The Undisputed Era prophecy comes true , Imperium invade NXT and the entire roster rumbles to end the show! And yes we’re reviewing NXT like this now!
Click the timestamps in the video description below to go straight to any of those stories and learn more!
I’m El Fakidor Laurie Blake and as you’ve seen the WrestleTalk Magazine hits shops in the UK today so look out for that while on your travels and if you fancy travelling down to the comments section below, leave one and answer the question of the day: was NXT’s first live show the best it could have been?
And click the ‘i’ above my head to give your rating of the show – where you can choose from: An EST NXT, Undisputed-ly Good, The Fine-est, 2 Out of 5 Live, Cameron Grimes’ Hat – as I review the 18th September episode of NXT!
Triple H opens the show like he’s in the Iron Man suit or the video for Bohemian Rhapsody.
But as we all know Hunter Hearst Helmsley is not a poor boy and everybody loves him.
He says ‘there are moments in life where everything changes in the blink of an eye, tonight, don’t blink.’ Because surprise, he’s been behind the curtain the whole time!
After Hunter’s Chris Angel antics we get a barnstorming fatal four way between Io Shirai, Mia Yim, Bianca Belair and Candice LeRae to decide the new number 1 contender for the NXT Women’s Championship.
All four women left it all on the mat, this was an absolute spot-fest that left me giddy with just how much they packed in here – and how much they beat the crap out of Candice.
Thankfully the plucky babyface managed to reverse an electric chair into a reverse rana on Yim and finished her off with a lionsault.
Baszler and her cronies came out from the back as Candice was celebrating for the big staredown.
It’s about damn time Candice got some momentum and her vs Shayna is set for two weeks time, the show that goes up against AEW.
Next up, technical savage and caveman toff Cameron Grimes literally squashed Shawn Maluta with the leaping double stomp as Maluta rushed him at the bell.
Grimes then regrettably put his steampunk tophat back on for the celebration.
We then got a very deep voiced promo package for Damien Priest. Who said ‘this is the stage where my name lives forever, Punishment Martinez… I mean Damien Priest’.
Not sold on the Priest character just yet.
We got Velveteen Dream vs Roderick Strong for the North American title to close the first hour of NXT and the only part being shown on the USA network:
damn you Suits! Corporate heels always spoil wrestling.
This was slow to get started but really came alive in the home stretch, with an incredible near fall following a ref bump and some Undisputed Era interference making Dream look like an absolute superstar.
But the numbers game still got the better of Velveteen and a superkick, End of Heartache combo meant 1,2,3 Dream Over but prophecy fulfilled! Dream loses the title but lost nothing really in this defeat.
I’m not convinced UE having all the belts is the best way to bring new viewers into the fold, but for a longtime NXT fan the final image of all four Undisputed guys dripping in gold is enough to get me dripping in me pants.
After a quick bit of faff switching over to the WWE Network we’re back in and Undisputed Era are celebrating, but new channel means we best recap what happened not 10 seconds ago!
And if you like deja vu, why not deja two, because here’s Candice winning that match from earlier too.
Did you know Pete Dunne is the most dominant champion in modern WWE history? Mauro and Nigel were falling over themselves to tell us.
Well anyway Pete Dunne, most dominant champion in modern WWE history, is here and he has a fun match against Arturo Ruas.
That ends when Dunne, most dominant champion in modern WWE history gets him in a top down triangle, snaps the fingers and taps him out.
We then get a rerun of Dakota Kai’s return promo package, which is dated for next week.
I genuinely can’t believe that they dug Aliyah out of the closet for the first two hour NXT,
thankfully she got a good dusting off at the hands of Xia Li who kicked the cobwebs off her in a quick little match.
She then did a sort of we will rock clap with the crowd. Li will, Li will, rock you.
That’s the second Queen inspired bit from this NXT.
What next? Rik Bugez doing the Live Aid day-oh bit?
A young man named Denzel Dejournette makes his way to the ring for a match with Kushida, except members of Imperium Fabian Aichner, Marcel Barthel and Alexander Wolfe attack with plenty of mustard for dear dijonnaise .
The who should make his Full Sail debut but United Kingdom Champion WALTER. Which was a huge shocker because he had previously said I ain’t getting on no plane.
Walter cuts a promo saying the ring is sacred ground for them and anyone who disrespects it will answer to der ringgeneral.
Which is when Kushida’s music hits who says ‘This is my time. Now your time belongs to me’. Are they genuinely doing Walter vs Kushida, because I CAN’T EVEN.
Kushi fights off Imperium and then bails before he’s swatted like a McFly.
Lio Rush returns to WWE in a stellar match with Oney Lorcan
that also broke the space time continuum with a move that was half a wrecking ball dropkick, springboard from the bottom rope, back into the ring to do a cutter.
What even was that?!
This was a reminder of just how good Rush is – his selling was on point, his offence was unique and he had the crowd behind him all the way. Lorcan as ever was fantastic too.
Rush picks up the hard fought victory earning himself a Cruiserweight title opportunity.
With five minutes left Riddle and Dain get to the ring and just start going to town on each other.
They brawl backstage, but end up drawing the aggro of Walter and then the entire Imperium mob and then the whole damn locker room.
The show closes with Dain hitting a whopping suicide dive onto the gaggle of goons at ring side. What a finish!
Interestingly in a clip on Youtube post-show Regal comes out at the end and rebooks the Killian Dain and Riddle street fight for next week.
He’s very angry with them for brawling but actually rewarding them massively, because you’ve been bumped to the TV half of the show and the winner gets to face Adam Cole for the NXT Championship. I am useless at disciplining people
This week’s NXT was an amazing way to set out your stall and say look at our wares people of USA. We have a Pete Dunne, we’ve got Imperium, we’ve got the Undisputed Era.
