There were a lot of good pairings on WWE TV this week that didn’t really reach their potential: Jericho vs. Zayn from RAW kind of stunk, while Ambrose vs. Owens had its moments but wasn’t the right match to close out a 3-hour show that had been dragging for an hour.
Ambrose/Zayn vs. Jericho/Owens from SmackDown! was a great 20-minute match whittled down to like 8 minutes, so I couldn’t put that here.
I can understand an argument for The Miz vs. AJ Styles from SmackDown! as Match of the Week – a very competent showing from the always-on Styles and the Miz who has always been solid but is really on the run of his career these days.
But let’s give it up for NXT. NXT TV has been in a lull for the past few months, as a lot of their top dogs have been called up to the main roster or are about to be called up and thus aren’t being used much, and the stories and matchmaking just haven’t been interesting enough to make up for that. TakeOver was great, but the rest, while totally solid, hasn’t touched the week-to-week greatness they were pumping out even six months ago.
But I thought this match was really awesome, and a perfect example of why I like NXT.
NXT for the last year or two has been known for its’ smark pandering, and there indeed has been a ton of talented guys coming through with years of experience all over the world – Neville, Itami, Balor, Owens, Zayn, Nakamura, and even Tyson Kidd and Cesaro have all come in and been booked at a main event level, and Aries, La Sombra, TMDK, and a bunch of cruiserweights are right behind them. And it’s a lot of fun.
But something NXT has also done very well is take guys trained almost from the ground-up by the Florida system and book them to their strengths. It’s hard to defend something like The Drifter, but from Big E and his five counts to Tyler Breeze and his entrances to the entire women’s division and now the budding tag team division, NXT has done a good job of letting guys run with gimmicks that work and giving them time to develop those gimmicks and become pretty good wrestlers too.
Chad Gable, Jason Jordan, Enzo Amore and Colin Cassady aren’t indy darlings and don’t have experience all over the world, but they’re all used effectively and consistently have rock solid matches. The Amateur Warriors and Timon & Pumba shticks just work. Occasionally they reach high-level tag team wrestling (usually it’s against The Revival), but when they don’t the matches are just plain fun.
This a match where they tell an old story that appears to be a new one. Enzo & Cass typically have the same match – Enzo gets beat up, Cass saves. It usually works. Here though, Enzo & Cass are the veterans who have graduated to the main roster, and it’s Chad Gable taking the heat. And it works. Gable sells well but also is really fun getting shine early, outwrestling Enzo and just generally being Chad fucking Gable. And then you have Jason Jordan who’s an incredible hot tag.
There’s a bunch of neat stuff here like Enzo finally getting away from Gable’s holds leading to Cassady’s first tag in and a Big Man Staredown of Gable, like he’s some Long Island reincarnation of The Undertaker. I also really liked Cassady using his body to save Enzo from taking a hard bump in the corner, which is a move you see a lot in Memphis that should be used more in tag matches everywhere. And of course there’s Jordan pulling his straps down on the hot tag, and then PULLING THEM UP AND PULLING THEM BACK DOWN AGAIN, which was just tremendous.
There were a lot of competent matches wrestled this week, but if I’m stuck on a Desert Island and had to choose, I’m choosing this fun thing. Raise a glass to Enzo & Cass.
