JT: Many moons ago, long before the Revolution in Jacksonville, before the world ever had to hear the phrase “In these uncertain times”, there was one certain in WWE. No matter who was world champion, no matter who was in charge of Raw or SmackDown, there was a certainty in Black and Gold. In the mid 2010s despite all the uncertainties around it, NXT was seen as a show that would always hit its mark. Especially on its biggest stage, the Takeover specials, with no greater example than NXT Takeover: Brooklyn in 2015.
Seán: This show was certainly a pivotal moment for the Black and Gold Brand. Never before had a developmental brand of WWE gotten to gain such a huge following in the wrestling world. The previous brands like Heartland, OVW, Deep South and FCW were cult-like in their following and only shown on locally syndicated television from where they emanated. NXT was different, they were being broadcasted on television and with the help of the WWE Network, they were a key part of the platform’s programming, further expanding their fanbase. What would come from this would be special events which would never fail to get people clamouring about the quality on display. This would all build up from the modest Full Sail University Arena in Winter Park, Florida to the big state of New York, in the Barclays Centre with over 15,500 in attendance. The kick-off to what would be an amazing period for NXT.
JT: And now, we interrupt our regularly scheduled broadcasts of the Cruiserweight Classic to bring you the sequel to NXT’s biggest event!! It’s NXT Takeover Brooklyn II, DIY Boogaloo!! It’s time to check in on our CWC boys Gargano and Ciampa as they challenge for the NXT Tag Team Titles against The Revival!! That and so much more, on this episode of the 3rd Season of the Power Hour!!
S: It’s a wild, splendiferous side quest of a bonus episode in Season 3! NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn II! Roll whatever theme songs were selected for this show, Of Mice and Men, play us in!!!
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Booting Up
JT: Helloooooooo everyone and welcome back to the Power Hour!! Special 2016 bonus episode edition. I’m James, Yorker of New, excited as always to be analyzing, reminiscing and complaining down more wrestling of the 2016 variety.
S: Seán McLoughlin, smiling politely behind this keyboard and ready to take a step out of our beautiful purple haze that is the Cruiserweight Classic and step into the developmental brand of WWE with it’s popularity at a fever pitch!
JT: Last time around, we concluded the first round of the tournament with a classic bout, our unanimous match of the round, Gargano vs Ciampa. And partially why that match delivered was because the two had a prior history teaming up in NXT. Now, the two of them are back to their regular tag team business in NXT, so we figured why not check it out?
S: Absolutely, there was no reason as to why we shouldn’t check it out anyways because every time we’ve done a season of this very blog. We like to take a breather from what we’re focusing on and shift our focus towards something which is different to what we’re watching. Much like with our Heel Jeff Hardy storyline where we reviewed Armageddon 2008. We like to do bonus episodes for that reason but also, because it’s just fun, isn’t it?
JT: Agreed! Plus, part of the fun of the CWC so far has been looking at our competitors and seeing where they were at the time, and where they’d go on to go in the next 5 years of their career. Now it’s time for another version of that….about me!! Where was I 5 years ago? Well I was attending NXT Takeover Brooklyn II!! It’s always easy to get me to watch something if it’s something I’m nostalgic for, and I think it adds to our dynamic here when I can recall how I was feeling then and there. So get ready folks, because I’ve got opinions and stories to tell about this show. I mean on top of all my usual business.
S: I sure am looking forward to hearing what the show was like to attend live from your perspective, a very unique edition of The Power Hour. We could do that with me sometime but I don’t wanna touch that redacted company with a ten foot pole or give them any attention so let’s move on, shall we?
JT: Yeah let’s ignore that company. Instead, let’s talk a little about the opening to this show. First we get a little flashback to the first ever Takeover Brooklyn, featuring all the highlights. And Seán? I’ve gotta say this. Takeover Brooklyn? Instantly iconic. I’d argue it’s up there with many of the great shows of the past. The second it happened, I think we could all tell “This show is special”.
S: Oh without a doubt, like this show was just something so special for NXT and WWE as a whole if you ask me because I don’t think many people would’ve saw this development brand in 2012 starting to find it’s foot in how it wants to be presented selling out a beautiful 15,000 seat arena in Brooklyn, New York. It’s very rare that a show comes across as iconic but my word, the first TakeOver Brooklyn was that and more. It was just a special event in wrestling history, the crowd was up for everything that night. It gave us some great matches, an iconic match and JUSHIN THUNDER LIGER!
JT: Everything from the wrestlers involved to the content of the matches to just the presentation was an instant hit. So it’s no surprise that the opening video package takes some time to go, “Yo holy shit remember last year?!? Wasn’t that great?”. Then we get tonight’s competitors looking back on where they were a year ago. No Way Jose was trying to find his place, Gargano and Ciampa were in god knows where doing god knows what. Andrade Cien Almas was still in Mexico, Shinsuke Nakamura was watching it live in Japan. The Revival, they didn’t have the tag titles a year ago, but they do now. And Bobby Roode poses the question, who thought a year ago that he would arrive in NXT? Meanwhile, those who were there last year try to repeat history. Samoa Joe knows what it’s like to be on this stage, and Bayley still gets choked up thinking about it. But the past is in the past. The challengers say they will win, the champions say they will win. This is NXT, this is Brooklyn. Tonight they Takeover Brooklyn, and for Bayley, she’ll takeover again!! Quite the little video package they got for us!
S: Yeah this really was a cool opening video package for sure. I liked the focus on where the wrestlers were a year ago and what their aspirations are for the future. Really good stuff, reminds me of the opening video package from WrestleMania 24 where they focused on the whole, “A lot can happen in a year” story. Which for WWE going from their tumultuous and bumpy 2007 to the HD presentation and PG Era on the horizon 2008, really did work for that show.
JT: Tonight’s commentary duo is a pair that we’ve seen a lot in recent years, but was really firing on all cylinders at the NXT Commentary booth shaped like a table, it’s Corey Graves and Tom Philips!!
S: The classic NXT pairing from 2014-2016 if you ask me, aside from the brief stint of Rich Brennan. This is the ideal and best pairing NXT had for it’s commentary at this time period. Graves is a busy boy too, isn’t he? Because he’s got to do another two nights straight on the job after this show. He’s got to do SummerSlam tomorrow night and on Raw, he’s got some more work to do. This is truly the beginning of Graves being worked to the absolute bone on commentary by WWE.
JT: Yeah by this time, he had proven himself to be a good hand. No longer was he an experimental commentator the likes of Rich Brennan or Alex Riley, he had graduated to bring a full time commentator, and then promoted to the big time of the main brand. This was in the last sort of days of his NXT time, but don’t think because he was busy he wouldn’t have time to put his working shoes on for NXT. He’s had his edges smoothed down some now that he’s been a main roster commentator for 5 years now, but I still think Graves comfortably sits at the top tier of WWE commentators.
S: Yeah I certainly agree there with you. I do think there was a period in 2019 where I feel that Graves had lost his ability somewhat and needed something new for himself. The 18 months on SmackDown really helped and now this new dynamic with Jimmy Smith and Byron Saxton where there’s no real play-by-play commentator and it comes across as a real team effort between the three of them seems to be working so yeah, definitely one of the best commentators that WWE has at their disposal.
JT: Tom Philips is also a pretty good commentator while we’re at it. Now, I’m not going to act like Tom is some iconic broadcaster like prime JR or Gorilla Monsoon, but I think he very admirably did his job for a good near decade.
S: Yeah he really was a very solid commentator, he’s such a weird case because no one would ever give out about Tom Phillips in terms of his ability but he was never held in high regard either. He was just appreciated for doing his job the right way. Definitely someone with very little flaws in terms of commentating.
JT: A consistent 7/10 every night. Also since we brought up Corey Graves, we all know he considers himself a big musical scholar, what with his Beastie Boys quote tonight. So with that in mind, would you like to run down our three whopping theme songs for Takeover?
S: Ohhhhhh baby I sure would like to, not gonna lie, they’ve got some really cool theme songs for this show. The main theme which opens the show is “Giant” by Banks and Steelz. The other two themes are “Serpents” by Neck Deep and “Relentless” by Of Mice and Men. I’ve gotta say James, those last two songs are absolute bangers in their own right. What do you say?
JT: I say they’re pretty good songs. I’m not crazy about any of them but they’re all solid enough. And it’s important to note how they compared to the main roster shows at the time. I mean honestly, it felt like from really like 2011 onward, WWE gave up on licensing PPV Theme songs aside from the big four. It feels like most of the stuff they played on the shows was house made, stock pop songs. And I know Nu Metal ain’t exactly hip and happening, but for many fans it felt like too far in the opposite direction. As a result, NXT licensing metal from bands that weren’t total crap was a nice change of pace.
S: Yeah for real, NXT were truly focusing on all genres of rock bands that were more relevant, fresh at this time or bands that got some exposure due to this show and with that, gained more fans in the process from wrestling exposure. It’s a win for all parties really.
JT: Now we’re on to our main show…..or not because I have one last little piece of insight to share with you about being at this show. Now, let me remind you of something that used to happen before this dreaded pandemic forced NXT to retreat to the safety of the Capital Wrestling Center (the lesser CWC). Back when NXT could hit the road, they used to tape an episode of TV at the venue they were at for Takeover, just to get a little extra bag for their buck. As I’m sure you’ll remember, these shows weren’t much, mostly just recaps of what happened at Takeover and maybe 2-3 matches. But if you haven’t been at a Takeover, you might not know that they tape those matches before the actual Takeover event. So Seán, before we get into our event proper, shall I tell you about the TV matches I got to see before Takeover went on the air?
S: Absolutely, let’s run this down! Cue that “Here Comes a New Challenger” jingle from Street Fighter because we’ve got some bonus matches on this bonus episode!
JT: Well the first person to come out in front of the crowd was none other than Ten Guy himself, Tye Dillinger!! The actual, legitimate run of The Perfect Ten began that night!! Tye had been a part of NXT for a while, but almost exclusively on the losing end of things, whether it be on his lonesome or with tag partner Jason Jordan. In 2015 though, at the first Takeover Brooklyn, Dillinger re-debuted with his Perfect Ten moniker…..in a one sided loss to Apollo Crews. But over the next 12 months, he’d start to feature on NXT TV more, and against greater competition like Shinsuke Nakamura, Oney Lorcan or even losing to Andrade Cien Almas in Almas’s debut match at Takeover: The End in June. Well in Barclays that night, Tye evolved from an enhancement talent type Pokémon into a Midcard Type Pokémon as he defeated Wesley Blake in 9:12 with a Ushigaroshi. So if you want to blame anyone for having to watch Shawn Spears have matches on Dynamite in 2021, blame me. My bad, we shouldn’t have encouraged him.
S: Ah now, be fair to Shawn Spears, he’s a decent auld hand to have on the roster. Don’t worry bro, you have my backing. That match on the other hand, sounds very NXT episode taped before TakeOver but hey! Tye was over!
JT: He was!! The 10 Chant was fun at the time! Also what a fall from grace for Wesley Blake. Defending the NXT Tag Titles last year, jobbing in the pre-show the next year. Oh and speaking of Tag Teams, our main event of the evening saw The Authors of Pain facing off against TM-61. Akam & Rezar had only debuted 2 months prior at Takeover The End when they demolished American Alpha after they lost their tag titles to The Revival. They had only had 3 matches to that point, and this was actually their first under the “Akam & Rezar” ring names. But despite their inexperience they had already picked up a win against American Alpha on NXT TV. Nick Miller & Shane Thorne meanwhile, they were just getting their footing in NXT. They had managed a victory over Murphy & Blake and had put up spirited efforts against Gargano & Ciampa and The Revival, but hadn’t put together a real momentum building win streak yet. And sadly for the Aussies, they wouldn’t find success tonight, as AOP crushed them in 6:55 flat.
S: Damn, that’s just TM61’s NXT career in a nutshell, isn’t it? Lost to AOP like. Honestly, one of the biggest missed opportunities that NXT had was not pushing them as a team to the moon. Crazy how only one of the guys on that NXT taping is still with the company as of right now. By the time you read this, WWE will have probably had another fucking huge list of names they cut including Vince McMahon.
JT: Wow I didn’t even think of that, but you’re right. It feels like after years of having an actually pretty low roster tune over in the early to mid 2010s, things are closer to where they were back in the late 90s. And nobody is safe from it either. You’d figure that two big, meaty guys like Akam & Rezar would be safe but I guess Vince’s dislike of tag teams overrode his love for beef. And to think at the time, I thought AOP would be Vince’s favorite new toys and that TM61 in a year would be NXT’s top tag team.
S: Yeah honestly, I was stunned with how long AOP actually stuck around in NXT considering how fucking cool they look. I know Shane Thorne suffered a horrible knee injury some time before the end of 2016 which may have hampered their success considering The Undisputed Era were never gonna be knocked off their perch and War Raiders were on the move but still, they were criminally underutilised.
JT: TM61 just had the worst timing. If they came around earlier they would have benefited from being a pair of solid wrestlers to contrast the entertaining but more character based tag teams of the time like Enzo & Cass or the Vaudevillains. Then when they actually got to NXT, they debuted just in time for Gargano & Ciampa to really pick up steam in the same sort of “underdog work rate tag team” role they would’ve filled. Then like you said, the injury put them on the shelf at a time where they could’ve conceivably filled the void left by the DIY breakup. And by the time they came back, they were old news sadly. A heel turn and a rebrand later, and I don’t really blame Nick Miller for leaving and trying to greener pastures. But I also admire Shane Thorne’s dedication to stick things out and see where they would go. I can’t say either’s run has turned out like they would’ve hoped, but that’s life sometimes. Just getting there is hard enough, and it’s even harder to achieve in the world of wrestling. We’ve seen that already without first round eliminations in Episode 2 & 3 this season.
S: It really sucks because you do feel that TM61 could’ve been the team to beat AOP for the titles rather than Sanity, don’t get me wrong I loved EY and Wolfeman as a pairing but TM61 would’ve slotted in that position well comfortably. Shame really, even for their big return for the Dusty Classic in 2018, lots of people thought they were the team to go all the way to the finals, myself included but as their career in NXT tended to go, they jobbed to AOP. IN THE FIRST ROUND.
JT: AOP crushing TM61. Then. Now. Forever. So, I think that’s more than enough preamble dontcha think?
S: I certainly think so, let’s run this sucker down!
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Here comes the Boy
JT: Opening up the show, is the BOY ALARM!! It’s one of my boy!! A boy who earned his seat at the table, mostly due to being on this show!! It’s my boy No Way Jose!! And he’s talking on hopefully nobody’s boy in Austin Aries. Seán, it’s No Way Jose!!
S: Awesome! That’s a fucking excellent choice to have in your boy stable, James. There is no one who exudes bigger boy energy in NXT history than NWJ himself. Great pick. He was bloody over, wasn’t he?
JT: He was!! And as we go along, I’ll get more in depth about why he specifically is one of my boys. Part of it though, is because he’s just a charismatic and energetic guy. To open the show, he comes out dancing and vibing to his fun theme song, before having his conga line come out with him!! Let’s ignore the fact that the first guy in the conga line had an Austin Aries shirt on. Let’s ignore that. Kicking the show off with the sort of energy that Jose has immediately got the crowd in shape to have a good time. And hey! Say what you will about dancy gimmicks. But the fact he even got to Takeover and didn’t get booed out of the building with the name “No Way Jose” is a testament to his skills as a performer. There have been a lot of dance based gimmicks, but none of them have been as hampered right off the gate as No Way Jose just on the basis of his name.
S: Yeah for real, he really makes the dancing gimmick work and his own. The crowd just really like his energy too and to get a positive reaction with that name and in Brooklyn, at an NXT show which would absolutely have a lot of smarky fans there is really a credit to how likeable and good he is.
JT: Yeah I mean there’s a guy who, no offense to Jose, is much more talented than him later on in the show who gets a much worse reception. Again, this is NXT not too long off from when Eva Marie got absolutely crapped on relentlessly. If someone sucks, the NXT crowd was not afraid to say so. But Jose managed to pass. Now, granted, this was a fairly weak time for the NXT roster, there had been a lot of turnover due to the 2016 Raw & SD draft among other things. That’s in all likelihood how Jose managed to get on the card. But again, he made it despite being named “No Way Jose”! And that’s part of why he’s why my boy!! I feel like when it comes to your boys, you’ve gotta have a twinge of embarrassment or apprehension about admitting you’re a big fan of them. Like with Robbie E from last arc. By all accounts, I shouldn’t be standing by cheering silly No Way Jose 5 years later. But I will still stand by him, because he’s my boy.
S: Man I wish we were doing weekly retro NXT watchalongs where we could just fall in love with No Way Jose the same way we came to love Robbie E. Our shared boy, if you will. So ehm, his opponent. Austin Aries, great wrestler, massive prick. Drake Wuertz is the ref, absolutely gone in the head. Grim’s Toy Show in the front row, absolute melt.
JT: Yeah, I’m glad Jose is here because otherwise, the vibes on this show are fucking rancid. If they had someone managed to get like say, young Patrick Clark against AA, this would have tremendous “sequel that’s so much worse than the original” energy. Luckily we just missed that. Anyway, since Aries is here, might as well talk about him and his NXT run to this point, right?
S: Ah sure we might as well run down the five months of his fourteen month stint in Vinceland. Lay it on me, James!
