GRADE: C
Kevin Owens def. Adrian Neville via pinfall. GRADE: B+

Wrestling Review: NXT Takeover: Rival (2/12/2015)

February 16, 2015 by Colette Arrand Leave a Comment

When Roman Reigns won the 2015 Royal Rumble and #CancelWWENetwork trended worldwide on Twitter, there seemed to be this hitch in the sentiment, a slight hesitation: There would be a new live NXT special, and it would feature Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens reprising a feud that, for many, ranks as the best in the history of the independents. More than CM Punk’s tumultuous rise and fall, and more than Daniel Bryan’s ascendence to the top of the card, the story of Sami Zayn vs. Kevin Owens is the most unexpected development in recent WWE history—that a skinnyfat (to steal a line) French Canadian who used to work under a mask and a normalfat French Canadian wrestling in basketball shorts and a tanktop would be deemed “the future of this business” by no less a scion than Triple H, and after the pair had been deemed worthless by former Ring of Honor booker Jim Cornette for being too indie for the most indie of indie feds, is truly incomprehensible. Those who were hoping for this generation’s Guerrero/Benoit WrestleMania XX moment from Punk and Bryan, some verification that the “wrestling” in World Wrestling Entertainment is of ultimate importance, were putting too much weight on what is ultimately an overblown pop-culture novelty that places more emphasis on Mania than anything else. Whatever book that gets written about Triple H’s “book that never ends” begins here, in the only environ that’s more constructed than WrestleMania, The NXT Arena at Full Sail University. If this is the future, then the WWE is in awfully good shape.

Beyond Lucha Underground, there is no televised wrestling show that is more competently, completely booked than NXT. NXT Takeover: Rival featured five matches, and all five of them, regardless of their quality, had a reason for being on that show. Hideo Itami and Tyler Breeze, who opened the show, were in something of a battle of runner-ups in the NXT Championship #1 Contender’s Tournament. Baron Corbin and Bull Dempsey have been bullying each other for awhile now in an effort to establish themselves as the baddest big man in town. The Lucha Dragons were trying to avenge an upset loss of their NXT Tag Team Championships to the upstart tandem of Team Thick. And then there were the co-main events, a fatal four way for the NXT Women’s Championship and a one-on-one contest between Zayn and Owens for the NXT Title. Both feuds have long, extensive histories behind them, equally impressive in terms of what NXT’s writers are willing to do both with extra-WWE history (Zayn and Owens) and a women’s division whose championship feuds aren’t contested largely on grounds of petty jealousy, body-shaming, or the “bitches be crazy” mode of storytelling that is, depressingly, the one button the team writing Raw and SmackDown! know how to push. On “Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s podcast, Triple H said that writing that third hour of Raw is the most difficult creative task in WWE. While I hardly think that cutting that hour would fix all the problems, the NXT Takeover specials have proven to be a model for the kind of storytelling a compressed timeframe necessitates. With no time for a 30-minute speech to set up the night’s events, we’re given a dramatic recap video that’s as good as anything produced for the main event feuds on the main shows, our hellos from the announce team (Rich Brennan, Corey Graves, and Jason Albert), and head straight for the ring.