But as shows that are split into two halves on two different channels probably would be, it felt slightly disjointed – while the marquee matches were loaded into the USA half, the best stuff was actually on the network side of things for my money.
So while I really enjoyed NXT it’s not quite the EST but it was Undisupted-ly Great!.
Pete’s news is coming up where he will be talking about WWE draft picks being leaked but first it’s a very special day for us because the WrestleTalk magazine will be hitting shops, here’s Oli to tell you more.
Nice review Laurie, and I can’t believe they’re holding all the gold! It’s about time, yeaahhhhh…do I…do I look cool? Tell me when it stops being cool…
While NXT’s debut on the USA Network (for the first hour anyway) seems to have been a rather good show, it wasn’t all rainbows and smiles throughout for those in charge of WWE. Their rival programme of AEW, which starts at the same time on Wednesday nights on October 2, ran a commercial during this episode of NXT, after the conclusion of the women’s Fatal 4-Way.
According to Fightful, while the commercial wasn’t ran nationally, it was shown in some pretty key markets, including New York, Philadelphia, Tampa, Dallas, Detroit, and more. But sure, there’s no war coming, psh don’t know what you’re talking about.
There was another war that actually happened during last night’s episode of NXT, and no I’m not talking about Matt Riddle and Killian Dain. I’m talking about a war between the WWE Network and technical issues, everyone’s favourite.
The first hour of this new 2-hour episode of NXT aired on the USA Network, but the second hour reverted back to the WWE Network as usual. However, according to several users of the network, they had difficulty logging in to the network during the switchover, and ended up missing some of the show once they eventually managed to.
Triple H’s apology, wasn’t really an apology, essentially saying “Well, it didn’t happen to that many people and you can watch it on demand, so what’s the big deal”, while the official WWE statement does actually apologize for any inconvenience. Nice job, Trips.
Moving away from NXT now though, and everything is go in WWE as of late isn’t it? SmackDown moving to Fox, there’s a draft coming up, Brock Lesnar is back and challenging for a top title, and Raw is getting a season premiere!
…oh you didn’t know about that last one? That’s only because it’s never been mentioned before. The venue that is hosting Raw on September 30, the Talking Stick Resort Arena in Phoenix, Arizona, took to Twitter to say:
“As if the season premiere of Raw on Sept. 30 wasn’t big enough, we are now getting an appearance by the “Beast” Brock Lesnar!”
Raw’s been running since 1993 mate. Can’t exactly be a season premiere. But, possibly the bigger news here is that Brock Lesnar will be making an appearance at the show, considering he returned on SmackDown this week, and is assumed to be a SmackDown star heading forwards, especially once SmackDown moves to Fox on October 4. Perhaps this “season premiere” is just another WWE buzzword fest and doesn’t actually mean anything, but is a way to try and build some hype around the show.
But the season premiere very well may be where we get some major shakeups in the WWE before the draft and SmackDown’s move to Fox. It had been reported previously by WrestleVotes on Twitter that WWE would be moving back to a 2-man commentary team. It had also then been reported that it would be Michael Cole and Corey Graves on SmackDown, further proof that SmackDown will be considered the A show moving forwards.
But where does that leave Raw? Well in another update from WrestleVotes, the supposed plan for Raw right now is to have 205 Live and NXT UK lead commentator Vic Joseph make the jump, and alongside him…Dio Maddin. …who?
Dio Maddin is a former NXT talent who began commentary for 205 Live a couple of weeks ago. A perfectly normal amount of time to gain experience before you thrust him into the spotlight of your biggest show. Makes so much sense.
Where this leaves Renee Young, Byron Saxton and Tom Phillips is anyone’s guess right now, though with a SmackDown talk show supposedly in the works for FS1, one would think someone like Renee would be a perfect fit for that show.
Speaking of being perfect fits for shows, and WWE announced the draft is coming back on October 11 and 14, re-splitting the Raw and SmackDown rosters. Triple H recently confirmed that NXT will not be a part of the draft, so don’t expect any call-ups.
However with SmackDown becoming the A show, some changes are going to be made, and it seems some leavers and remainers for SmackDown, I promise this has nothing to do with Brexit, have potentially been leaked.
In a promotional video for SmackDown last week, Becky Lynch, Rey Mysterio, Alexa Bliss and The Miz were all advertised for SmackDown shows, which indicates they all could be moving across to the blue brand in the draft. Now there’s more.
An advertisement for SmackDown in Philadelphia on November 15 is promoting Kofi Kingston, Kevin Owens, Randy Orton, Bayley, Roman Reigns, Brock Lesnar, and the aforementioned Becky Lynch to all be at the show.
This wouldn’t have been a big deal if Becky Lynch wasn’t there, but considering the current Raw Women’s Champion is being advertised for the blue brand, perhaps there’s some credence to be lent to the other wrestlers also staying on the blue show when it comes time for the draft.
Of course, card subject to change, and this is just an advertisement for a show, which are always inherently untrustworthy, but it is worth bearing in mind. I for one can’t wait to see who gets picked for each show, and can’t wait for the biggest upset of them all. Mojo Rawley as the number one pick.
Press the button on screen now to buy the WrestleTalk Magazine, which is now also available in high street retailers across the UK! Plus it’s time for Rambo: Last Blood in our latest Cineworld-partnered series of videos, so click the video on the right to be taken over there now, including a frankly ridiculous skit we did, which made us all pink. Literally. A special thank you to our pledgehammers on Patreon, some of whom you can see scrolling below me right now! I’ve been Chopper Pete Quinnell, and that, was wrestling.
5 years ago by Andy Datson
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