JT: Well back in March of 2016, Aries made his debut on NXT, introduced by GM William Regal. He got the “Hottest Free Agent” treatment and was ready to sign his NXT contract in front of the live crowd, until he got attacked by Baron Corbin. NXT’s resident hater of Indy Wrestler set himself up for a match against Aries WrestleMania weekend. At Takeover: Dallas, Aries managed to roll up and get the win on Corbin, sending him packing from NXT. From there he set his sights on the NXT Championship, but in the process that matched him up against another freshly debuted wrestler, Shinsuke Nakamura. Nakamura’s grand debut at Takeover: Dallas really overshadowed Aries, and now they had to face each other to get to the NXT Title. Unfortunately for AA, he was no match for Nakamura again, as Shinsuke defeated him at Takeover: The End. Only a few months into his run, it felt like Aries run was already stalling out, and Aries could sense it too. With Jose having fun on NXT every week, Aries seemed to come down from the resentment that had been building over the past few months. He had been reminded that wrestling in the end, is fun! Well, that’s what Jose thought until Aries blindsided him with a Discus Elbow during a Dance Party, with Aries locking him in the Last Chancery on the ramp. This cemented Aries’s heel turn and it lit a fire under Jose, who came back a month later, ready to get revenge in Brooklyn.
S: Do you think that Aries shoot hates the gimmick of No Way Jose and feels disrespected that he’s facing him on a TakeOver card? Because I feel deep down he’s definitely having his small man syndrome rage ready to burst out and take it out on everyone like Ned Flanders when he slated all of Springfield.
JT: I’m not sure if I can say he was angry to be facing Jose, but I’m sure he feels angry with the fact that he was overshadowed so quickly. Like you could argue that by Takeover: Dallas, he has already been leapfrogged twice on the totem pole by two other competitors on the show tonight. Hell, arguably 3 guys if you count someone else who shows up later. And what’s worse for him is that he’s surrounded on all sides. Nakamura is a face, so he gets turned heel, but then there’s another heel around ahead of him in the pecking order. If even a 17 year old me could tell that Aries was already being pushed aside, I’m sure he could tell too. And I doubt he was happy about that.
S: I don’t really blame him for being pissed off because above five years prior to this, he was just after leaving ROH for TNA where he was the only two time ROH Champion as of 2011 and he was a huge success in TNA, even winning the TNA Heavyweight Championship off Roode and would have a great career there for a good while. I don’t think he wasn’t a good fit for NXT, far from it but just like TM61, definitely a case of just the worst timing.
JT: Again to foreshadow future events, you’ve got multiple people just on this show, who will just jump him on the depth chart within the next 6 months, let alone Gargano & Ciampa making the jump to singles competition and more additions in the next year. But he doesn’t have to worry about that. And hey, maybe we get an extra motivated Austin Aries tonight, out to prove his worth, that he should be doing more than what he’s doing. Anything you want to say about Aries’s music or gear or just general presentation in NXT before we move on to our opening contest?
S: Classic Aries look of the 2010s really. Super short hair, his oddly shaped beard is there, got his usual gear and his cape and a good theme song which suits him down to the ground as well. The best 90 seconds stretched out to 5 minutes you could ask for!
JT: And just like that, we’re off to the races!! Aries takes Jose down and slaps him on the head to just show Jose that he does not respect him. But in doing that, Jose shows that he’s got a temper, which already has Aries cowering in the corner for safety. Despite this and a smattering of chants for No Way Jose, the crowd is pretty much mostly behind Aries. I’ll have you know I was trying to cheer on Jose, but it’s really tough to support your guy when the rest of the arena is behind the other guy. Aries offers his hands to Jose, but Jose proves he’s not a naive moron and actually beats Aries to the punch with a slap to the face. Now Aries is mad and swings at him, but Jose takes him down and slaps him on the back, then dances and stomps on his head. I always appreciate when a match has a clear favorite in it, but the underdog gets an early burst of offense. Especially for someone like Jose, having him get a one up on Aries already makes it feel like this one will not be a standard match where the veteran tricks the newbie at every turn and wins by cheating. It looks for now at least that Jose would hold his own.
S: Yeah it’s a good way to show that the clear underdog is definitely to be taken seriously and giving him a bit of a shine in the early going of a match is a good way to show that he’s got a good shot of winning.
JT: Despite Jose’s success early on though, Graves poses an interesting question: Sill a pro Aries crowd get in Jose’s head? After all, this is the best crowd he’s ever wrestled in front of, and he’s always had the crowd behind him at Full Sail. We’ll have to see. Still, he has Aries on the ropes, as AA scrambles out of the ring to avoid a Home Run Fist from Jose. Jose goes out after him and chases him around the outside and back in, only to get caught with a kick to the face as Aries catches him coming back in the ring. But then Aries hits the ropes and runs into a huge tornado punch from Jose! Aries falls to the floor, Jose gets on the apron and dives off the apron with an Axe Handle!! Then after Aries tries to run up the ramp, Jose shoves him hard into the side of the ring. The diverse Brooklyn crowd starts to get behind Jose with chants of “Si se puede”, “Yes you can” in English, and just a general rallying cry for Latino-Americans. Aries tries to beg off but Jose has none of it. Jose goes after Aries up top, but Aries grabs him and jumps down to the floor, landing Jose’s throat right on the top rope. Ground and pound by Aries to boos from the crowd as the veteran takes over. He gets his usuals oddball offense in, including a split stomp on the face and a diving back elbow to the back of Jose. Jose tries to fire up, but Aries with a back elbow, then a jumping elbow for 2. The crowd chants “Si” for Jose as he fires up, blocking Aries’s shots and hitting punches of his own. Jose sends Aries over the top and to the floor. Then unfortunately, the crowd gets distracted. But I was in the crowd, so I know what it was!! Could you tell from the broadcast what happened?
S: I just saw a load of fans get distracted by something off to the side, I must ask, was it someone that was due to be shown sitting at ringside like NXT tends to do? Or am I thinking later on into the show and there was a scrap in the crowd?
JT: Well they didn’t show anyone on screen, but some people saw Ric Flair getting to his seat. And you know when one guy spots Ric Flair and starts going “WOOO, look it’s Ric Flair”, everyone starts pointing and wooing.
S: Yeah I figured it was Ric Flair alright because I heard some woos and it wasn’t Charlotte because her time to sit in the crowd hadn’t come yet. Swear this always happens when wrestlers are shuffled out to the front row to observe the show.
JT: I don’t know why they do it mid match and not like, mid commercial when the lights are dimmed.
S: I know they used to do that when they’d announce new signings to the TakeOver audience but when it’s guests, this generally tends to be the case, doesn’t it?
JT: Either way, I feel bad for the guys in the ring when that happens. They literally do nothing wrong to lose the crowd. It just happens. Back in the ring, Jose has Aries on the apron and is slamming him right into the steel ring posts. He follows it up with big chops to the chest, then a big back body drop!! Big hang time for Aries, plus I also realized that Jose is just a tall dude. Like, his poofy hair helps, but he’s tall!!
S: Yeah he’s deceptively a big dude, isn’t he? Like he’s probably about 6’3 and close to 250 pounds. It’s like him and Elias Samson are the deceptively big wrestlers that WWE have got at this time.
JT: With Jose building momentum, Aries digs into his dastardly bag of tricks as he just hangs onto the ropes for dear life. Jose tries to pry him off the ropes, but Aries is able to buy enough time to slip behind, connect with a Kneebreaker, then a Back Suplex facebuster, right into the Last Chancery!! He wrenches back on Jose’s neck, but with that deceptively large frame, he’s able to get the ropes. For all his hard work, the crowd boos and chants loudly for Austin Aries. Aries pounds on Jose with elbow shots to the head, then lines up the Rolling Elbow but Jose ducks, picks him up and nails a TKO!! Jose picks him up and goes for a Cobra Clutch Slam, but Aries slings himself forward and sends Jose through the ropes in the process. This leaves the Dominican Dynamo exposed on the outside as Aries hits the ropes and scores with a signature Suicide Dive. He follows up by picking Jose up and hitting him with a Neckbreaker on the ropes!! After that he scores with a running corner dropkick!! Aries is ready to put this match to bed as he sets up a Brainbuster, only for Jose counters with a Tossing Suplex!! Modified Falcon Arrow!! Potentially a scary move to have a relatively inexperienced wrestler do, but I thought they did pretty well.
S: That few minutes you just recapped there was just a real exciting flurry of moves there, I must say that Aries’ signature Suicide Dive always looks really cool and I think he’s the best at doing it with someone that we’ll talk about later.
JT: Yeah Aries is very good at building up steam and properly throwing himself through the ropes into the other guy. Unfortunately for him, Jose is in control of this match now, and is looking to pick up the biggest victory of his career. Jose goes for the Cobra Clutch Slam, but Aries with an Elbow to the face, then the Rolling Elbow!! But Jose stays up on his feet and hits a Clothesline! He turns Aries inside out!! Jose goes for the Cobra Clutch again, but Aries backs him into the corner. Jose tries for it again, Aries goes behind and hits a Crucifix Bomb!! He follows up with a Running Corner Dropkick!! 1—2–Kickout!! Aries goes up top, again potentially teasing another classic move of his like the 450 Splash, byt Jose with a big right hand!! He goes for a Superplex, only for Aries to hit an elbow right to the face. This causes Jose to slump and leaves him open to a Sunset Flip Powerbomb!! As he crashes to the mat, Aries immediately rolls him over and follows up with the Last Chancery!! Jose was able to hold out last time, but he’s got no choice but to tap out!! Austin Aries’ new attitude has bore fruits as he ends up victorious in Brooklyn. Seán, what did you think of our opening contest?
S: I really liked this one to be honest with you, aside from the brief distraction the crowd had with Flair being wheeled out into the front row, the crowd were pretty into this one. They always were going to be really because it’s a TakeOver show in front of a hot crowd. Yeah, these two worked pretty damn well together, Jose definitely kept up with Aries, he isn’t gonna be indieriffic like him or anything but he sure didn’t look out of place. Some really nice moves in this one and I liked that a Sunset Flip Powerbomb was actually the prelude to the finish! Wonderful to see, the Last Chancery too is a really cool submission, thumbs up from me.
JT: Yeah I think considering No Way Jose has this as his only marquee singles match, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone can get into this match and expect absolutely nothing. But let me tell you, I enjoyed this match when I was there in person and I enjoyed it on rewatch. This match was only a little over 10 minutes and I felt they packed as much into it as they could have. I thought Jose looked more than competent, I thought he looked pretty good for a guy with barely 3 years experience in front of the biggest crowd he’d ever wrestle in front of. Now, mind you, he’s definitely helped out by Aries. For all the criticism you can deservedly give Aries, he’s a giving performer in the ring. I think he realizes that part of making yourself look good is being able to make others look good. So even if he might feel it’s beneath him to work an inexperienced guy with a silly gimmick like Jose, he didn’t show it in the ring. I’d say the only time you could tell that Jose was not very experienced was the Crucifix Bomb spot was a little sloppy. Other than that though, I think this is like some of the best stuff you could’ve hoped for from this situation.
S: Absolutely agree with you, this is just your general real fun opener from a TakeOver event from this time period, I’d give it a recommendation if you want a reminder of how much time has changed. So with the released list at five from guys that were part of the NXT taping, allow me to update that number to seven people who are no longer with WWE. Aries would be shitcanned in June of 2017, just 15 months after he first showed up while No Way Jose was released in 2020 just after Mania during a pandemic for “budgetary reasons”. Despite the fact that WWE made record profits last year. That’s funny, isn’t it?
JT: Yeah funny how that happens. But on the positive side for Jose, he recently just popped back up in Impact Wrestling on Slammiversary!! Fallah Bahh needed a tag partner to replace TJP (who was unable to participate in the event) for the 4 Way Tag Title match, and out came No Way to be his partner. That’s right, he’s just No Way now. Either way, it’s nice to see him on TV again.
S: Yeah good for him to get a job, Impact always has a spot for ya when you’re an ex-WWE employee so No Way, do things your way now. I’m not proud of that one.
JT: Despite the win though, Aries isn’t satisfied. He wants to send a message and make Jose pay, as he attacks Jose as he tries to get himself up. Aries locks in the Last Chancery again!! Jose is tapping out!! You can’t count on Drake Wuertz to be useful, is there nobody who can save poor Jose?
S: We need a hero, dammit! Poor Jose is about to Go To Sleep… SPEAKING OF GO TO SLEEP!
JT: That’s right, Hideo Itami is in the building!! And looking sharp too! Boy was I happy to see Hideo when I was there live. I mean, he had returned just shortly before the show happened, but you never can really guess when someone will show up. I certainly didn’t!
S: Much like you James, I was so delighted to see him here and boy was I even happier with what unfolded with this confrontation.
JT: Suffice to say, things go poorly for Aries. He offers his hand to Hideo, but Hideo ignores his hand and starts to take off his suit, prompting Aries to attack him. Aries is in control at first but Hideo nails him with a combination of slaps and kicks to knock him down. The crowd starts chanting for Itami to put Aries to sleep, and to the joy of everyone, he actually picks him up, and hits the GTS!! The first televised GTS in WWE since CM Punk left the company 2 years earlier!!
S: And if you remember correctly, NXT had constantly been teasing for Hideo to hit the GTS within his first six months in NXT, with the exception of that NXT live event in San Jose at Mania 31 weekend where he hit Tyler Breeze with but man, seeing it here just brought such a smile to my face.
JT: Especially because, let’s be real, Hideo/KENTA’s GTS has always been far superior to Punk’s. He manages to have more impact to it, and I swear he’s hurt less people than Punk did.
S: Tell that to Brian Kendrick, he’ll probably tell ya different.
JT: …..I might have to do more research. Either way though, it’s an excellent move and an exciting comeback for a guy who just had one of the most unlucky breaks in NXT history.
S: He really did, he was going to be the guy to beat Kevin Owens at that Beast in the East special and when he came back, everything looked in place for him to succeed but sadly, it just wouldn’t pick up for him, would it?
JT: Yeah sadly his 2016 comeback run only had 4 total Televised matches, 2 of which came after this moment and none of which were against Austin Aries. Instead he fought exclusively members of the CWC! First Sean Maluta, then Mustafa Ali, then Drew Gulak and finally Lince Dorado. He was set to team up with Kota Ibushi in the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic (with a likely quarterfinals match up with Austin Aries & Roderick Strong in the wings) but unfortunately on an October 10th NXT House Show in Largo, Florida, Hideo was spiked on his head during a Powerslam and would suffer a concussion. If one injury is bad, another one before you can even get off the ground again has got to be worse.
S: And the bad thing about this injury is that it kept him off the shelf for a really long time too, like I’m pretty sure he was out for a good six months and showed back up in April to confront the NXT Champion, his name of which we shall get to later.
JT: Oh we’ll get to him alright. All I’ll say is that their match has been severely underrated, and I think the Takeover they fought on is generally just overlooked. So after failing to win the Title, he would eventually turn heel in a feud with Kassius Ohno, before finally getting a match in Brooklyn, losing to Aleister Black at Takeover Brooklyn III. From there it was on to the main roster, feuding with Brian Kendrick, Jack Gallagher, turning heel to feud with the likes of Akira Tozawa and Mustafa Ali while teaming with Ariya Daivari. In February 2019, he’d get his requested release from his WWE contract, closing the book on what he has referred to as “The most frustrating days of my life”.
S: What context was that used in? Was he frustrated with the creative team and all the typical WWE bollocks or was he just frustrated with how it went in terms of his terrible luck with injuries and all that?
JT: He said that in an interview with Sports Illustrated heading into the 2019 G1 Climax shows in Dallas. So it may have been partially kayfabe, but you had to think that it was reflective of some real frustrations. Personally I think it was just a combination of all those things. The injuries, getting frustrated with the booking, being away from home, and so on.
S: Yeah that’s what I reckon he was annoyed about really, it’s a bit annoying for him too because those could have been five years which possibly could have gone into possibly being a bigger legend in Noah or perhaps going to New Japan when it was getting super popular stateside.
JT: Yeah I mean I totally understand him. Your position on the card is constantly dropping, you’re far from home, constantly on the road and you have to learn a second language. I’m glad he’s just happier now.
S: Same here man, I always felt bad for him during his tenure with NXT and WWE so seeing him being happy with New Japan and all that is a nice thing to say. With all things that are said, I think it’s safe to agree that this opening match and post-match shenanigans were a big thumbs up then, yeah?
JT: Definitely a big thumbs up!! I was a happy camper then and a happy camper now. So, since we so nicely broke down how Hideo’s career has gone since this moment, how about in the spirit of Season 3, we do a little rundown on how No Way Jose and Austin Aries in the last 5 years?
S: Let’s do it! What’re these two strapping blokes up to these days?
JT: Let’s start with the man we started off with in the first place, No Way Jose! Sadly, even though he was my boy, I assumed Jose wasn’t bound to have a very high peak unless he rebranded. Even more sadly, this match was really the pick of his WWE career in a way. It would be more losing than winning from here on out.