The first contest will likely be the least buzzed about in the months that follow, but Hideo Itami vs. Tyler Breeze is proof that the NXT system is working in more ways than one, both in developing “WWE guys” (Breeze) and in working out the kinks of wrestlers who are coming in from different systems (Itami). Hideo Itami was one of the most respected professional wrestlers in Japan, where he competed as KENTA, but his initial transition to the WWE and its in-ring style has been somewhat of a non-starter. His debut was the platform from which Finn Bálor launched himself, and, beyond a few flashes of brilliance, he’s yet to really have a signature match. Of the group including him, Bálor, Adrien Neville, Sami Zayn, and Kevin Owens, Itami faces the hardest transition, both in terms of style and culture. As for Breeze, he was the star of the main event of NXT Takeover: Fatal Four-Way, but saw his position on the card slip as more renowned talent from the independents and Japan made their debuts. He’s a tremendous talent who works his gimmick (“part man/all model” as the theme song goes) so well that it would actually be a shame to see him transition over to Raw, where 15,000 fans and three disinterested announcers wouldn’t give it the time of day. Here in NXT, things like a fuzzy selfie stick and a screaming ladyfan getting too grabby are worthwhile touches to an already masterful piece of characterwork. Itami tries to start out by kicking the pretty out of Breeze in retaliation for an attack backstage, but Breeze maneuvers his way behind the referee and uses that diversion to take advantage early. Avoiding Itami’s kicks is Breeze’s angle here, but he can’t hope to do so as Itami is at least as quick as Prince Pretty, if not quicker. Before long, Itami has Breeze on the mat and lights him up with a scintillating kick to the chest—either Itami is putting extra oomph into them in his first live singles match or he’s figured out how to slap his knee, as is the fashion. Whatever. Some things are still magic to me. The sound of flesh slapping on flesh, for instance. Breeze, meanwhile, does a superhuman job of selling those kicks and Itami’s momentum. His character has also undergone a very subtle change in ring, moving from a psychological need to preserve his looks to a desire to finally clinch the NXT championship. As such, his wrestling is much meaner than it used to be, the way he takes advantage more wily than in the past. Hideo Itami has more experience than Tyler Breeze, but Breeze has more experience in the WWE style, which, in NXT, is paramount. The resulting match isn’t a clash of two styles, but a story of one hugely hyped international prospect finally figuring out the learning curve against a guy who feels like he’s been looked over in favor of shiny new signings. That’s a solid foundation for a wrestling match, and what they build on top of it is really quite impressive.

The rest of the first half is not good. NXT is frequently great, but it is still an extension of WWE’s development program, an effort to get their young workers camera ready while simulating the pressure of a main roster show. Some guys, like Bull Dempsey, are competent enough but just have nothing going for them. Others, like Baron Corbin, have a long way to go before they’re camera-ready, but are there because of their size. Dempsey was formerly the bully of the roster, taking down chumps left and right in “impressive” fashion, but then Baron Corbin hit the scene with his height, his ability to brood, and a fake biker/wolfman aesthetic, and now its his job to beat people in less than a minute. That got Dempsey envious enough to cost Corbin in the #1 Contender’s Tournament after two decisive losses, setting up this no-disqualification match. Corbin is terrible, pretty much all size, so it’s on Dempsey to lead the match. He does a capable job until its Corbin’s turn to take over, blowing a spot so badly that the happy-go-lucky, mostly self-involved NXT Universe actually boo them. Corbin can barely lift Dempsey for his finishing move, The End of Days, which, in addition to being a terrible Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, is also a terrible-looking thing to do in a wrestling ring. Following that is a match for the NXT Tag Team Championships between The Lucha Dragons, who have the worst official tag team name in wrestling, and Buddy Murphy and Wesley Blake, who, having once been called “Team Thick,” have the worst unofficial tag team name in wrestling. Kalisto and Sin Cara, the Dragons, are both capable high fliers, but both men are off tonight, and Murphy and Blake—two ex-cowboys who retired their cowboy hats when they heard about this new dubstep thing everybody seems to like—aren’t able to help them. The two teams keep exchanging moves, reversals, and blown, awkward spots with one another until it’s over. I can’t tell if the two teams were working too fast or if they were trying to work to fast and just couldn’t hit the pace they were looking for, but there was very little to like about this beyond the closing sequence. If there’s one thing that’s consistent across every WWE brand, it’s the irrelevance of the tag team division. Whether or not they’re able to build something around these two teams remains to be seen.

