I know, you are probably reading that title and thinking… the fuck is he writing about an episode of NXT that happened over a year ago? Well, toward the end of last year, I just completely fell out of love with wrestling. I don’t have a single minded focus when it comes to hobbies, I like to do a wide range of different things, which is probably why I always feel like I never have enough free time. As a result, trying to keep up with The Indies, BritWres, NJPW, AEW, NXT, NXT UK, 205 Live, Main Roster WWE and probably something I forgot, it just became exhausting. First world problems I know, but problems all the same.
I basically had to spend every moment watching wrestling just to be able to keep up with it. Not only did this strip all of the fun out of wrestling for me but it also made me resent it in some ways too, as I also had absolutely no time to do anything else with my free time. However, I’ve still missed watching wrestling, so I decided to come back and just focus exclusively on NXT. I started with the October 2nd episode of NXT as it seemed like a good jumping in point after working my way backwards through current TakeOvers to identify where the seeds for current stories were first planted.
The episode kicks off with a match between Matt Riddle and Adam Cole for the NXT Title. It is disappointing to read about Matt Riddle not really doing much of anything on the Main Roster currently, but then for most fans of NXT being “called up” actually became synonomous with a demotion, rather than a promotion. This fits nicely with Finn Balor showing up here and announcing he is returning to NXT. Thanks to Seth Rollins’ injuring him, Balor’s mainroster run never felt like it ever really started and so I’m honestly happy for him to have another go at it in NXT. They did the right thing in limiting his mic time, too. He has never been good on the mic as far as I am concered, at least while being in WWE.
I will say for me personally, I do have kinda of mixed emotions on this, though. While I am sad his Main Roster run was a disaster - just like with basically all squandered NXT Talent - I really didn’t enjoy Balor’s stranglehold on NXT during his time there. I just personally don’t like long title reigns and I just felt he held the NXT title way too damn long. I really hope they don’t just immediatly throw the title on him and repeat what happened in the past.
Anyway, in terms of that Riddle/Cole Match… it was alright. Exactly the kind of solid 3* TV match NXT is built upon. I do wish they maybe got out of second gear at least once, but they had good in ring chemistry, pulling off some solid sequences and reversals. Plus, the finish was pretty clever in the context, even if Cole’s injury was perhaps poorly utilised.
What is stranger, perhaps, to me is that Riddle was set up strong here. You could argue if not for the stun with the cast, Riddle might have won the NXT Title here. Yet now the match is over, it seems they are moving to set up Balor and Tommaso Ciampa as the next challengers for Cole. Would you really set up Riddle strong, just to immediately replace him and drop him down the card?
I will say that I actually enjoyed the women’s title match later in the show much more, however. This was less of a conventional wrestling contest and more just Shayna Baszler battering Candice LeRae as she fought from under the best she could. Honestly when I was watching NXT week to week I really hated Baszler’s stranglehold on the Women’s Division, but after being away so long, I really enjoyed the spectacle of this.
The final Title Match on the card saw Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly (representing Undisputed Era) versus The Street Profits for the NXT Tag Titles. Now, I have no idea what their stock is like today, but those were two teams people were super high on when I was still watching wrestling and I never really got the hype for either team, at least based on their work in WWE. Accordingly, this match was kinda whatever for me. It never really felt like it properly got going for most of it’s running time, there were a couple of nice individual moments in the clashes of charisma between the two teams but it never amounted to much overall, for me.
In terms of other stuff on the card, a lot of it was kinda unremarkable but then maybe that is by design. I do remember when they increased the run time of NXT but then never really added anything meaningful to the card to justify it and I see that is still true here. You had Gargano and Thorne hit a couple of moves just to seemingly use up some time and get Gargano on the show. NXT was fine when it was an hour, these ballooning runtimes were a big part of what drove me away from wrestling.
Later in the show Pete Dunne and Danny Burch seem to set out to do the same and I’d argue this was the much better match of the two, with Dunne really putting the under appreciated Burch over. However, it was this match that immediately set up an angle when it closed, this would have felt more at home at the end of the kind of match Gargano and Thorne put on. Plus a fued between Damian Priest and Pete Dunne? That is a yikes from me.
Overall, this first NXT Live on USA delivered an enticing package on paper, an almost TakeOver Light style card and the results were about what one would expect. No actual Titles changed hands and none of the Title matches were Match of the Year contenders, but they were all of the quality one would expect from NXT, no one let anyone down. More than that, future feuds are established with popular wrestlers like Ciampa, Balor and Dunne to entice you to come back next week and see where things go.