After this match, he would enter the Dusty Rhodes Tag Classic with fellow fun loving guy Rick Swann, but would lose in the second round. After that, he entered a feud with Sanity, after they attacked after Swann a match. Also in the meantime, he’d have a NXT Title #1 Contenders Qualifying match which he lost. Imagine No Way Jose, #1 contender for the NXT Title. Anyways, his feud with Sanity mostly involved multi-man tag matches with Tye Dillinger and/or Roderick Strong against Eric Young, Killian Dain and Eric Wolfe. After that feud came to a close in spring 2017, appearances for Jose on TV just kinda petered out. From June 2017 to April 2018, he only had 5 matches, 3 of which were losses to bigger name wrestlers and the other two were him beating Cezar Benoni. Guess he just fell outta favor?
S: That is fucking crazy that he just didn’t get used for his second year in NXT, isn’t it? Like I knew he was appearing less and less on NXT programming but FIVE TELEVISED MATCHES IN TEN MONTHS?! That’s ridiculous! How did he get called up to the main roster?
JT: Yeah it’s weird because like at this point, he was only 28 years old. Like if they thought the gimmick wasn’t working, you could easily rebrand him and he could have another few years to work on it. You didn’t have to treat the No Way Jose gimmick like it was his last shot to do anything. I mean he was getting plenty of work on house shows, I just don’t get why they didn’t put him on tv more if they were gonna call him up. Guess there wasn’t much communication between NXT and WWE’s main branch.
S: I get the impression that they thought the gimmick had a real short life span for NXT but WWE thought if it were used on the main roster, it could succeed. WWE recently tends to succeed with musical/dancing gimmicks lately with Elias and Rick Boogs, who both are fucking awesome and are close to being in my boy stable.
JT: Yeah anyway, so that leads to the fact that on the Raw the night after WrestleMania 34, No Way Jose debuted with a victory over John Skyler. Then in his very next match two weeks later, he’d get his biggest main roster win of his career!! Thanks to a distraction from Titus O’Neil, Apollo Crews and Dana Brooke of Titus Worldwide, Jose managed a roll up victory over Baron Corbin! That was about when the fun times ended though. The next week he’d lose with Titus Worldwide against Corbin and The Revival. The week after that he was the fall guy in a MITB Qualifier that saw a certain man on this show advance instead of Corbin. Corbin would beat Jose in 4 minutes the week after that, and then started the biggest feud of No Way Jose’s career.
In his WWE career, No Way Jose had 81 televised matches. 18% percent of those were against one opponent in some form or another, and it’s still at 14% of his total career matches if you exclude battle royals they were both a part of. I’m of course talking about the legendary feud he had against Mojo Rawley. They had seven, count it, SEVEN one on one matches against each other on Main Event alone between May 2018 and January 2020. That of course doesn’t include fighting each other twice in a span of a month on Raw, and a tag match featuring No Way Jose & Zack Ryder against Mojo Rawley & Mike Kanellis. Oh, and a one last 20 second match on Raw in January 2020 that saw Mojo successfully defend the 24/7 Title against his longtime adversary. Just in general, 32 of Jose’s 81 career matches took place on Main Event. His final WWE match took place on Raw April 13th 2020, in a 1:45 squash at the hands of Bobby Lashley. Poor Jose, poor poor Jose.
S: What an absolutely riveting main roster career that was. SEVEN matches with Mojo on Main Event, was it a best of seven series by any chance like SHAMBO and Cesaro?
JT: I don’t even think there was a story behind it, I genuinely think they just had Mojo fight and beat Jose 5 times randomly on Main Event from September to December 2019.
S: That averages at about a match a month on Main Event between Mojo and Jose. What a time to be alive that must have been.
JT: Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to be the type of person to match every episode of Velocity or Metal or Jakked or Superstars or Main Event. I can’t even imagine what type of person that is. It’s just such a wasteland of guys going nowhere, doing nothing in particular. The only thing worse than watching those is someone who caught every episode of Main Event during the Thunderdome era. Sounds like torture.
S: Imagine being the NXT Champion and having to wrestle on Main Event with none of the sizzle in your entrance, your valet not by your side and making a boring ass entrance? Couldn’t be me.
JT: So if talking about wasn’t depressing enough, let’s talk about Austin Aries!!
S: Oh joy…
JT: So much like his seeming rival Hideo Itami, he didn’t have a lot going on in fall of 2016. He teamed with Roderick Strong in the DRTTC, but in a live show match against Shinsuke Nakamura he suffered an injury to his orbital socket. Thus, Strong had to have a singles match for his spot in the DRTTC, which Roddy lost. After sitting on the sidelines for a bit, Aries re-appeared on WWE TV, but on the main roster instead of NXT. For the next 3 months, Aries took over commentary duty for the Cruiserweight Division on Raw, 205 Live and Main Event. This lasted until March, when an interview with Cruiserweight Champion Neville went sour, leading to Aries attacking Neville and staking a claim for the Title himself. He then got his shot by winning a 6 man Elimination Match on 205 Live. However, he never managed to win the title, as he lost on the Pre-Show of WrestleMania 33 by pinfall, a victory by DQ only at Payback, and then a loss in a submission match at Extreme Rules. Then only a month later, Aries was released from his WWE contract in July 2017. I remember being very surprised by this when it happened, seemingly out of nowhere. According to Dave Meltzer, Aries did not ask for his release and was let go of due to being “incredibly unpopular backstage”. Aries has since been interviewed about his release, stating in 2019 that he didn’t ask for his release, but he believes he was released due to Creative having nothing for him. That’s the AA in WWE story.
S: The creative not having anything for him is definitely a valid reason for him being released but at the same time, he’s on 205 Live and I doubt that’s a brand in 2017 with not enough space for an uberly talented wrestler, hence why I think him being incredibly unpopular backstage is fairly likely if you ask me.
JT: Plus based on his history, and stuff that happened after this, the unpopularity theory makes a lot of sense. Shall we look at his post WWE career to the present?
S: Yes we shall, does this include his really dumb opinions on covid and how he doesn’t think it exists?
JT: I mean I didn’t have a good transition to bring that up, but hey, since it’s out there, now y’all now. Yes he’s that kinda guy. So he was essentially just on the indies for the rest of 2017 until he popped up again in Impact in 2018. As much as I hate the idea of him making more money for doing nothing, Kenny Omega might owe him some residuals. After all, he was calling himself “The Belt Collector” 3 years ago during his Impact run. He was Defiant World Champion, IPW World Champion and with a win over Eli Drake, he became Impact World Champion over the course of about 1 month. Funny how that works, huh? I think that may explain my distaste for the whole angle they’re doing in AEW, residual AA left over.
S: I mean it’s always a good visual to have multiple belts if you ask me, yes even with Aries and with some of the belts not having much of a meaning like the overly sized Defiant Title, the IPW title which has definitely been held by multiple sex offenders and the Impact Grand Championship. I always find it to be a cool visual really, even if some of the belts are a bit shit. I think with Kenny’s one though, at least he’s holding three titles (four if you wanna include the TNA Heavyweight Title) that have some prestige to them and is the current champion of a huge wrestling company in AEW. But I will agree, calling yourself The Belt Collector is totally the same as what Aries did, no denying that at all.
JT: Oh yeah let’s not get it twisted, Kenny’s version is definitely better. So back to AA, as his first big PPV match was supposed to be against Alberto El Patron at their Redemption PLV. Lovely lineage Impact. But after Patron no showed an Impact vs Lucha Underground event WrestleMania weekend, Patron got released from the company. That led to the exciting development of Aries vs Pentagon Jr vs Rey Fenix for the Impact World Title, with a shock Pentagon victory!! What a name to hitch yourself to in 2018, Pentagon Jr!! Anyways, Aries won it back on the Impact tapings the very next day, which was quickly spoiled and spread around online. Aries turned heel in the process, defeating Moose in his first defense, Eddie Edwards thanks to his “insurance policy” Killer Kross. He was then joined in his alliance by Moose, who betrayed Edwards.
But then, then things got tricky. Heading into Bound For Glory 2018, Aries was set to face Johnny Impact aka Johnny Mundo aka Johnny Nitro aka Johnny Blaze aka John Morrison. So in the lead up to their match, the two started trading shots on Twitter, with Johnny making short jokes and Aries making fun of Johnny’s wife’s weight. It seems to have been a worked shoot, but was reported like a real deal by TMZ. And if that wasn’t messy enough, in the main event of BFG, Mundo won the Title off Aries, only for Aries to stand up moments after the finish took place. Aries would flip off the crowd and yell at commentator/Impact owner Don Callis as he left, all while Johnny, Kross and Moose looked on rather confused. Some reports have attributed him getting up so quickly due to a concussion suffered during that match. Petey Williams, who was a producer at Impact at the time claimed that BFG was the last date on Aries contract, though Aries showed up to the next set of TV tapings and was subsequently sent home and the scripts of the shows were rewritten. Dave Meltzer also later reported that the worked shoot on Twitter was started by the two wrestlers without management’s permission. What a shit show.
S: Yeah good god that whole fucking predicament between Johnny Power Hour and AA really was such a messy incident for every single party. The typical work shoot Twitter shots at this time then escalates into proper heat because of some stupid comments that are rightfully deemed too far, spills into tensions backstage, a match which ends in nothing but controversy and overshadows the whole show. Then escalating to unprofessionalism and confusion among everyone working with Impact and nobody has a blue’s clue as to how this all came to be and why it happened the way it did. Fucking mess, man even when Impact was having a great 2018 they still had to put up with some shit like Alberto Del Dipshit being a bollocks and this whole mess.
JT: And funny enough, that Impact business about does it for AA. He’s had two dozen matches since then, most of which were indy dates, and four matches for MLW in late 2019 where he beat Adam Brookes, Ace Austin and Brian Pillman Jr only lose to Ted “The Hitman” Hart for the Middleweight Title before dipping. Since then, he didn’t wrestle at all in 2020 and has had 3 matches in 2021, the most recent of which was a losing effort to Dontae Smiley for the OIWA International Championship for Dallas based promotion SOAR Championship Wrestling.
S: Fucking hell, I had no idea his bookings had completely dried up after the Bound for Glory fiasco. Just goes to show you that his shitty attitude had caught up to him and now he’s pretty irrelevant all things considered, you can now find him sharing all of his shitty opinions on Twitter and getting absolutely ratio’d in every way. God have mercy on his Twitter account if they actually go through with this dislike option.
JT: Well I have just this to say to him in case it happens: Sucks to suck.
S: Amen to that and I’m not a religious man. End scene.
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Bad Moon Rising
JT: Before our next match we see that “Nature Boy” Ric Flair is watching tonight’s show and we also see Shinsuke Nakamura preparing for his NXT Title match backstage, with SmackDown’s #1 Announcer Funaki and CWC participant Kota Ibushi helping him get in the zone. On to our next match, it’s an NXT Debut!! Ember Moon takes over Brooklyn, unless her opponent Billie Kay can spoil the festivities.
S: Who is this Ember Moon? We were seeing vignettes for weeks of this mysterious character with red eyes, who could this lady be???
JT: Well let me ask you this, did you know anything about Ember Moon before she made her debut?
S: Well the only thing I had heard about Ember Moon was that she trained at Booker T’s Reality of Wrestling school and that was about it. I didn’t watch any of her matches or research her beforehand so I was going in blind in terms of her ring skills and boy, I must say that I definitely was pleasantly surprised with what we got here.
JT: All I’ll say is that like you said, she was a Texas wrestler who trained with Booker T, and she has this one move that I saw about one clip of from like a VFW hall. Other than that, she was all new. And her opponent, well she was pretty much a nobody to the Brooklyn crowd. It’s none other than Billie Kay!! And Seán, let me just say, it was fucking eerie to hear her music hit and get literally 0 reaction from the crowd.
S: I know right? Like that music was a guaranteed pop from even by the start of 2017 when Billie Kay was getting featured more prominently alongside Peyton Royce. Like there was not only silence but confusion as to who’s evil Disney Queen music belonged to.
JT: Yeah she does look like an evil Disney Queen doesn’t she? She’s got her big blue flowy robe and her blue gloves to match. So, what’s this Iconic Australians deal at the moment? Well back in June, she was used as an enhancement wrestler who lost to Dana Brooke on SmackDown. And that was all the confidence boost she needed, as apparently she has been bragging about being a main roster star ever since. It shot up her ego and she’s become unbearable backstage. Oh and she had victories against Liv Morgan & Santana Garrett on NXT heading into this. Still no character outside of the words “stuck-up heel” under her personality description though.
S: I think that’s a really great character honestly, you have an enhancement match on pre-Brand Split 2.0 SmackDown which most people would have forgotten about in I’d say two weeks but because of being on a main roster show, they become really egocentric. I like it.
JT: Oh don’t get me wrong, it’s a good basis for a character. It’s just she doesn’t really have much of a character aside from that backstory and being generally obnoxious. But that’s enough about her, let’s focus on the woman who this match is all about. What do you think of Ember Moon’s big debut entrance and just her general presentation/look?
S: The entrance is fucking awesome, I have to say. The theme song, the look, attire and all that just screams top level wrestler and makes her out to be a real big deal. If we touch on that theme song for a second, what an absolute banger that song is, eh? Like that is a brilliant piece of work from CFO$, I like to slag them for their looped formula a good bit and I’m probably going to win the match after this but Ember’s theme here is a real banger. It’s a shame she doesn’t have or use this song anymore.
JT: Yeah I definitely like her original theme more than her current one, though I get that they made a change to try and get her a fresh start. I also think her presentation is a winner. The bright red contacts really stand out and make her look like a freak of nature. I’m also a sucker for any sort of media where a big red moon appears, wrestling included. It’s just such an amazing visual. Though I feel like the crowd didn’t have their socks blown off by the whole presentation, I still think it’s a pretty damn good presentation.
S: I really wish that she was around when WWF did that Majora’s Mask ad so that the moon on her titantron could’ve been the big angry moon from that game, ready to crash into the arena.
JT: That would be excellent. Now, ready to get to the match?
S: Let’s do it!
JT: So the bell rings, we get some chain wrestling with Ember in control until Billie hits an elbow and takes her down. But almost immediately after Kay gets her first piece of offense in, Moon pushes her off and gets a nip up Headscissor! Moon starts to pick up the pace as she runs at Kay, Kay goes for a Hip Toss, but Ember lands on her feet and gets an arm drag. She’s got great agility and athleticism doesn’t she?
S: Yeah honestly, she’s one of the most agile western women’s wrestlers that I’ve probably ever seen. The other one that comes close to her ability would be Sadie Gibbs who day one AEW fans might know for her very few appearances and supposedly having a backstage scrap with Bea Priestley at All Out in 2019!
JT: Sadie “Not Taking Japan seriously according to Imperial Lord of Nippon William Ospreay” Gibbs.
S: Sadie “How Dare You Mourn The Death of Your Grandfather Says The ‘Young and Dumb’ Near Thirty Year Old Man Ospreay” Gibbs
JT: Anyway, back to our match. So Ember goes for a Crucifix pin but it’s blocked by Billie. Ember tries to then transition into another roll up but that’s also blocked as Billie pulls her up by the hair. Ember ducks a chop but leveled by an elbow, allowing Kay to take control of the match with elbows and a Headbutt. It doesn’t last long though as Ember gets back up and gets a Springboard Crossbody for a nearfall. That said, Billie gets right back in control by connecting with Soul Food!! 1–2–Kickout by Moon. Billie ground and pound as crowd claps for Ember, Billie goes for the Widow’s Peak, Moon doesn’t go up, Billie beats her down and gets her up for it anyway, holding Ember in the Peak for a submission. Impressive move by Kay honestly!!
S: Was this the Gory Special type move she did but working the neck rather than the arms? Because that was a cool looking submission.
JT: You can only pull off a move like this if you’re deceptively tall like Billie. Like 5’8 is fairly big for a lady, so she gets that nice elevation on Ember. It also helps deal extra damage when Kay drops her with a Gory Bomb. She covers, but it only gets a 2 count. Then we get a sneak peak and something that would become a signature of her career: Shrill yelling, this time at the Ref in anger.
S: Now the shrill yelling of Billie is one that usually tends to divide opinion on whether it’s great or horrible like nails down a chalkboard. What’s your thoughts on it?
JT: I’m okay with Billie’s screaming because she doesn’t go to a Melina-degree of screaming. Like she yells, but it’s not constant, just enough for it to be good. I’m all got things that make heels look silly and annoying.
S: Yeah true, I’m a bit mixed on it at times but for the most part, it’s a great little heat tactic and it makes her seem animated.
JT: Ember quickly gets with a quick roll up for a nearfall, so Billie goes right on the attack only to get a pair of back elbows by Moon, then a roundhouse to the gut, the. a Neckbreaker followed by a Front Facelock Suplex. Ember follows up by lining her up in the corner and running and getting a Handspring into a Clothesline!! Billie crumples to the mat and Moon goes up top. She waits for Kay to stand up, then dives off the top rope, flying and HITTING A FLYING STUNNER!! The crowd absolutely flips out and are fully on her side as she gets the 1–2–3 and the win in her debut!!
S: What an amazing pop that got from the crowd and rightfully so, when I watched this as a young lad of fifteen I absolutely flipped out seeing what is now known as The Eclipse being busted out for the first time before my very eyes. This was the ideal debut match you could give someone of Ember’s intense and insane talent. I’ve been saying it for the last three years but Ember Moon is up there as being the most underrated woman on their roster, it’s between her and Naomi if you ask me. I’d lean more towards Ember considering Naomi has gotten two SmackDown Women’s Title runs whereas Ember is back in NXT now.