After that, though, this NXT Takeover special is hot fire for about 90 minutes. It never stops. It never lets up. The first contest is simplicity itself, a match to determine who the next challenger for the NXT Championship will be. Finn Bálor and Adrian Neville went through an eight-man single elimination tournament to get here. They also have a history against each other in Japan and bring an extensive knowledge of each other’s game with them to the NXT arena.Kevin Owens weaseled his way into a championship match, but after him there were no clear contenders. Neville had his chance to regain the gold. Bálor, like Owens, is too new to the scene to demand that he has a shot. But the tournament has established that the two are in a different class. Better than Baron Corbin. More “ready” than Hideo Itami. The NXT Championship feels like one of the most important titles in wrestling because of simple, effective storytelling like this, an undercard that is constantly gunning to be the top man on the best wrestling show in North America. On the live specials, Bálor takes it to the next level with his entrance, putting on body paint and Predator dreads and really soaking in the adulation of the crowd. It worked really well in New Japan Pro Wrestling and will probably work really well on WWE pay-per-views, but his special entrance really makes the arena look small, and, in front of the same people who see it every few weeks or so, less special than it should be. I was more into the show Adrian Neville made of putting in his mouthguard, even if mouthguards are, like protective cups, the antithesis of professional wrestling. The two really take their time in building this match up from its entrances to its finish. At first, much is made about how both are wrestling a slower match than anticipated, as both are known for their flying finishing moves, but it’s not so much a “race to the top rope” as it is a test of will an conditioning. Bálor actually hits a double stomp to the back of Neville’s head really early, a killing blow in most matches, but not all plans are fated for success. Once Neville hits one of his big moves (a corkscrew splash from the second turnbuckle, which is unreal), he shows his frustration by taking out his mouthguard and hurling it to the canvas. But that lets Bálor get back into the match with a slingblade clothesline (to the mouth!), which is why you wear your mouthguard. Nice bit of in-match storytelling. The finishing sequence is absolutely breathtaking, with Bálor countering the Red Arrow with knees to the gut, which he transitions into a small package. Bálor follows with his dropkick into the corner, which is being built as the dropkick to end all dropkicks, and crushes Neville with a double stomp to the gut. If this match is indicative of what it means to be in line for a shot at the NXT Championship, then it follows that any match for the NXT Championship should/must be better. In a WWE ring, though, it doesn’t get much better.

The NXT Women’s Championship match was built entirely upon in-WWE history, a fairly complex weaving of characters and storylines that is unlike anything the company has ever done with any permutation of a women’s championship. On Raw and SmackDown!, feuds for the Diva’s Championship, a hideous panoply of rhinestones and butterflies and reproductive organs, feuds are normally based on looks (“Look at Mickie James—she is so fat!” or “I don’t look like a typical diva, so I’m better than all of them!”), romantic ties to men, or the “bitches be crazy” school of thinking that it’s tempting to say that the people in charge of that show, despite the strong game they talk about having strong female role models, don’t see women as individuals worthy of much attention. I remember when the women’s spot at WrestleMania 29 was cut, the argument being “Well, would you have a Bella Twins match at WrestleMania at the expense of seven or eight minutes of John Cena vs. The Rock?” Maybe not, but there’s probably always room for women’s wrestling on a card that features a mini-concert by Puff Daddy. That’s how women are treated on the WWE cards that everybody sees. In NXT, they get this rich tapestry where the Women’s Championship is about on par with the NXT Championship. Charlotte, the daughter of Ric Flair, is the dominant champion of the division. Sasha Banks has been nipping at her heels since the dissolution of their stable, gaining confidence in herself (and her character) with the passage of time. Becky Lynch joined up with Sasha Banks, feeling that she needed a change of attitude in order to be successful, but isn’t the obedient foot soldier Banks demands. Bayley, having come up short in her effort to capture the championship, has realized that success is more important than being friends with people who constantly take advantage of her, and has been more aggressive in chasing her dream without compromising who she is. She’s the dark horse in this match, talking about “having her Sami Zayn moment” where she redeems herself by finally winning the big one, and she has something of a Sami Zayn moment in this match when she slides under the turnbuckles to land a kick on Becky Lynch. Before that, though, there’s a lot of storytelling to get through. Lynch and Banks team up, dividing and conquering Bayley and Charlotte. They eliminate Charlotte from the match for awhile by throwing her into the side of the ring, where one of the dumb LED panels that have no place on a wrestling ring blinks off to signify how brutal the impact was. I’m not a fan of that kind of stuff. Wrestlers are good enough at selling pain to do it without special effects. But it’s a minor thing, because Charlotte gets back into the match without the usual big production of ringside physicians and stretchers and all that.