JT: I certainly agree with that. I still think as a speaker she isn’t great but I think she’s more than passable, considering Natalya has gotten pushed on and off for a decade now. But yeah when you have a finisher that is pretty much guaranteed a pop from the crowd, I think you should absolutely do more with her than they have. It’s been an improvement in NXT recently, but not all it could be. Also I want to give a shout-out to Billie Kay for her sell on this. She fell right into the hard cam so Ember could do her pose with her bright red contacts for the camera. Very good job in general with the ending of the match.
S: Billie Kay, a real pro so she is. God bless her. What were your thoughts on this match anyways?
JT: As a debut match it feels almost like it didn’t do good enough by Ember, but the Eclipse is the only move she really needed
S: It’s a very old school booking tactic isn’t it? Get someone excited for a certain wrestler by making their signature move the draw. Pay to see their move, you know?
JT: Or at the very least, folks will stay in their seats and not head for the bathroom when she has her next match. Now I gotta say this, with Ember debuting tonight and a more tenured member of the women’s division making her final appearance later tonight, it seems like Ember has a pretty big spot to fill. Shall we run down how that went for her?
S: Yes we shall! Enlighten those as to how she got on.
JT: So Ember Moon! She has a real successful next few months of her career, as she runs through the NXT Women’s Division, all in the name of becoming NXT Women’s Champion. But unfortunately for Ember, she wasn’t just facing any Women’s Champion, she was facing Asuka at her strongest. WM33 weekend, she took on Asuka for the title, but was defeated. Then when Ember was set to get another shot in a 4 Way at Takeover: Chicago, an injury prevented her from competing. She would get her rematch against Asuka and for the title one year to her debut at Takeover Brooklyn III, but again she would come up short, as Asuka retained yet again. By the way, that Brooklyn III match? One of the most underrated in WWE History. It is fantastic and it never gets brought up among the best women’s matches in WWE History like it should be. Then even more unfortunately for Ember, before she could get a chance to redeem her two losses, Asuka was forced to vacate the NXT Women’s Title. But luckily, she was embraced by Asuka after she won the vacant title at Takeover War Games.
S: That match from TakeOver: Brooklyn III is such an underrated classic of a match, like I haven’t watched it in a while but I really have fond memories of it. Her winning the vacant title with Asuka embracing her really was a deserving moment for someone who would always have been Champion sooner if it weren’t for Asuka being booked like a terminator. Thoroughly earned.
JT: I still hope that someday they run back an Asuka/Ember match where Ember finally gets her win. Maybe it’ll happen someday, maybe it won’t. We can always hope.
S: Yeah hopefully it does happen soon but when we get back to what she’s up to now, I’ve got some things to mention.
JT: Well then let’s catch back up to the present? After holding the NXT Women’s Title for 140 Days including a successful defense over Shayna Baszler, she lost the title to Shayna WM34 weekend at Takeover New Orleans. But she’d recover, debuting on Raw the night after WM34. On the main roster that year, she’d unsuccessfully compete in MITB, and be the last person eliminated in a Battle Royal for a title shot at Evolution. She’d end up lasting 52 before being eliminated by Alexa Bliss. Unfortunately, she’d also suffer an injury that would put her on the shelf for a few months. She’d return just in time to compete in the Women’s Battle Royal, and then go to SmackDown in the Superstar Shakeup. There she would feud and beat Mandy Rose & Sonya Deville, before being selected as Bayley’s opponent for Summerslam. Sadly, Ember would lose that match and go on a losing streak before another injury would put her back on the shelf until October 2020.
Upon her debut in NXT, she would begin teaming up with Shotzi Blackheart against NXT’s heel. In March 2021, the NXT Women’s Tag Titles debuted and were given to Dakota Kai & Raquel Gonzalez, only for Ember & Shotzi to win the titles off them later in the night. She’d hold the belts 55 days before losing them in a Street Fight against Candice LeRae & Indi Hartwell. She’d also challenge for the NXT Women’s Title at Takeover In Your House 2021, but she’d be defeated by Raquel Gonzalez. Her most recent match was a loss to Dakota Kai on July 13th NXT. So Seán, you have an axe to grind?
S: Yeah I’ve a bit of an axe to grind with how Ember’s return to NXT has gone down for the most part. I think it was the right move for her to be honest, always a good place to go to catch up with some possible ring rust and creatively it was probably better for her too. To start off her return to NXT was built up for weeks as an anonymous challenger. She comes out after Io had successfully defended against Candice LeRae if I recall and so she comes out, takes off the biker helmet to reveal it’s her. Big pop, we’re teased a possible match with her and Ip Shirai, which probably would’ve ruled but her return was completely overshadowed by Toni Storm showing up on the big screen. Why two returns on one show? Who knows, NXT in 2020.
She has a brief appearance in the Rumble where she lasted about two minutes before Nia Jax threw her out, what a pittance. She then wins the NXT Women’s Tag Titles with Shotzi, yes those belts are in fact real and then they lose them on TV. She challenges Raquel, loses again and then she loses to Dakota Kai. The problem I’ve been having with her return is that she’s barely getting any big wins, like as well as those matches I mentioned, she lost Wargames as part of Shotzi’s team and she lost with Shotzi in the Women’s Dusty Cup Final. She’s just losing so many matches and I know it’s not as easy as it sounds but what’s the end goal with her in NXT? Like with Finn going back it seemed like he was there to reinvent himself and get some of his credibility back while with Ember, she just seems a bit like enhancement to people for the future.
JT: Yeah WWE in general feels like they struggle with long term planning. The reason for this is something I’ll call “Microwave Pushes”. WWE, not just the main roster but NXT too, has come to realize that they can make people credible challengers in short notice by giving them a 4 week push instead of building them up steadily over say, 3 months. It’s like microwave meals, why bother buying ingredients, preparing them and cooking them when you can throw something in the microwave and have it all done in 10 minutes? Pushing someone like that is fine when you need someone to challenge on a B PPV, but when you do it so often you’re left with a stagnant midcard. Everyone in the midcard is a frozen dish, doing nothing but they could be potentially unthawed and heated up at a moment’s notice. They don’t have to plan things out or do things with purpose over an extended period of time when they can just hunker down and get their work done just before the deadline. Again it’s fine short term, but it leads to someone like Ember just hanging out instead of being booked with vision and purpose.
S: And she’s a prime example of that too, isn’t she? Her and Ricochet I feel are going to be victims of that as long as they’re in WWE. Those two have both got insane marketability and do aerial maneuvers so well to the point where it’s completely natural and effortless. They should be wrestlers that are always in prominent roles given their places on the card but their place right now is just to be pushed for a bit whenever you’re needed for a spotlight PPV match.
JT: Yeah both had initial pushes that must kinda stopped and they’re now sidelined for big spectacle moments. It’s a way to handle a roster. Speaking of not handling your roster well, shall we run down Billie Kay now?
S: Ohhhhhh, do we have to? I’m just gonna be more frustrated about this.
JT: Well luckily it’s kind of a short story. So Billie would win some jobber squashes after tonight and by October she would form an alliance with fellow rising star Peyton Royce. This Iconic Duo, as they’d dub themselves, would be mainly a threat in NXT’s midcard, though they would unsuccessfully challenge for the NXT Title at Takeover San Antonio in a 4 Way match. The pair would continue to cause problems as an annoying heel pair.
On the first SmackDown after WM34, the now named IIconics would debut by attacking Charlotte Flair, leaving her prone to a Carmella MITB cash in. For the coming months, they’d frequently participate in tag matches, with varying success. One of their first big successes as far as W/L goes is when they defeated Asuka & Naomi in front of their home country fans at the Superstar Showdown. In 2019, they’d go on to compete in the Royal Rumble and the Elimination Chamber to determine the first Women’s Tag Titles. Then at WrestleMania 35, they had the biggest moments of their career as they won the Women’s Tag Titles.
S: Yeah up until this point, it’s safe to say that their careers were really on the rise and the fact they were given mic time, given big wins and were involved in some important moments during their first year was really a great sign of things to come. It doesn’t get much bigger than winning in front of your home nation in a big stadium show and winning the Women’s Tag Titles at WrestleMania. Really was a positive first year for them.
JT: Plus even though they were prone to comedy moments, they were still getting moments. Which is more than most people can say. They’d hold those titles all the way till August, and then it was a swift decline for Billie & Peyton. For most of the fall of 2019 into the Spring of 2020, they were inactive. Then upon their return they’d feud with Ruby Riott, leading to the reuniting of the Riott Squad, who they’d trade wins with for a few months.
Then in October, disaster struck!! Billie was drafted to SD, but Peyton was drafted to Raw. Split up for the first time in 5 years, it felt like both women struggled to build momentum. Billie began a comedy gimmick where she’d offer her services to various wrestlers as well as SD’s commentary team via her résumé. She was rejected on multiple occasions until she helped the Riott Squad get a victory on SD. For the next few weeks she’d continuously try to join The Squad and was seemingly set to turn face. Yet, with the constant rejection from the Riott Squad, she instead turned back heel as she joined with Carmella for a Women’s Tag Turmoil match at WM36…which they lost. Then very shortly afterwards, Kay along with Royce were part of a mass release by WWE. And since then, sadly Kay has not had any more matches. Just in and out of WWE in just 5 years.
S: Yeah it’s really shitty with how quickly they were just forgotten about and pushed down the card. Like they tried with Peyton Royce but they got bored after two weeks and Billie’s resumé story never got a fucking end, much like Ally Black’s Dark Father story. Fucking bizarre company.
JT: Yeah it was a weird case of “what have you done for me lately”. I feel like Billie & Peyton as a duo definitely had enough chemistry to justify sticking together at least for a little while long. Or at the very least, now that crowds are back, those two should be in consideration for folks who can return to fill out the roster. They’ve never been real 5 Star Match types, but they’ve certainly always helped out whatever card they were on.
S: Yeah they’re not gonna be the ones whose jobs are to tear the house down with a match or anything. They’re best with using their personalities and natural chemistry to get the crowd going for an upcoming match.
JT: I’m not gonna say that they’re necessarily jobbers but like, they don’t need to be booked as winners to improve the show. They can just do their comedy and lose and still be effective.
S: Exactly! Their characters are ones that won’t be affected by losses at all so having them on the roster would do more good than harm.
JT: Somewhere, anywhere, whether that’s WWE, AEW, Impact, ROH, wherever!! Bring back Billie & Peyton, it would be…..ICONIC!!
S: Good thing you didn’t use an extra ‘I’ because WWE would’ve been on us in a flash.
JT: Call them “The Iconic Australians” or “The Duo”, just call them anything as long as they’re wrestling again.
S: Now “The Duo” is a name I can get behind, makes them sound like a two person band or a pair of misfits in a 90s High School Comedy.
JT: Point is, I want them back soon. Maybe us talking about them will actually cause something to happen?
S: It’s seemed to work in the past so all we can do is hope that we succeed yet again. Let’s just not curse them like Nese and The Bollywood Boys.
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Something something Glorious
JT: So before we get to our next match, we have an ad for Summerslam 2016, with its huge main event!! Brock Lesnar vs Randy Orton!! Oh man, I wish that match was done differently than it was done.
S: Yeah this legit dream match was booked like fucking shit, wasn’t it? 2016 when you think about is a year which definitely wasn’t Brock’s best in WWE because of the overall match, I love Brock by the way, I think he fucking rules but man 2016 was a year where I wasn’t too hyped for Lesnar. The weird handicap match against Harper and Bray, the wet fart of a No Holds Barred Street Fight with Ambrose, which we reviewed by the way and this match with Orton. Just an oddly booked affair with a fucking mad finish and even stranger afters.
JT: It’s funny that it took rehashing a 12 year old feud to finally turn Brock’s year around. But man, Orton/Lesnar was something I booked as a kid in my fantasy promotion. Even with Suplex City Brock, it feels like we could’ve gotten more than what we got with it’s weird worked shoot elbow thing. Nobody came out of it better off, despite the pretty solid build the match had.
S: Yeah that match was built up really fucking well and I love how it was just announced, everyone knew Orton was coming back soon and they announced the match either when he just came back or like a week before he returned. I do like the sudden nature of it, the feeling of “Oh shit! This is actually happening”. I do like the surprising nature of it but yeah, this match was booked very poorly so it was. Sorry guys, we ain’t doing it.
JT: We ain’t got that kinda time. After all, we’ve got our next matchup to get to!! It’s Andrade “Cien” Almas taking on the debuting Bobby Roode!! And look at that, Bobby Roode has just arrived via limo for his match! He is asked about his first NXT Takeover and he says that NYC is his kinda town, but not Brooklyn. It’s the armpit of NY, it’s a dump. He’s more Manhattan than Brooklyn. Tonight, he’s taking NXT to the next level, and he’ll make it Glorious. After that we’ve got a video package hyping up this match. Roode has been wrestling for 18 years, waiting to make his move, and now he’s doing it since NXT is the hottest brand in the world. According to Corey Graves, he’s a game changer, and Roode talks about taking the company to the next level. NXT needs him in his fancy suits and shoes, because he’s a superstar. 15,000 aren’t paying to see Andrade, they’re paying to see him. It’ll come down to tonight’s match to see who is right and who is wrong. And right off the bat I just wanted to point something out: Where the fuck was Andrade? He got like 2 shots in the video package MAX. Boy, do you think he’s an afterthought in NXT already or what?
S: It’s almost as if they were setting up the fans to not react to him at all, isn’t it? Like my god this poor guy didn’t get a cat’s whisker of features in this promo package, at the last TakeOver they were ready to push this guy as a top babyface. Where the hell did that all go to?
JT: Yeah it’s pretty easy to tell that Andrade Almas’s NXT career was off to a rocky start. And it’s a shame because he had these really great vignettes talking about his history in Mexico and what it means to be wrestling in America, and then he came out and just, why? Why the fedora? Why the suspenders? Just talk about setting him up for failure, he looks like a dweeb!!
S: He looks like a fucking Chippendales dancer, bless him. He’s got the red fedora with the feather in it like he’s Peter Pan, he’s got his pull away red slacks and his red suspenders which cover his nips. It’s, it’s not a good look at all. He’s just asking to be turned heel.
JT: Yeah I mean hindsight is 20/20 (ewww, 2020….) and all that, but it was odd that they took one of CMLL’s biggest rudos and just made me a typical “heritage” luchador with bad gear.
S: I think it’s safe to say that even by January with TakeOver: San Antonio, his gear and look would improve considerably, yeah?
JT: Yeah luckily for Andrade this gear wouldn’t last but boy, it got him off on the wrong foot. But as NXT’s bookers would say, enough about Andrade, BOBBY ROODE!! WOW!!! So we’ve got another holdover from S2 making his appearance!! But this Bobby, he’s a much different guy than last time we saw him isn’t he?
S: Oh he most certainly is because he looks like Triple H’s kid brother here. I mean just look at him, he is the fucking ringer for 2013-2015 Trippers. All he needs is some leather and denim and he’ll be facing Joe rather than Nakamura. To be serious though, yeah he’s definitely a much different guy because since we last saw him at Victory Road, he split away from Beer Money, turning his back on James Storm and won the TNA Heavyweight Championship. He would have the longest reign in that belt’s history and it is still the longest reigning champ in history as of this writing at 256 days. He’s become a top singles wrestler and that’s what he hopes to be in NXT.
JT: He’s toned down the Drinking half of Beer Money and has focused more on the other half of that name, acting like a billionaire CEO on his way to buy out the little small business NXT once he tricks the doofus owner to hand over the rights. He’s got real “Villain in Young Adult mystery book” energy to him, he’s got an overwhelming presence and power behind him. Oh, and he’s got a meme to boot. Seán, would you like to remind everyone about….The #GloriousBomb?
S: Ahhhhhh of course I would, with pleasure sir. So what the #GloriousBomb happened to be was basically his theme song had been uploaded by WWE’s music channel before he’d actually debuted it on NXT. So in the days that followed, Gargano and Ciampa being the lovable scamps that they are would creep up on Bobby Roode playing his theme song in various locations and scenarios, they’d play the song until he nodded his head in approval and that was that. These wee skits happened on bus journeys, in the bathroom, whilst Gargano and Ciampa were eating their lunch, them doing it with a titantron version of Bobby Roode. The next time around they did it while Roode was sleeping and he just looked as if he was questioning his existence, he’d look angry but by God would he nod in approval! The one that was definitely your favourite was when they panned the camera up, No Way Jose was there! But he wasn’t the guy they were looking for, he’d move out of the way and who was sitting? It was only bloody Bobby Roode who shook his head in approval. The finale was him about to make his way up the steps to his entrance, he looked at Gargano and Ciampa in the distance, he nodded and he made his entrance. That is your history of the #GloriousBomb.
JT: Nothing like a little viral marketing to get your career off to a hot start am I right? With the hashtag coming on social media a bunch, it only helped make Roode more popular than he already was. And I mean, he got real popular real fast. It starts with him sitting ringside at Takeover: Dallas, then his popularity exploded with the release of his theme song. And it’s fair to say his theme song, it’s a great one. And one that fans instantly latched on to.
S: For sure man, cannot disagree with you there. It fit Bobby Roode like a hand in a glove so it did, it was super catchy, sounded great and is insanely fun to sing along to. A real big win for CFO$. What was it like hearing this song live, James?
JT: Well since you brought it up, we might as well just talk about his entrance as a whole. The first notes of his theme hits, the lights go out, and then flash on with the first “Glorious”, as we see Roode in his big sparkly Ric Flair type robe standing on a podium. His song belts out, with the fans singing along to the lyrics, exclaiming out with every “glorious” as Roode lowers to the floor. To cap off the first 90 second loop of his song, he brings the lights on properly after pointing out his own name on the Titantron. He walks to the ring with the crowd serenading him, and takes time to bask in the gloriousness in the ring with his arms outstretched. Being there live for this was really, really fun. I think any entrance that encourages fan interaction is a good one, and Roode’s certainly does that. I was a big fan of Roode and a big fan of his theme song, so it was fun to sing along and not be the only one doing so.
S: Yeah that’s the crazy thing about his theme song too, even by his first match at a TakeOver, the song was insanely over and people were well up for singing it. That sounds like a bloody brilliant live experience. What about Andrade? Was his reaction as flat as it came across on the Network?
JT: Like Jose, Andrade was one of my boys at the time. He’s not now because I argue he’s too good and too popular now to really be a boy. But at the time, he was someone who I thought had the tools but lacked the presentation and character to let him shine. So I was probably one of the only folks there who were actually cheering for him when he came out. Honestly, I think Jose got a bigger reaction than he did. Which is, as you say…not good.
S: Yeah that’s definitely not good but the difference between the two is that one’s presentation really fits him in Jose while Andrade is horribly miscast, hence his fairly dull reaction. Honestly man, I was a day one Andrade fan just like you were, I always thought he was uberly talented and just needed to be casted in the right role.
JT: So will the fish out of water Andrade manage to pick up the win, or will Bobby Rooooooooo pick up his first NXT Victory. Let’s find out. So right off the bat there are chants for Roode and chants of “This is Glorious”. He is just full of swagger as he saunters around the ring, taunts Andrade and just soaks in the many chants about him. Roode applies a wrist lock, Andrade gets out of it, but Roode locks in a headlock. Andrade sends him across, goes for a Dropkick, but Roode hangs on and Andrade hits air. Roode yells glorious, and another round of chanting ensues. Andrade presses Roode into the corner, but Bobby uses the break to his advantage, grabbing Andrade and throwing him into the ropes only for Andrade to hang up in the ropes for his signature pose. Even though we’re only a few minutes into this match, I feel it’s obvious how much better Andrade is to be a cocky heel. Like just this one spot he does here gets more reaction and shows more personality than anything he had done in his entrance, in the video package or in any of the chain wrestling he had done.
S: Very true, that taunt being tranquillo in the ropes is enough to tell you that he is definitely miscast as an initial babyface but at the same time he’s also showing NXT probably why more attention should be put on him too because he’s definitely being cast aside in the run in to this encounter with Roode.
JT: With that one moment of tranquility, Almas is able to really throw off Roode’s rhythm and take control. He blocks a kick and nails a chop, runs the ropes and as Roode drops down, he hits a low Dropkick. He gets back to his feet, Andrade runs into the corner bouncing from one rope to the other and coming out with a Hurricanrana!! This sends Roode to the floor, and Andrade goes to the apron, then springboards and swings himself from the apron back into the ring for a Wrecking Ball Dropkick right to the face of Roode!! Almas has all the momentum now as he sets up a dive, but Roode sees it coming and tries to rush back in with a clotheslines, but Andrade ducks rolls over the ropes to the apron and just shrugs to Roode and the crowd, who have a laugh. Roode is really pissed off now, charging in only to eat a shoulder to the gut. Andrade goes up top for more high flying action, but Roode cuts him off by hitting the ropes, causing Almas to lose his balance and fall to the mat. Just saying, the loudest reaction Andrade has gotten is with swagger. Also, he clearly has got talent in the ring too. Like it makes sense why he’s getting a push in NXT, he’s clearly got the skills, like you said there’s just that disconnect between who he is and what it feels like he’s able to do as a character and wrestler.
S: Yeah there’s no doubting his skills at all, he’s totally immense in the ring and he’s shown some signs of character but there just is this sense of a man who needs to find his true character.
JT: He’s very much a guy stuck in a role, and you can see him break out of it for a second and then remember he’s gotta play his role as he goes back to being a generic smiley face.
S: Smile and wave, Andrade. Smile and wave. Blow them kisses, wave to the people! Man I’ve managed to include both a Madagascar reference and a Simpsons reference in the same paragraph.
JT: That’s some true talent. Now, back to the match! Roode has taken control after knocking Almas off the top, as is now hammering him with stomps and chops in the corner. He scored with a running knee to the gut in the corner, followed by a Stalling Vertical Suplex by Roode for a 2 count. The crowd chants “That was glorious” as Roode locks in a rest hold. Andrade fights out of the hold, but he hits the ropes only for Roode to connect with a running knee. Roode picks him up for a Back Suplex, but Andrade manages to flip out of it and back up into the corner. Roode chases him in but Andrade moves out of the way. He charges in at Roode but Roode gets his boot up. Bobby goes up to Bret’s Rope, but before he can leap off, Almas with a springboard Dropkick that sends knocks him out of the ring to the floor. Now with Roode down on the outside, Andrade gets the crowd behind him as runs, springboards to the middle rope near the corner, then leaps over the top rope to the floor for a Corkscrew Plancha!! Holy shit!! This is a move I remember very distinctly. All I could think of was “This guy is awesome, how can people still boo him and think he’s boring when he can do stuff like that?”
S: I was in the exact same boat with what you said there when he busted this thing of beauty out. The way he does that Corkscrew Plancha too is just beautiful because he gets himself above the top rope and then does his full 360° rotation. I could understand his character being maybe a bit on the bland side but to say he was flat out boring? Absolutely not, at this point I thought he was doing all the work in this match moves wise for the most part.
JT: Yeah, one thing you can say about Bobby Roode is that he isn’t exactly the flashiest wrestler. I know we both like him and expressed as much in Season 2, but he does have a tendency to seem a little bland. That doesn’t really come through when he was in Beer Money because he could do big tag combo moves with James Storm. But his true strengths as a performer has always been in psychology and mic work. So while he mainly sticks to crisp looking knees to the gut and smart cut off spots, it’s really Andrade’s job as face to really get the crowd excited and that Corkscrew is the peak of it.
S: I think what we can see about Bobby Roode is that he does what he knows and feels most comfortable with doing in the ring and does it really damn well.
JT: That’s more sure, you won’t ever really see him mess up anything. That said, he’s on the ropes in this matchup after that “Glorious” dive as Philips says (which Graves greatly objects to). Andrade rolls Bobby back in, and then follows him back in with a Springboard Crossbody where he turns in mid air!! 1–2–Kickout!! Andrade follows up with a Casadora into a Bulldog!! 1–2–Kickout again by Roode!! Andrade lines up the big double knees in the corner, but as he takes off Roode with a big clothesline to snuff out the rally. Roode puts Andrade up top, facing out of the ring, but Andrade with an elbow to knock him off the top. He stands up top, Roode runs up after him, German Suplex!! Andrade lands on his feet!! He goes behind, Straight-Jacket German!! 1–2–Kickout!! Andrade still can’t put him away and is now looking for anything that could win him the match. He goes for a Springboard Moonsault, Roode rolls out of the way, Andrade lands on his feet and jumps again, but Roode gets the knees up. Roode goes for the Fisherman’s Suplex, Andrade rolls him up into a Small Package!! 1–2–Kickout!! Despite all this offense you might think Andrade has won over the crowd somewhat, but the Yay/Boo punch spot they do only reconfirms that the crowd is completely behind Roode. Still, Almas keeps fighting and is winning as he gets sharp back and forth elbows, followed by a wheel kick. He sets up the Double Knees in the corner, and connects!! He pulls Roode out to the center and looks for the Hammerlock DDT, but Roode hits an uppercut to escape. Roode goes behind him, but Andrade with a back elbow and a go behind, pushing Bobby into the ropes for a boot. He then takes off and hits the ropes, only to come back into a Double R Spinebuster!! Roode with his Glorious Pose to the audience, gets Andrade up in a Pumphandle position, lifts and slams him down with the Glorious Bomb!! He covers, 1––2—3!! Bobby Roode is glorious and victorious in his NXT Debut. What did you think of this one?
S: This match was certainly much better than what I had remembered five years ago. I really only recalled the Corkscrew Plancha and whatever the heck that Glorious Bomb finisher was as far as the in-ring side of things went for this match but on a rewatch, it’s definitely improved with age. It’s a pretty fun match to watch, Andrade was definitely the highlight as far as the actual action was concerned but Roode was obviously the more memorable character and overall package if you will. I honestly think that Andrade did nearly all of the work in this one and got much more offense than what my memory ate up at the time but as you said, he was there to keep the crowd invested and hyped for this match because it’s Roode’s debut. A good match if you ask me and Almas was a great first opponent for Bobby Roode.
JT: Yeah I feel the same way, and honestly I think it’s because my focus was shifted. When I watched this match live, all my focus was on Bobby and seeing what he’d do. And since really the only big moments he got were the Spinebuster and the Glorious Bomb, it felt like there wasn’t that much. But this time around, my focus was primarily on Andrade and he did all sorts of cool and impressive things. Even the little things like his elbows followed by the wheel kick were just really crisp. Since I brought it up, what did you think of the Glorious Bomb as a finisher? Because I remember watching it live and having a distinct “….oh ok” feeling when he actually won with it.
S: Oh I had the exact same feelings as you about the move, I was just like “That? That’s his big finish?”. It just didn’t fit at all, if he’s gonna do something called the Glorious Bomb, at least have it be some form of a Powerbomb like a Doctor Bomb or even just do the Pumphandle Slam that isn’t Road Dogg’s version and more like Test’s. Thank god the Impaler DDT came in to save him a few weeks later.
JT: Yeah it’d only be a little while before he’d switch things up. And just while we’re here, what do you think of this whole, dare I say, Bobby Roode fad? Do you think it was a fad just spurred on by a meme for a theme song? Or do you think he was genuinely over? Do you think this was a run that could last or do you think it was always doomed to get tired at some point??
S: I think if you’re going to book someone as well as Bobby Roode was throughout his NXT run, I don’t think people would get tired of singing his theme song if you ask me. It’s the same with Nakamura while he was in NXT and during his first year on the main roster, not saying he was booked well but because he was a face and had an awesome theme song that helped. Also, I just think people love singing along at wrestling shows if you ask me. Just look at Jungle Boy in AEW now for example.
JT: Agreed. Just getting something fans can latch upon really helps get a guy over. That’s why now that WWE has Fox & Saudi money, they need to bring back licensing themes. Or getting licensed bands to make in house stuff, like Wale doing Big E’s theme. I’m not saying everyone needs one, but just you can get a specific person and just set them up for success. Jungle Boy is a good example, as is Orange Cassidy getting “Where’s My Mind”. Fantastic theme song by the way.
S: Yeah they’re amazing theme songs, very fitting too for those lads. I do think that getting proper music artists help make a wrestler feel way more bigger than what they are because it gives them the air of being a “superstar” per say. The reason I love Big E’s theme song is not just because of Wale, who does an excellent job but also because of how triumphant the song sounds.
JT: Agreed. I suppose to get back on topic, I feel like there was an element of Roode’s push being a fad honestly. But not because he wasn’t over organically. I think he was over organically. I just think that his Glorious theme song was just the right kind of spark to really get the crowd to pay attention to him. From there though, the crowd really got hooked onto his whole thing. And far as his main roster run goes, it was definitely a misstep to book him as a face. That said, I don’t think where he currently is on the card is all that disappointing. I just think he’s someone with such good range that I think that he could work well lower on the card or higher on the card. Like he’s old enough where you could justify making him just a solid midcarder but he has the ceiling where if you wanted to really push him, I think he could make it work.
S: Agreed but when you think about it, how long was he really been pushed as a singles act on the main roster? About a year tops? Because by about the Autumn of 2018 comes around, he’s primarily a tag team wrestler for the most part.
JT: I mean honestly though, I don’t mind him being a tag team wrestler. I mean it’s how he really rose through the ranks in TNA. He’s about one of the only guys I trust to make Dolph Ziggler less boring.
S: Yeah I totally agree with you there when you say he makes Ziggler in 2021 less boring, which he does to be fair. I guess a positive of him being a tag team wrestler is that he’s actually been more successful doing that on the main roster than he was being a singles guy.
JT: Well this we got bits and pieces of it, should I just run through the rest of Roode’s run?
S: The floor is yours sir, take it away
JT: From here Roode goes on to have one of the most protected NXT runs ever. From here, he’d continue his win streak with a victory over Tye Dillinger at Takeover Toronto. From here he’d go on to win the NXT Title at Takeover San Antonio and would go on to hold it all the way till next Takeover Brooklyn with wins over Hideo Itami, Kassius Ohno and Roderick Strong. At Brooklyn III he’d lose the Title to Drew McIntyre, and head up to the main roster the next week. From there he’d engage in a brief feud with Dolph Ziggler, beating him in his PPV match, losing to Ziggler on SD but then winning a 2 out of 3 Fall match to qualify for Team SmackDown for the Men’s Survivor Series match at Survivor Series 2017. Sadly in the stacked match, he only lasted 13 minutes before being eliminated by Braun Strowman with no eliminations himself. After failing to capture the US Title at Clash of Champions 2017, he’d go on to win a tournament for the vacant title. He’d only carry the title for 54 Days before losing the Title to Randy Orton at Fastlane 2018. He’d compete for the title at WrestleMania 34, but would be unsuccessful. He’d move to Raw in the Superstar Shakeup, feud with Elias for a bit, qualify for the men’s MITB but be unable to win the contract. In the fall he’d begin teaming up with Chad Gable, unable to win the Raw vs SmackDown Tag Team Survival at Survivor Series 2018, but they’d win the Raw Tag Titles from AOP & Drake Maverick on the December 10th episode of Raw. They’d hold the titles until February 2019, losing the belts to The Revival. Man, I almost forgot his team with Gable.
S: It’s honestly up there as one of the most forgotten tag teams of this current era if you ask me and there’s been a lot of them. Those Raw Tag Titles especially have just had some bizarre pairings hold the belts since they were rebranded as such. I remember he and Gable had a cool tag finisher and that Drake Maverick pissed on Roode’s robe after he pissed himself at Survivor Series. You just know Vince was cracking one off watching those moments.
JT: Yeah I’m sure Vince adored that moment. And you’re about to get a real flashback in a second. They’d turn heel in April but Gable would be drafted to SmackDown. Roode would change his name back to Robert Roode later in the month, and in May he’d become the 2nd ever 24/7 Champion only to lose the title later in the night. By August he’d begin teaming up with Dolph Ziggler, winning the Tag Titles off the beloved team of Seth Rollins & Braun Strowman, with Roode pinning Rollins. Remember that shit??
S: I sure do remember it alright, an absolutely weird result which was definitely forgotten about within a month, did he even get a shot at Rollins for the Universal Title or was Da Fiend terrorising Rollins at that time?
JT: He’d get a one on one match but for the title and honestly, it’s a weird ass segment!! So he was about to lose via Stomp until Ziggler ran in for the DQ. Then out came The OC, all three of them to further beat down Seth. And then all of a sudden, KANE?!? Kane make the save, running of RooDolph, Gallows, Anderson and Styles. Finally, when you think it’s all over, it’s DA FIEND!! He takes down Kane, and stares down Seth to end Raw. Yeah, uhhh, what the fuck was Raw in 2019.
S: I do remember Kane coming back to get taken out as a victim of The Fiend alright but man, I did not realise that barely 30 years in the business Mayor Glenn Jacobs fended off FIVE DUDES including your Raw Tag Champs and your United States Champion only to become a victim of Da Fiend. Raw was a fucking mess in 2019 during that Wildcard Rule and after Mania 35 in general.
JT: It really was a mess. For example, RooDolph would only hold the titles for 29 Days though, losing them to The Viking Raiders. They’d get drafted to SmackDown, where he and Ziggler would be cronies for King Corbin in his feud with Roman Reigns and the Usos. They’d compete in the Elimination Chamber for the SD Tag Titles but were unsuccessful, and then the pandemic hit. Roode would sit on the sidelines from March all the way till September, with him and Ziggler being traded to Raw in the meantime. What did they do on Raw? He’d return to action in late September, challenge Drew McIntyre for the WWE Title in an Open Challenge, and get drafted back to SD in October. What a well organized company, am I right? Anyways, on SmackDown they’d have consistent success, leading to them defeating The Street Profits for the Titles in January. They’d carry the belts through WrestleMania, defeating the Alpha Academy, Street Profits and The Mysterios. Still, their reign would come to an end at the hands of the Mysterios at all time stupidly named show, WrestleMania Backlash. And that’s about it for Bobby Roode.
S: You know what, as much as I think he should definitely be used more in a singles capacity because of how good of a hand he typically is, he really has had himself a nice little run as a tag team wrestler for himself. Yeah the run with Gable was largely forgettable but to be fair, he’s had a run with Ziggler which has lasted much longer than I thought it would.
JT: I mean it seems like it might go in that direction since they got in a segment with IC Champ Apollo Crews on SmackDown, but who knows. And now that we’ve talked about him, shall we look at his just as equally interesting opponent, Andrade?