This is a very good match, full of impressive double and triple team moves that look brutal. Bayley, whose character has always grated on me, was particularly impressive. There was a Fatal Four Way match on an earlier NXT Takeover special where Tyler Breeze, goofy supermodel, surprised a lot of people by being the star of the match. That’s where I was here with Bayley, person who likes to hug everybody. She doesn’t wrestle mean (like Breeze did), but she wrestles like she’s determined to win, less for the fans and more for her. It’s this nice, subtle character arc that should pay off even bigger in a singles match. But the story here is Sasha Banks, who has been blowaway fantastic, and her quest to prove that she is better than Charlotte, who is probably the best product yet produced entirely by the WWE Performance Center. Charlotte is wrestling from behind after getting thrown against the ring, humanizing her somewhat, and the element of chaos added by two other competitors is too much for her. Sasha Banks is never without a plan, zeroing in on Charlotte’s ribs, making it hard for the champion to breathe. When the crossface she has Charlotte in doesn’t work and she finds the champ inching towards the ropes to break the hold, she’s got enough faith in the damage she’s done to transition her submission into a roll-up, which secures the victory. It’s this big, emotional moment for Banks, showing that the seemingly evil “Bo$$” of NXT has a heart, but she largely proved her point, beating the champion and her two top contenders in one fell swoop. She shoos away Charlotte after the former champion hugs her, less interested in a supposed passing of the torch than she is in relishing in her moment. This is the best women’s match on a WWE show since the division was largely imported talent from Japan. It’s also either the best fatal four way match or second best depending on how you feel about the other NXT go at this format, which is usually a boring, convoluted mess. There has always been the potential for a good story here. Finally, away from the bright(er) lights and big(ger) arenas of the WWE’s touring act, they’ve figured out how to tell them.

The main event, too, has a nice story to it, both in the way WWE is telling it (fourteen years of friendship for nothing) and in the reality of the situation, which is that Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn have been inextricably linked throughout their professional lives as partners and as rivals. Even without that past history in the mind, the story leading up to this match made it clear that it was going to be unlike any Sami Zayn match thus far, that all of the fun of his rise was out the window, and that his post as the defender of NXT from the likes of Curtis Axel and Titus O’Neil was all for naught, as Kevin Owens doesn’t care about fun and he doesn’t care about NXT. He’s such a weird, engaging presence as a heel on this program, as he says that he’s been working his entire life to get to this point and that winning the championship means a better life for his wife and children. It’s Sami in the promo videos who sounds like the bad guy, saying that Kevin “changed” when he got married. But in the ring, Owens is a brutalizer, a man whose only desire is to punish whoever is set in front of him, and if it’s a guy who he figures bailed on their plans to make it into WWE together, so much the better. Owens is, in an odd way, being built as the Brock Lesnar of NXT. A cold, relentless throwback to an era that would have laughed at the concept of “sports entertainment.” Here’s a dude who nearly had his nose shoved into his brain in his debut match, who still has that scar, who looks like he wouldn’t mind bleeding some more. He should be set across from Bruiser Brody or Terry Funk or Abdullah the Butcher, but he’s there with Sami Zayn, god help the poor champion, with fourteen years of history and fourteen years of being told that the WWE wouldn’t want a chubby dude in basketball shorts and a tank top.