S: Yes we shall, I’ve got a good lot to say about him.
JT: Well as we said here, it was obvious that Andrade needed a change. And it wouldn’t be long before one happened. In the fall he’d lose by Pinfall to Cedric Alexander, but the two would show mutual respect for each other and they’d team in the DRCC. However, after a First Round loss Andrade would snap and attack him, turning heel. He’d enter into the NXT Title picture by defeating No Way Jose and getting to a Fatal 4 Way for the #1 Contendership, but he’d be eliminated by Roderick Strong. This would lead to a match against Strong at Takeover San Antonio, but he’d be defeated again. He’d get more low level wins but he’d be defeated at Takeover, this time in Orlando by Aleister Black. Though he was a different guy, he still wasn’t reaching his potential, exemplified by vignettes of him partying backstage after losses. This led to Zelina Vega entering the scene, whipping Andrade into shape. He’d defeat Johnny Gargano at Takeover Brooklyn III, then Gargano again on NXT TV, then Roddy Strong to earn a shot at NXT Champion Drew McIntyre. In a huge upset, Andrade defeated McIntyre at WarGames 2017 to become NXT Champion. Even with Andrade as one of my guys, his win here totally caught me off guard!! What about you?
S: I remember watching this with my friend the day after my 17th birthday actually and even though my friend would casually watch and keep up with results, we were both CONVINCED that this was a sure-fire retention for Drew because it was his first TakeOver defending the title and Almas we thought was someone for Drew to face and ultimately beat but when he hit that Draping Hammerlock DDT and the ref counted three, I was absolutely stunned as was my friend but I was absolutely buzzing because my boy had become a top guy! It was awesome to see!
JT: Same, I didn’t believe it’d happen, but I’m glad it did. He had climbed his way from rock bottom to the NXT Title, and he wasn’t the only one trying to do that. The despondent Gargano he had defeated in the Summer and Fall was long gone, as he was rejuvenated and driven to become NXT Champion. This led to one of the greatest NXT Title bouts of all time at Takeover Philadelphia. It was a match for the ages, and Andrade came out on top. And to just rub salt in the wound, Gargano put his NXT Career on the line against Andrade for another shot at the title, and Andrade came up victorious again. Let’s just take a moment to appreciate one of the greatest rivalries in NXT History.
S: It’s such a simple rivalry but my word was it was so effective in front of the live audience. Starts off with Johnny trying to get over what happened in Chicago and Andrade is the rejuvenated one, they’re both looking to find their form but Andrade is the one who gets there first. By the time it comes around again for Philly, John Boy is the rejuvenated one while Andrade is the man on top. I love how it was set up to be that Gargano has come from rock bottom into the main event of only his second TakeOver singles match and this time, it’s for the title. It’s not only one of my favourite matches in recent memory or of Gargano’s but it’s honestly one of my favourite matches of all time. It was simply incredible, a masterpiece to quote Dunkey. God how much I adore it.
JT: I’m seriously going to rewatch it again soon, it’s so great. And shoutout to Zelina Vega for being such a great addition to his gimmick. Their chemistry is fantastic and she really adds another layer to his character. She definitely did her part to make sure he won, and kept the NXT Title. Until a costly mistake on her part led to Andrade being defeated by Aleister Black at Takeover New Orleans. Shortly afterwards the pair would head up to the main roster, with Andrade defeating veteran luchador Sin Cara in his first feud. He’d go on to team with Vega to defeat Rusev & Lana at Summerslam 2018, but then things would just kinda slow down for Andrade. They’d lose a rematch on SmackDown, and Andrade would just kind of bounce around through the fall without much of a direction. In January things would begin to turn around, as his name was shortened to just “Andrade”. He’d enter a rivalry with Rey Mysterio, beating him on SD but losing in a 2 outta 3 Falls match. He made it to the Final 4 of the Royal Rumble, but would be eliminated by Braun Strowman. He’d challenge for the US Title but fail to win it at Fastlane 2018, he’d compete in the MITB Ladder match but fail to win the contract, he’d be defeated for the IC Title in a Ladder Match at Super Showdown in Saudi Arabia. He’d make the Semi-Finals of the King of the Ring tournament, but would be defeated by Chad Gable. Mainly, imagine Luchador King Andrade instead of King Corbin?
S: Ohhhhhh now that would’ve been something awesome! You could’ve called him Rey Andrade and do a King vs King or Rey vs Rey match with him and Mysterio!!! Why didn’t they fucking do that???
JT: I guess Corbin was higher on the list of priorities. Still, Andrade got his biggest main roster victory shortly afterwards, as on the Madison Square Garden house show on Christmas Day, he defeated Rey Mysterio to win the United States Championship!! He’d defend the title against Rey on Raw, then again in a Ladder Match!! He’d enter a feud with Humberto Carrillo, managing to keep the title away from him at every turn, despite Carrillo putting him on the shelf for a month (for violating the wellness policy). With him on the shelf, Vega brought in Andrade’s cousin Angel Garza to do her bidding. Garza & Andrade would have a real love/hate relationship for months, with the two set to fight for the Raw Tag Title at WrestleMania 36, but Andrade was pulled out of the match due to injury. He’d also lose the US Title to Apollo Crews in May. Teaming with Garza would continue for months, with relatively little success. In October Vega left the two to fend for themselves, leading to a match between Garza & Andrade that Garza won. Vega would take Garza’s side in the aftermath, and Andrade would split from them entirely as Andrade left them to be attacked by The Fiend and Alexa Bliss. This would be Andrade’s final WWE appearance, as he would be taken off TV after this, Vega would be released, and he’d end up sitting until next March when he would ask for and get his release from WWE. And that’s Andrade’s incredibly rocky last two years of Andrade’s WWE career!!
S: Wowwwww. Talk about a frustrating time for a wrestler if there ever was one and honestly, I just remember being annoyed with how we would be used on the main roster half of the time. Like there were glimpses of him being used properly, he pushed AJ Styles to the limit in a match on SmackDown whilst AJ was in the midst of his year long title reign, the feud with Rey which gave us some belters. Getting to the final four of the Rumble and winning the US Title but all those great things, it would be overshadowed by just questionable booking and too many losses.
JT: Andrade has one of the worst cases of spot start pushing I’ve seen, frankly ever. They’d make him look a serious star one minute, and then he’d go weeks without doing anything of importance. There were so many opportunities to pull the trigger on him fully, that they didn’t take. They could’ve had him win MITB in 2019, they could’ve gone all the way with his pairing with Garza, they could’ve done something serious with him after he split with Garza & Vega. I mean the only time I can excuse them not following though is when he got a Wellness Policy violation as Champion. Even then though, they didn’t have him drop the belt, they just did nothing with it.
S: He is literally the poster child for WWE’s stop start pushing methods over the last decade if you ask me, so many times they had the opportunity and they just didn’t bother their arses to do so.
JT: Well it’s okay because now, he’s on to somewhere where hopefully his value will be recognized. On June 4th, he debuted in All Elite Wrestling, initially alongside Vickie Guerrero, but now it appears like she has been replaced by her nephew, Chavo Guerrero. He hasn’t had any serious story moments or matches yet, but he has called out Death Triangle, with a chance that he might snatch Pentagon & Fenix from PAC. And even if he doesn’t, the idea of him facing PAC/Pentagon/Fenix sounds delightful.
S: The feud with the Death Triangle could be something unbelievable and will have some amazing matches. What I do hope happens is that Andrade gets two lads to back him up and face Death Triangle in a Trios Match for All Out, what tag team though, I’m not sure.
JT: I mean I see people floating about Rush & Dragon Lee, who would be tremendous partners, but they also apparently resigned with ROH only 5 months ago. But who knows! I just hope Andrade doesn’t get jumped on the totem pole, especially with the rumors of certain people potentially coming to AEW. But we can talk about that in a later segment. Hey wait a minute, why don’t we go to that segment now?
S: I’ve got the French Press coffee prepared so we might as well. Get yourselves a brew people because it’s time for a Recharge!
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The Recharge
JT: Hello and welcome to the Recharge. Here we diverge from our main timeline to just talk about other non related stuff, be that Wrestling other than the show we’re watching, TV, video games, real life occurrences and so on. And since I brought it up before, should we talk about those AEW rumors?
S: Yes we shall and boy, those rumours sure have a lot of fanfare and truth to them, don’t they?
JT: Honestly when it comes to wrestling journalism, I find myself choosing not to believe anything until any of it is actually confirmed on TV or by the companies themselves. But then again, these rumors seem to have a lot of smoke around them, and you know what they say about smoke. When there’s a lot of it around, there may be fire.
S: Yeah I used to be mad into looking into wrestling news in my early teens but I’ve completely gone away from it nowadays aside from the odd article which may catch my eye but these reports man, they’ve got a lot of traction and it’s looking closer to reality rather than rumour and speculation.
JT: Well let’s be real, if you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen the rumblings yourself. And hell at this point, one of them may have debuted by the time this gets out. But if you don’t want to know who we’re talking about, this is our last warning. Go on, get outta here, we won’t talk about it any other time other than this segment. If you don’t want spoilers, scram!!
Alright now that you’ve been sufficiently warned, we’re of course talking about the rumors that’s sounding a lot more like official news that both Daniel Bryan and CM Punk will be signing and showing up in AEW soon. Holy. Fucking. Shit.
S: Holy fucking shit indeed. Who saw this coming? Like honestly, this is the best kind of shocking news you could ever ask for. I thought it was likely that Bryan was going to be renewing his WWE contract and Punk, well nobody really would ever know what’s going to happen with Punk and nobody has had a clue for the better part of a decade now. If this comes to fruition then WWE have a real battle on their hands.
JT: Yeah it still won’t be at the level of WCW poaching two of their youngest stars in Hall & Nash, or poaching their former top star like Hogan, but I certainly think it would be a huge shot. Bryan & Punk are two of the most important figures in wrestling from the past decade, getting them on the Elite side in short succession would be huge. Bryan going to AEW is something I should’ve guessed would happen. I mean wrestling is a challenge to him, from reading his book you get the feeling that he’s always trying to do better and to do more and do new things. He’s said it himself, he knows he’s in his last couple years, this is the last chance he really has to go for those dream matches and prove he can make it anywhere. On top of that, AEW would really, really want him, so signing a big money contract would really benefit his family and he’s always talked about how important his family is to him. Finally, I just don’t know how much was left for him in WWE. Unless he wanted to do an NXT run and try to mix it up with the younger wrestlers there, there wasn’t much more he could do. He’s got a Grand Slam, he’s won Money in the Bank, he’s main evented WrestleMania. Going to AEW could be one last thrill ride before the ride that is his career closes permanently.
S: Totally agree with you there, he really did all he could do in WWE. With his last year it did really feel like that he was trying to do everything he could to help push guys he felt deserved a push or personally put over guys of his choosing like Cesaro, Sami Zayn and Roman Reigns. With AEW he could possibly work a lighter schedule which would mean no or very little house shows, for great money and getting to wrestle guys he definitely feels are on his bucket list.
JT: Oh man am I excited for those fresh matchups!! I gotta say, there are lots of tantalizing options on the table. I mean I’ve got about 6-7 matches off the top of my head I’d love to see. Obviously you gotta do Omega/Bryan. Even if I’m not the Omega fanboy I used to be, you gotta run that match.
On the opposite side of the spectrum for star power: Wheeler Yuta vs Daniel Bryan. Yuta is such a gifted technical wrestler, and I’m certain I heard him say he was a huge Bryan fan when he was younger during a promo he cut in ROH. Even if it was a short match, I think it’d be really great.
Back to an obvious idea: MJF vs Bryan. Bryan is natural top face material, MFJ is a top heel. MJF is also someone who I find can struggle to have exciting matchups, and who better than Bryan to give him his best match ever?
One more that I think would be great is PAC vs Bryan. They were in WWE at the same time but were never close to crossing paths and I think their match would RULE.
This one also seems fairly obvious but I think a Hangman Page vs Daniel Bryan match has potential to have such a great story. I think you could have a tremendous story if you had a heel American Dragon targeting Page as the exemplary figurehead of wrestling gone soft. He can highlight Page’s good looks and talk about how tough the indies used to be while someone like Page was able to just skate by without getting properly stretched and taught respect. In general a Daniel Bryan furious at the newest generation of Indy wrestlers sounds like a fantastic gimmick to me. But even face Bryan vs Hangman sounds great.
And finally, my biggest Bryan dream match in AEW is against Orange Cassidy. Both guys fill almost the same exact sort of niche for me. They’re both guys who know how to be funny and silly, but while also being incredibly technical wrestlers while not being the sort of slow, mat based guys you think of with “technical wrestling”. I think putting those two together for a storyline and match is a recipe for pure gold.
S: Those all sound like fantastic matches on paper. The one which stands out to me the most out of the ones you mentioned was the possibility of Bryan taking on Wheeler Yuta, he’s always been someone I’ve heard great things about but had only checked out very little of his stuff and in the past few weeks of watching him in various matches in AEW, whether it be on Elevation or Dark, I’ve gotta say that I really like what I’ve seen so far. He really stands out in a roster of talented wrestlers and that says how talented he is. Another guy who you didn’t mention that I’d like to see Bryan possibly wrestle, this may seem like an out there choice but I’m gonna say, Angelico! Much like Yuta, he’s a very gifted technical wrestler who uses his long frame to his advantage and has loads of unique looking submissions including his patented Novaro Death Roll. I’d just love to see him and Bryan trade loads of holds and lock some awesome submissions in on one another, giggidy.
JT: Both Angelico & Wheeler sound like fantastic first matches for him to have. Also, with AEW getting licensed music for other wrestlers, the idea of Final Countdown coming back is very tantalizing.
S: Oh how good it would feel to hear that belted out in front of big arenas on episodes of Dynamite and for their PPV’s. It would be a joy to the wrestling world really.
JT: Now onto Pepsi Man himself, CM Punk. His re-entering wrestling is something people have hoped for for a while, but without any real progress or reason to believe it would happen. Nevertheless, him coming back would be big. Personally, I hope he does just because it would be nice to see him happy again. It feels like he’s almost become another Bret Hart figure in a way, just bitterly angry about how things turned out. So the idea of Punk being positively involved with wrestling again sounds like a nice fresh turn.
S: He really was a Bret Hart like figure for a good three or four year period after how his exit from WWE went down but I think just like Bret in the last few years, he seems to be more at peace with himself and finding joy in his actual life outside of wrestling. Have you ever seen Bret Hart backstage nowadays? Dude’s smiling like a Cheshire cat all the time. I do think that Punk going to the “new promotion” if you will under completely different ownership as opposed to WWE will definitely create less frustration for him as well. Plus, they’re not gonna work him into the ground like he was in his last three years with WWE, he would be shitting himself in the ring again if he were on that schedule one more time.
JT: I will say, compared to Bryan, I’m more worried about his run if I’m being honest. That’s nothing on AEW, it’s just I’m not sure what to expect from him. The guy was pretty worn down by the end of 2013, and though he wouldn’t be under such dire circumstances, he is now 42 and has been out of the ring for over 7 years now. So I’m not exactly sure what kind of output to expect from him. I’m also concerned we’re gonna get a “Fuck the Fed” gimmick/storyline/theme to his work. And as deserving as he is to do that about anyone else, it’s just not something I’d be interested in seeing. That sort of thing feels like it was played out even decades ago. So basically, my nightmare scenario is him being more Chris Jericho 2021 and less Chris Jericho 2011 if you catch my drift, with a “Fuck the WWE” on top of that.
S: Those are major concerns really and I’ve been thinking about them as well, especially with how he may look in the ring. I do have my doubts, especially with how broken down he really looked at the end of his WWE tenure. I think Punk looks healthy nowadays though, like healthier than he looked when he was in that MMA company that shall not be named for his sake and definitely healthier looking than in 2013. They do need to play their cards right when it comes to his character, I think what it needs to be is a personal redemption arc for Punk, him wanting to main event big shows and wrestle the way he wants to.
JT: At the very least though, he should be a captivating speaker. And since we’ve both expressed concerns about his in ring skill, what do you think about talking about the promo opponents you want to see?
S: Well MJF would definitely be a good one because they’re both brilliant loud mouths. I think Don Callis would be an interesting person he could trade shots with, both wordsmiths, both aren’t afraid to speak their minds and the two of them could definitely make for a good promo battle. I mean him and Jon Moxley could do some fucking incredible promo battles against one another and while we’re on about Moxley, we’ve gotta mention Eddie Kingston too. There’s definitely some history that goes back a good while between the two of them and a promo battle between them would certainly be top of my list.
JT: I won’t lie, MJF was one of the first to pop into my mind too. Eddie is also another tremendous pick too. I also think Cody would cut some strong promos too, he’s really been able to flex his chops as a speaker since Punk has been gone. And I don’t know if I want an Archer vs Punk match, but I’d certainly love to see a Jake Roberts/CM Punk promo exchange.
S: Ohhhhh now a Jake vs Punk promo exchange would definitely make for some very captivating television. A match between Punk and Archer wouldn’t be my first choice of a match for Punk but if it meant getting Punk and Jake promos in the build up then I’m down.