The announce team compares this match early to the tone of John Cena and Brock Lesnar’s main event at SummerSlam, as it’s all Owens dominating Zayn. But where Lesnar took Cena apart piece by piece, suplex by suplex, there was nothing personal about it. Even with their history, Lesnar was just there to win a title and sit upon his throne of human skulls. Owens takes it to Zayn with strikes. Punches. Kicks. Chops that issue with the concussive force of a shotgun blast. Zayn is the absolute best in the world when it comes to selling, so even Owens’ most basic stuff seems deadly. When he cranks it up, man, it’s like nothing I’ve seen in the WWE in years, even in a Brock Lesnar match. With Lesnar, it’s a matter-of-fact brutality, a neanderthal man overwhelming his opponent through sheer natural ability. Kevin Owens, on the other hand, learned how to be this way, how to turn his girth and his ambition and his spite into weapons. Brock Lesnar is a hateful man. Kevin Owens has hate in his heart. And Sami Zayn isn’t John Cena, who is himself a test-tube freak. Zayn fought and bled and sweat for fourteen years, too, only his experience made him resilient. It taught him to love wrestling and the people who love it. It makes these two perfect foils, Owens as the monstrous bully and Zayn as the heartbroken babyface who refuses to die as a personal point of pride. All Zayn needs is an opening and he can catch Owens with his suplexes and kicks, which are too fast for anybody to stop. Zayn’s offense, to that point, is beautiful. There’s a Rey Mysterio Jr. over-the-referee dive to the outside, a slower, meaner Blue Thunder Bomb, big suplexes. Every time he counters one of Owens’ bombs or kicks out, it feels huge. But he is the victim of circumstance, banging his head on the entrance ramp after catching Owens with a springboard moonsault. Zayn, from that point, is (storyline) concussed. He loses his footing going for a clinching Helluva Kick, and Owens takes over. He is not shy about punching his defenseless “friend” in the head as many times as it takes, nor does he spare him any powerbombs. But Zayn keeps kicking out, won’t quit. Doctors come to the ring to check on Zayn, but it’s Owens who wants to end the match, so he keeps powerbombing Zayn until the referee calls for the bell, stopping the match on account of the champion’s inability to defend himself.

I often find myself unable to engage with NXT as much as I would like. The wrestling is great, world-beating even, and the storylines and writing are frequently so good that it’s hard to believe that the same company behind NXT does such a poor job with Raw and SmackDown! for roughly three-quarters of the calendar year, but I am, generally speaking, not for the “bubble universe” that filming shows in the same venue every single show engenders on a globally-televised product. It’s easy to tell when a crowd that has sat through four tapings of wrestling has become tired and cranky, sick of even their own inside jokes, and when an audience cheers for everything, it’s hard to get an idea of what will actually work on the main WWE stage. The live specials mitigate that somewhat, though chanting things like “HUG IT OUT” at Finn Bálor and Adrian Neville during a tense post-match showdown, or “Z-PAK” while doctors are checking Sami Zayn for a concussion makes me wonder if the people who get to see this stuff live are there for the wrestling or if they are Smart Internet Fans Who Listen to Podcasts and are there just to chant. I want NXT to tour in the worst way. I think that’s the next phase of this experiment, to test out how a guy like Sami Zayn will do in Iowa or North Dakota, where there are independent wrestling fans but not an arena full of them, all in a constant state of orgasm. When I watch NXT, I’m watching to see if these supremely talented men and women can rise above an audience trying its damnedest to turn every match into an instant classic, or if the studio audience is something of a crutch. NXT Takeover: Rival was an event where the majority of the card rose above the noise which so frequently reminds me that, in 2015, it is not possible to watch wrestling without also watching how others watch wrestling. With the exception of two very underwhelming matches, Rival was an instant classic show from the opening bell, capped by a match that rose to the challenge of meeting and exceeding not only a long, storied history of contests between its participants, but by a year that is already heavy with great professional wrestling. Those Smart Internet Fans reacted to Kevin Owens destroying Sami Zayn and the NXT Universe as if they had just seen The Undertaker lose at WrestleMania. People were crying. And Kevin Owens, once told that he didn’t fit the mould, stifled his own tears long enough to hold his newly won championship triumphantly over the corpse of a man he called a friend. Wrestling, especially at its most brutal, is beautiful.

Results

Hideo Itami def. Tyler Breeze via pinfall. Grade: B+
No Disqualification Match: Baron Corbin def. Bull Dempsey via pinfall. Grade: C-
NXT Tag Team Championships: Wesley Blake and Buddy Murphy (champions) def. The Lucha Dragons (Sin Cara and Kalisto) via pinfall. Grade: C-
Finals of the Tournament to Decide the #1 Contender for the NXT Championship: Finn Bálor def. Adrian Neville via pinfall. GRADE: A
NXT Women’s Championship: Sasha Banks def. Charlotte (champion), Bayley, and Becky Lynch via pinfall to win the championship. GRADE: A
NXT Championship: Kevin Owens def. Sami Zayn (champion) via referee’s decision to win the championship. GRADE: A+