JT: Now since I brought it up when we were talking about Andrade, I’ll talk about a worry I have. The only problem with both Punk & Bryan coming over at the same time is that they’re huge stars. Like legitimately, they will be the 2 of the 3 biggest names in the company (Jericho is the 3rd). AEW has been real smart about building up and protecting people so far, but my only concern is that people right at the cusp of the main event level are gonna really get hurt. I’m talking about guys like PAC, who have faced all the top guys already available and struggle to get wins. I’m talking about Andrade, who is a big name but not a big name relative to Punk & Bryan. And the one that comes to mind the most is Christian Cage. He was a big deal when he signed, but it feels like he hasn’t done much since then and his status as “big free agent” get absolutely eclipsed by two younger, bigger names in Punk & Bryan.
S: That is a legitimate concern that I’ve been having about AEW recently too, it really is awesome to have a load of big names under one company who can all legitimately be built up to take on whoever the AEW World Champion is but it could get to the point where there’s too many big names under one roster in a way, you know? Those names you mentioned are all who I’d be concerned for and you could nearly add Malakai Black to that list too but hopefully he should be safe.
JT: Look, if any company can manage to keep all these guys plus Hangman, Jericho, Orange Cassidy, Darby Allin, MJF, Miro and more in interesting feuds without having too many of them totally drop down the totem pole, I think it’s AEW. The show is more exciting with more stars, I’d rather have this sort of problem that they have on UK Scene post NXT UK and Speaking Out, where there is nobody to pick from. It’ll be a tough needle to thread, but I think they have a chance to do it mostly well (nobody can be perfect with this) and at least we’ll get some big matches out of this.
S: Couldn’t have said it better, I do have my doubts but I’m sure they can do a grand old job. Shall we get info today’s trivia anyways, James?
JT: Yeah that sounds like a good time! As I’m sure you know, our trivia rules are pretty simple and pretty flexible. We ask the other a question, they get usually 3 guesses and 1 hint, and the winner gets WWE Bragging Rights on DVD!! Hold on, I mean just regular, normal bragging rights.
S: Awh dammit! I was hoping one of us would snag a Bragging Rights DVD from all the classic PPV’s that event brought us like 2009, 2010 and that’s it.
JT: It’s okay, you’ll get a chance to watch Kaval some other time. Now, I have to say, Takeover Brooklyn II? This is my domain. So I’ll give you the option of electing to ask your trivia first or try my trivia first, since I am a benevolent god.
S: Well Mr. Benevolent God, I will take the option of your trivia first because as the trend seems to be with me lately, I haven’t got a bloody clue what to ask you, so the floor is yours sir.
JT: Alrighty then!! So, if today’s episode of the Power Hour were one of those educational shows for children, I’d say today’s word of the day is….Glorious!! That’s right, this word is repeated over and over throughout the show. So in an “Unbelievable” OSW style, I’d like to ask you this: How many times do you think the word “Glorious” was said from the time Bobby Roode first appeared on screen before his match to the time his match ended? As an extra caveat, I’m removing any time it was said by the crowd during his theme song, because that would just be too much man. I’d also like to add, one chant of “This is Glorious” only counts the first time, not for the duration of the chant. But otherwise, it’s every time a chant with that word was started, every time commentary said it, and every time Bobby Rooo said it, both inside and outside of the ring.
S: Oh fucking hell, I was not expecting this at all hahahahaha. Sounds glorio- NO, BAD SEÁN. Alright so including all of what you laid on me right there, I’m going to say that Glorious was said about 26 times.
JT: Well since guessing just straight numbers is difficult, I’ll be nicer and work on a warmer/colder hint system rather than just one solitary hint. I’d say you’re pretty cold there champ, you’re much too high.
S: Alright much too high then, so the warmer/colder system is what my hint is for this question, yeah?
JT: Yeah, after you guess I’ll tell you if you’re closer or not, and if you’re close, how close.
S: Alright, stick me down for about 12, is that right? Hot? Cold?
JT: That guess is RED HOT!! You are literally so close, only a 1 number difference. It’s up to you to decide if it is one less or one more.
S: I’m going to take a stab at me and my friend’s lucky number, stick me down for 13????
JT: That is correct….with a little caveat I set for myself. So, I couldn’t decide if I should include calls of the “Glorious Bomb” only because it’s the name of his finisher, and regardless of what it was named, they would’ve repeated the name to make sure the fans remember it. So you actually had 2 numbers you could’ve guessed 13 or 15. Shall I run through every Glorious instance?
S: I am fucking delighted with myself that I got that right, it’s proved to be my lucky number yet again. Every Glorious instance, James. Better cue that song up because we’ve got ourselves a glorious compilation.
JT: At the end of his promo, Bobby Roode says he’s taking NXT to the next level, and he’ll make it “Glorious”. Number 2 is Corey Graves saying his entrance was “Glorious”. “This is Glorious chant” before the match begins, which Corey acknowledges, using the word. He then goes on to talk about his Tri himself is tweeting about it with #Glorious. And right as he says that, Roode taunts Andrade while saying the word (as does the crowd but it’s one instance). Later on in the match, Roode yells “glorious”, which kicks off a “glorious” chant. He also does a move later leading to the “That was glorious”. We enter double digits as Tom gets on Corey’s case by saying Andrade’s big dive to the floor was “glorious”. When Andrade goes for the Double Knees in the corner and Roode cuts it up with a clothesline, Graves says it was a “glorious clothesline”. Roode ends the match with the move called the “Glorious Bomb”, Tom repeats the calls of the “Glorious Bomb” so the crowd remembers that name. And Graves closes the bit by saying “Hallelujah, it’s Glorious”. That leads to a final count of….14. Motherfucker.
Kids, first off pardon my French, second of all if you do a counting gimmick and make someone guess that count, double check your work. Either I cut out an instance accidentally as I was running through the match, I counted something twice, or I just goofed. I’m giving it to you anyway on account of human error. But boy do I feel like a dolt now. A very un-glorious end to my bit here, if I do say so myself.
S: Sure we’ll just count the first glorious in his theme song, which brings it up to fifteen, take away the two “Glorious Bomb” calls and voilà! Your gimmick is saved! That’s what I’m here for, buddy. But holy shit, that’s too much glorious for me to digest, it’s like when you have too many sweets on Halloween. You just feel sick afterwards.
JT: Yeah I think generally the Bobby Roode stuff has aged well, except for how much they repeat it. It was fun at the time but it’s overwhelming when you think about it. So let’s not think about it anymore, let’s move on. What have you got for me?
S: Alright so since you asked me to guess the number of Glorious calls correctly, I’ve got something for you as well. I alluded to the “released counter” earlier but now my question for you concerns releases so excluding two of the pre-show panelists in Renee Young and Mauro Ranallo and that backstage interviewer gal who are now gone from the company. How many of the NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn II roster are gone from WWE? This includes wrestlers, commentators and referees. This also includes dudes from the NXT Taping too beforehand.
JT: Yikes, that’s a grim, but interesting question. Let’s see here. Tom Phillips is gone, Drake Wuertz is gone, and that’s all I can think of off the top of my head for non-wrestling personalities. So 2 so far. On the pre-show, we had Tye Dillinger vs Wesley Blake, who are both gone, so that’s 4. Then all three of Akam, Rezar and Paul Ellering (bet you thought I’d forget him!) are gone along with Nick Miller, doubling that count to 8 total. No Way Jose and Austin Aries are gone, so that’s double digits. Billie Kay is gone, as is Andrade to get us to 12. The Revival are now both Elite, so that’s 14. And then the only matches where everyone is still around are the final 2 title matches. So what’s that, so what’s that, 12 of 16 wrestlers, and 14 total people gone within 5 years?
S: That would be correct! Brilliant work there, James! Smashed it in one go. Fair fucking play man.
JT: Thank you my friend, Paul Ellering was the one hurdle that I remembered for some reason, despite the fact I don’t think we even mentioned him when talking about AOP. Also that number was almost 17, until WWE brought Samoa Joe back in. I swear whoever signed off on that one should get their ears boxed.
S: They should have their ears boxed and shot out of a cannon over to Yemen or somewhere to be honest. One of the most clueless releases ever done.
JT: So I think that can about wrap us up for the Recharge, unless you have any other pressing business to attend to.
S: Not really man, I suppose all I can say is that as of this writing, today is my last day in isolation because of my positive covid test I got 10 days ago so all is well in the world with me.
JT: Well in other real world news, tomorrow is my 22nd birthday, so yay me! And yay you! Yay Power Hour!!
S: And happy birthday to the best blog partner any human being could ask for, the man who keeps this show tipping and prevents it from being a total disaster. As well as making it look proper class in the final edit. Happy birthday to you, James!
JT: Thank you my man!! Now, why don’t we go back to the show that I attended as a 17th birthday present! Back to Brooklyn II!!
S: I sure can’t wait to get back to Brookl- HEY I’M WALKING HERE!!!!
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Reviving The Revival
JT: So before we get to our next match, we’ve got some festivities to get to. First, we’ve got a video featuring shots of the inside of an institution, explosions, chaos and guys in hazmat suits. The final thing we see is some writing on a wall that says: Sanity!! Sanity are coming to NXT!! I gotta ask, who did you think this was gonna be when you saw these vignettes? Because let me tell ya, I had a name in mind immediately.
S: Well there were two people that came to mind initially. The first was Tommy End, how I managed to link the Sumerian Death Squad guy to a bunch of riots was beyond me, I just knew he was on the brink of signing. Now the only other one that I thought it was gonna be was Big Damo, the reason being that there was footage of a mural up in Northern Ireland, thankfully there wasn’t any of that fascist orange order bullshit in there so good work WWE. So yeah, Tommy End was the maybe but Big Damo was the runaway pick for me.
JT: Ohhh look at that geographical knowledge coming into play! Fair play! But me, I had a lady in mind for this one. It was a lady I actually hadn’t seen any matches of and had only known because I saw her name online. That would be Crazy Mary Dobson, otherwise known as Sarah Logan!
S: Ohhhhh now that was another name I remember I saw being floated around alright. Her signing was very under the radar as far as WWE signings around this time went so her being a left field option definitely would’ve been cool to see.
JT: Well it’s nice to know we were both right in a way. Me, being right because a woman would ultimately be part of Sanity. And you, actually being right about one of the members of the group. On top of that, we’ve got some crossover with the actual main timeline!! We’ve got a first glimpse at the CWC Trophy, thanks to the hard work of Orange County Choppers. Then we see participants of the CWC at ringside! It’s Kota Ibushi, Rich Swann, Noam Dar, Brian Kendrick and lead commentator Mauro Ranallo!! Good to see our guys getting to show their faces.
S: Yeah it’s cool to see that they were continuously promoting the CWC like this, it’s very nice of NXT to do that but I’ve a question about the trophy. Orange County Choppers is typically a motorcycle manufacturer, right? Why exactly did WWE go to them to make their current WWE Championship and the Cruiserweight Classic Trophy? Was it a cross promotional thing? For publicity?
JT: Had to be a promotional thing of some kind. To their credit they did a good job, but I don’t think you go to them specifically unless you had some sort of deal with them or they had some prior obligation to them or something.
S: They definitely souped up some of fucking Trips’ motorcycles and vehicles for his last three Mania entrances, you just fucking know they did.
JT: So with the plugging out of the way, we cut backstage to Gargano and Ciampa. Ciampa looks at Johnny and brings up the fact that Johnny is always mentioning that they’re doing everything themselves. So what has he done? Only went and got them a T-Shirt, a little blue number with “Gargano & Ciampa: DIY” on it. And boom baby, an official tag team name is born. Just in time for them to challenge The Revival for the NXT Tag Team Championships in our next matchup!!
S: It’s the most well oiled tag team perhaps in NXT’s history up to this point against the unlikely challengers, hot off the heels of their excellent First Round encounter against each other at the Cruiserweight Classic. Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa! James, how did we get here?
JT: Well after showing up as a team for last year’s DRTTC and having some singles action, Gargano & Ciampa have started to really gel as a tag team and have started to pursue the gold.
The Revival have a similar trajectory, having their breakout run in the DRTTC last year, getting to the Quarterfinals before losing to the eventual winners. On top of beating then Tag Champs The Vaudevillains in the tournament, they’d go on to win the gold only a few weeks later! They’d go on to defend the title successfully against Enzo & Cass, but at Takeover Dallas, they lost the titles to American Alpha. They would get their contractual rematch at Takeover The End, winning the titles back.
But what would happen just before they won their titles back? Well they only were upset by Gargano and Ciampa! Now, Gargano & Ciampa have a claim for the gold. We’ve got two teams with a lot to prove here tonight. Gargano & Ciampa want to cement what they’ve worked a decade for on the indies, and The Revival want to send them back to the Bingo Halls and cement their position as Top Guys.
S: Top Guys, out. It’s a very great build stemming from something which was just a shock victory. I really liked the build for this one five years ago and now today, they both gained notoriety as a team from the Dusty Classic Tournament, one had a breakout performance in The Revival while Gargano and Ciampa were just getting their feet in the door. One team are the guys hoping that a decade of hard work pays off, the other team is bitter and wants to send them back packing to where they came from. Really effective build, Revival are good on the promos too not gonna lie.
JT: Yeah this like 20 month run, from the last DRTTC to WM33/Takeover Orlando really made their career. Now that’s not to say they haven’t done good things since then, because they have. But just this run they’re in the middle of is an all timer. They’ve got their characters down pat, they’re having great matches, and they’re facing some great opponents. Their matches against American Alpha were great, and they had easily Enzo & Cass’s best match as a team. And DIY? Well we already talked about how good those two are just last episode.
S: Exactly we talked about quickly they just got each other as individual wrestlers and instantly gelled as a tag team so from what we’ve told you in the past about DIY to what we’ve now told you about The Revival. Safe to say that there’s the potential for an absolute banger on the way.
JT: DIY got a great reaction coming out for this one, with their classic theme song. And then The Revival came out also to a great reaction, though they got booed instead of cheered. Oh, and they’ve got their classic theme song too. Man that harmonica!!
S: Proper mean lads on the prison yard vibes off that one, these are the boys that are in with the higher ups of the prison. They got proper food in nice shoes and are always well protected because of one headcase who’d rip your head off. Great fucking them and just their entrance too, god they come across as the biggest assholes in the world, don’t they? True heels.
JT: With that comparison, I’d argue that there are more of the prison wardens than actual prisoners. Dawson’s got the big old southern prison warden mustache, and Dash is his little shit head step son. Either way, they’re proper Dukes of Hazzard type characters. They’re loud, they’re mean, they’re very hateable. Love to see it, a perfect opponent for a beloved tag team of underdogs.
S: They’d fit right in late 80s JCP with that look. Proper class entrance. Loved the contrast with the happy, over babyfaces as opposed to the dickhead, hated heels. Great stuff. Shall we get this one underway then?
JT: We should but I just wanted to note, as if you couldn’t tell The Revival are heels, Dawson pushes Ciampa as they enter, forcing the Ref to get in between them. Absolute dickehads. Oh and Dash Wilder & Scott Dawson are just such better ring names then Cash Wheeler and Chuck Nasty or Cunt Dickson or whatever the fuck the other one’s name is.
S: The other name you’re looking for is ehm, Dax Harwood but I agree, they’re just cooler names. Why couldn’t they just keep part of their names?
JT: Certainly they could’ve been just Dash & Dawson. But it’s just a minor gripe, and I have a feeling we won’t have many more this segment. Let’s break down this match.
S: Let’s do this shit! I’m ready for this.
JT: So the bell rings, we get a physical lock up in the corner between Ciampa & Dawson. The crowd chants for the Psycho Killer as they chain wrestle. Ciampa manages to stop Dawson from making a tag, but aside from that they’re relatively even. Dawson with a chop, Ciampa goes to Chop him back but Dawson drops to the mat and rolls to the floor for him and Dash to regroup. They talk a little strategy, Dawson goes back in and gets a headlock on Ciampa. Ciampa sends him off, but Dash blocks a hip toss and it’s back to even. More chain wrestling until Ciampa chops Dawson, then Dash, then a little pinball between Gargano & Ciampa on Dawson. Ciampa tags in Johnny, Ciampa sends Dawson into the corner, then sends Johnny in with big knees to the chest of Dawson, with Johnny sending him into a clothesline from Ciampa. The crowd is immediately behind Johnny with Johnny Wrestling chants, and Dawson wants out. Dash leans in illegally, grabbing Dawson, so the Ref forces them to break, and in the half second of chaos, Dawson is able to grab Gargano by the hair and throw him down. It’s stuff like that that’s just so smart. They could do a hair pull spot and have the Ref go “No, no, don’t do that”, but instead they have a reason for him to not see it.
S: It’s proper old school heel tag team tactics, breaking the rules and playing dirty while the ref isn’t looking, it’s how you make a team break the rules with the ref distracted that isn’t over the top, it makes sense and it gets heels over. That’s how you make a proper heel team.
JT: Of course in classic old school heel fashion, they can only be in control for so long. Dash runs in and immediately gets a drop toe hold and a kick to the arm from Johnny. Johnny focuses the arm with an arm breaker and a wrist lock but Dash grabs the ear to get free. He goes behind and pushes Johnny against the ropes, Gargano holds on and Dash rolls back, allowing Gargano to hit a low Dropkick to the face. Johnny again goes after the arm but Dash with a scoop slam to turn the tide…or not as Dawson misses an elbow drop, then gets hit with arm drags from Gargano. Gargano goes over him and out of the corner, hits the ropes but gets hit with a back elbow. Dash looks to send Gargano into Dawson on the apron but Gargano slides under him to the floor. They try to trap with 2 on 1 on the floor but Johnny rolls in, and as they both go after him, only for Ciampa to get in and now The Revival start to back off. They want order to be restored, or so it appears and they look to go back to their corner, only to run right back into right hands from DIY. Dawson gets clotheslined over the top to the floor, Dash takes a Superkick. DIY set up Meeting in the Middle, Dawson pulls Dash out of the ring and to safety. Or not as Gargano comes flying with a Suicide Dive onto Dash, and as Dawson flees to the the other side, Ciampa comes off the apron with a Diving Knee to the face!! In classic Southern Tag Wrasslin style, the heels have been beaten pillar to post so far in the early minutes of this match!!
S: Dutch Mantell cracking one off from where he may have been at this time, he must have been fucking loving this if he watched it. The amount you’ve just reeled off there is so much and yet we’re only in the opening stages of the match, look at the amount of content we’re being given! Tag Team Wrestling at it’s very best.
JT: So Ciampa rolls Dash back in and the coward that he is, Dash immediately rolls back out. Ciampa chases Dash around the outside and back in, with Wild getting a sneaky tag to Dawson. They try to double team Ciampa but he manages to fight them off with punches and elbows for a bit before Dash picks him up and sends him into the ropes throat first, followed by a Back Suplex by Dawson!! 1-2-Kickout by Ciampa. The Revival clubber Ciampa in the corner, then being laying it in with tag offense Drop Toe Hold by Dash, Elbow Dropped right on the head of Ciampa by Dawson. He starts to grind Tommaso down as the crowd starts to rally him. Ciampa with an arm drag, Dawson pushes him back in the corner. Ciampa knocks Dash down and tries to leap over Dawson!! Dawson catches him, Ciampa manages to roll through and get his shoulders down: 1–2–Kickout. Dash comes in, Ciampa tries to kick him but Wilder catches him. Still, Ciampa goes for an Enziguri that Dash ducks but Dawson doesn’t!! Ciampa then pushes off Dash and has nobody between him and Gargano!! He leaps for the tag, Dawson pulls Gargano off the apron!! He rolled under the bottom rope, got behind Gargano and pulled him off just in time, with a mean right hand to punctuate it. Love a good hot tag denial. And I love it when they do one and everyone is accounted for. You saw Dash go down, you saw Dawson go down, you know that there’s nobody between them. And of course, Dawson got hit in a way for him to be right in position to deny DIY at the last second.
S: The hot tag denial spot by denying it at the last second is probably one of the greatest heel tag team tactics that has ever been created, EVER. Like it’s between that and cutting off the ring. It’s just absolutely brilliant stuff which is always going to get the right crowd riled up and invested.
JT: It’s just guaranteed to get the crowd loud, so long as they actually like the face tag team. So now that The Revival have Ciampa 2 on 1, they’re able to get some tag team offense in, with Ciampa over Dash’s shoulders for Dawson to pick him up with a Suplex into a Facebuster!! But it only gets a 2 count. The crowd rallies behind Ciampa again, he gets a Jawbreaker but just can’t tag in as Dash holds onto him. He can almost reach Johnny, but Dash pulls him back to his corner and gets a drop toe hold to pin him deep in enemy territory. With the drop toe hold, Dawson is able to easily tag in, waves to Johnny Wrestling, and hits a Dropkick to Tommaso’s face. But after not too long, Ciampa starts gaining ground on Dawson, pushing him back into the corner. But as Dawson falls into the corner, Dash flops into the ring. Ciampa backdrops Dawson and tags Johnny, but the Ref was focusing on Dash so he didn’t see the tag!! With Gargano arguing with Referee Drake Q Wuertz, The Revival pulled Ciampa back to their corner and hit the Demolition Decapitation!! 1—2—Kickout!! Lovely fake out, and a lovely piece of combination offense to put The Revival back in control again.
S: That flop into the ring spot by Dawson was possibly the greatest piece of cheating and method to prevent a tag that I think I’ve ever seen, then they capitalise on the exhausted Ciampa by hitting him with a sweet Demolition Decapitation. Fucking beautiful stuff.
JT: Even with their cheating, it feels like the tide is turning against Dash & Dawson, they need to put the match away. Dawson slugs Ciampa right in the face, but Ciampa pounds the mat and fires up, only for Dawson to clobber him with a clothesline!! Dawson knocks Johnny off the apron and goes for a Splash in the corner, but Ciampa moves and Dawson hits the post!! Dash runs in for the cutoff, but misses the body check against the ropes and bounces away, leaving Ciampa free to finally tag in Johnny!! Knockdown, knockdown, Belly to Belly Overhead Suplex on Dash!! Dawson with an elbow, Gargano avoids him coming into the corner and gets the Roll Up Kick!! Then a Jumping Neckbreaker!! 1–2–Kickout!! He charges Dawson in the corner, gets thrown to the apron but Gargano with a Superkick to Dash and a Slingshot Spear as Dawson charges back in!!! 1—2—Kickout!! This is Awesome chant from the crowd as Gargano is just rolling right now. He ducks a punch and gets in a headlock, but Dawson backs him up against the ropes and makes a blind tag to Dash. Dawson drops down, Gargano leaps him and ducks a Dash clothesline, but Dash rolls under a Gargano clothesline and Dawson hits the Arn Anderson special!! Fake the punch, spike him with the DDT!! Dash jumps on him for the cover: 1—2—Kickout!! They both send Johnny across, but Johnny ducks their tandem clothesline and Ciampa pulls Dash out of the ring and tags in himself. Dawson goes for the same DDT as he just hit Johnny with, but Ciampa turns out, takes him to the mat and gets the Fujiwara Armbar!! He cranks back on the arm, all while in the background, Dash pulls Gargano off the apron. He goes to slide in, Gargano grabs his feet, Wilder pushes him off and then gets in and bowls over Ciampa to save the match. The thing I really love about Revival matches during their NXT run is that they’re really not afraid to get the tar beaten out of them. They just get hit every which way and make their opponents look like a million bucks. And yet, they always seem to get a big move or have a big moment when it matters.
Also love that their throwback gimmick applies to their offense too. Copying Demolition one minute, Arn Anderson the next.
S: It’s what an old school heel team always used to do really, isn’t it? Make your opponents look really fucking good, get the shit beat out of you but be very cunning and ready to strike at the given moment. Also I’ve gotta praise John Boy for that hot tag flurry he just went on earlier, he has got one of the best hot tags in the last five or six years and I stand by it, even when he teamed with the noncer on NXT against Oney and Pete Dunne, still a fucking tremendous hot tag and house on fire. Just had to throw that out there. Any opportunity to give praise to him, I’ll take it.
JT: Yeah he does a great job here. Shoutout to that Overhead Belly to Belly Suplex he does here. He doesn’t do that move too often, but it’s a really nice dropping of levels and it looks great every time.
S: It works for a guy his size too because he’s using the speed and the momentum of a man bouncing off the ropes to his advantage to hit that move the way he does.
JT: But for right now, Johnny is out of the picture. Dash made the save on Dawson, meaning it’s 2 on 1 with Ciampa in the ring. The Revival take advantage of that and pound on him, they go for a Double Suplex but Gargano comes back in the ring and spears Dash!! Ciampa turns the Suplex into a Small Package!! 1—2——Kickout!! As the legal men, Dawson & Ciampa get forehead to forehead, trash talking and staring daggers at one another. They start trading big elbows to the face, faster and faster as the match breaks down. Ciampa starts hitting knees, then slaps, then a Bicycle Knee!! He rips off his elbow pad, goes for a Rolling Elbow, but Dawson with a right hand!! Dawson backs him up, tags in Dash, they’re setting up Shatter Machine!! But Dawson gets hit with a Gargano Superkick and Ciampa stops himself before he lands on Dash, allowing himself to get a Jackknife Pin!! 1—2——Kickout!! Dash scrambles back up to his feet, panicking at coming so close to defeat, too panicked to respond in time for a High Knee from Ciampa!! Ciampa tags in Johnny, snapmares down Dash into the middle of the ring, Ciampa with a Knee to the back of his head as Gargano hits a Superkick to the other side!! Meeting in the Middle!!! 1—2——3!! Wait, STOP THE COUNT!! Drake calls the election, I mean the count, off!! Dawson put Dash’s foot on the ropes!! Not once, not twice, but three times The Revival came as close as you can get to losing their titles. And let me tell you, live in the arena, everyone bought on that last one. Me, the people next to me, everyone in Brooklyn thought that was it.
S: I guarantee you if I were in the Barclays that night, I absolutely would’ve bitten for that mother of all false finishes too. God that must have been heart wrenching to see live, was it?
JT: It really was. And it’s not like it would be unbelievable for The Revival to lose to a hot team at Takeover, they already lost WM weekend to American Alpha, we all thought it might happen again tonight. And we aren’t the only ones who thought that, Ciampa & Gargano cannot believe it either. Still, they’re in the driver’s seat, maybe they can win if they tune up the band and hit it again. Dawson tries to rush in and do something but he eats a knee then a Superkick!! 2 on 1 against Dash, Johnny sends him into Ciampa potentially for Project Ciampa, but Dawson pulls Ciampa out of the ring and then pushes him into the post. Dawson gets back up on the apron and gets clocked by Gargano, but it was just a distraction so Dash can nail a chop block!! Dawson tags in as the crowd loudly boos, he holds Johnny’s leg in place as Dash jumps off the middle rope with a stomp right to the leg they just hit with the chop block!! Dawson locks in an Inverted Figure 4, and Johnny is all alone with no help in sight. He tries to hold out and make the ropes, but Gargano has no choice and has to tap out!! Top Guys do Top Guy things as they retain in Brooklyn. Like we said, they don’t make the highlight plays, but they hit the shots that count. What did you think of this match?
S: This match is a truly underrated one because of what happens later in their series of matches, perhaps another story for another time, who knows? This match really does not get the shine and the praise that it deserves because my god, it’s a fucking excellent match. These two teams were nothing short of absolute fire working together. The Revival, this is them hitting their peak in WWE in general, this is why people would praise and rave about them for a solid four years, it’s because of this match and several other matches. The heelish tactics which they’d do in this one were just so dastardly and fucking sneaky. DIY were amazing as they always were during their tenure as a tag team, Gargano’s hot tag was amazing and the false finish was brilliantly done. The way The Revival just stole the win in the end, brutalising Gargano’s knee and locking in the Inverted Figure 4 while Dash is screaming at Gargano to just tap out and give up makes them the biggest assholes in the world. Two massive thumbs up for this match, go out of your way to watch it.
JT: Yeah the only real nitpick I have about this match is that a leg submission won it in the end and they didn’t really do any leg based offense until that last section, but again that’s nitpicking. This was an excellent match from start to finish. And on top of that, we get a touching post match moment, where Ciampa helps carry Gargano out to cheers from the crowd. Let me tell you this, I was so happy when the lights went down as they were walking out. I was scared they were going to have DIY break up then and there.
S: I think everyone feared that DIY would break up every time they lost a match, didn’t they? Especially here because this would’ve been a time where they could’ve done it too since Gargano beat Ciampa in the CWC and they lost their big match here tonight but alas, DIY still lives and they didn’t befall the fate of Y2AJ who broke up after they debuted their t-shart. What is the fate of DIY? Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out.
JT: Yeah we won’t quite get to the fate of DIY just yet, not with John Boy still having a chance at Cruiserweight glory. But we can certainly look at The Revival, am I right?
S: I think it’s only right we look at how everything has gone down for Dash and Dawson in the last five years.
JT: Yeah let’s look at Dash & Dawson’s wild ride. So this match wouldn’t be their last against DIY, far from it. They’d go on to face them at Takeover Toronto in 2 Outta 3 Falls and fall to Johnny & Tommaso. They’d continue to linger around the Title picture though, managing to challenge (unsuccessfully ) with DIY against the new tag Champions The Authors of Pain in a Triple Threat. That match is pretty underrated by the way, just kind of let down by it’s final act.
After that, it was on to bigger things for The Revival, as they’d debut to a huge ovation on The Raw after WrestleMania, knocking off WrestleMania hosts the New Day in their first night, and then again in a rematch the week after. After reigning as Tag Champions for a record amount of time, the New Day lost to The Revival back to back weeks. Things are looking up right? Well, unfortunately not. Just a few days after Raw on a House Show, Dash fractured his Raw and the two went on a temporary hiatus as he recovered for the next 8 weeks. But that’s okay, they were back right in time to start feuding with two former tag champion teams: Anderson & Gallows, and The Hardys. And presumably the winners would be next in line for the tag titles!! Well sadly just as soon as they came back, Dawson this time got hurt. Ruptured bicep, 5 month recovery period, that’s essentially their entire 2017 out the window.
S: God man they got off to such a hot start on Raw, they had two really fun matches with The New Day and then that jaw injury happened, Wilder recovers, they return for a bit and then Dawson gets big time injured. Seven months out the door and in the bin, a really rocky start.
JT: Right when they were at their hottest too. Coming up from NXT they were looked at like the consensus next top tag team. But just 7 months later, that sort of universal standing is no longer the same. Still, they could theoretically come back and get thrown back into a winning program. Or they could get thrown to the wolves. After only returning in December, in January was Raw 25, the 25th Anniversary of WWE’s flagship program. With all sorts of legends showing up on the program for nostalgia’s sake, they figured it’s better to steer clear of the best of the best and go pick a fight with mid 90s Midcard Act Degeneration X instead. Before their match, Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Road Dogg Jesse James, Billy Gunn, X-Pac, and bonus Scott Hall all shared a bonus Too Sweet with Dash & Dawson’s opponents, The Club (Gallows, Anderson and Finn Balor). In the match, Anderson & Gallows put away Dash & Dawson and went back to celebrating with their new buddies. The Revival took exception to this, rudely breaking up the party. What came of this? Only a one sided ass kicking. Dawson got a toothpick to the face, an X Factor, Shake/Rattle/Roll punches from Road Dogg and a Famouser from Billy Gunn. Dash meanwhile charged right into a Sweet Chin Music and Pedigree Combo. And why not let Finn Balor in on the fun with a Coup De Grace. A shining moment for The Club, and just humiliation for Dash & Dawson.
S: These poor old fuckers deadass got the same treatment that The Ascension got three years prior to this. What’s similar with those two you ask? They were top heel Tag Champs in NXT who took umbrage with legends taking spots. Hall, Pac (I think), Road Dogg and Billy Bitchcakes were all in that segment too. They were both go home Raws to the Royal Rumble and each team got fucking battered by a bunch of auld lads. Looking like fucking geeks, Dash and Dawson definitely had it miles worse though.
JT: And just like The Ascension, they won on the Pre-Show of the Rumble as revenge, but nobody remembers that after the ass kicking they took earlier. And I agree, the Ascension always had a limited ceiling of maybe “Dominant Tag Team” for like a year, year and a half before becoming henchmen/heavies for someone. The Revival were much more fleshed out as characters and much superior talkers and wrestlers. Alas, they suffered the same fate. And maybe that segment wouldn’t have been such a definitive moment in their run if they had been able to have a good spring/summer/fall the year before as planned. Instead they debuted, went a way, showed up, went away, and then this was the first big moment they had on TV since their debut.
S: I remember thinking at this time that they were fucking doomed on the main roster. You mention their Pre-Show win over Gallows and Anderson at the Rumble in 2018, another similarity they have with The Ascension is that they both got their revenge in Philly! What are the odds? Also, you’re not going to believe this but The Ascension and The Stone Age Outlaws actually OPENED the show at the 2015 Royal Rumble. Start as you mean to go on, am I right?
JT: And if you didn’t think their run was going down the tubes, on Wikipedia it brings up this, then the next line is about SUMMERSLAM. On the pre-show to that PPV, they were unsuccessful in their bid to become Raw Tag Team Champions when they were defeated by The B-Team (Bo Dallas & Curtis Axel). Bo is my boy! He and only Gully Bully weren’t exactly winners, so it was tough times for Dash & Dawson.
S: I remember watching this match, they pretty much dominated from minute one in this affair and as soon as they were getting most of the offence in for most of the match, you could just tell that they were most definitely doing the job.
JT: They would continue to chug along, competing in the Team Raw Tag Teams vs Team SmackDown Tag Teams Elimination Match on the Survivor Series Pre-Show, actually surviving until the very end, only to be eliminated by the sole survivors The Usos. So closer, but still no cigar. On Raw in December, they’d start a feud with The Lucha House Party, facing off against the Luchadores in Handicap matches with “Lucha House Party Rules”, ending up on the losing end on multiple occasions. On top of that, they’d challenge the tag team champions Bobby Roode & Chad Gable on three separate occasions, once in a regular tag match, once in a lumberjack match, and once with Special Guest Referee Curt Hawkins, and they’d end up losing each time. It was in the midst of this cycle where they’d fight Gable & Roode, then LHP, then Gable & Roode again, then LHP again that Dave Meltzer reported that Dash & Dawson had apparently asked for their release from their WWE contracts.
S: Ahhh yes, the never-ending saga of The Revival’s future being up in the air with WWE, I swear those talks went on for a solid two years.
JT: Well this is right at the start of 2019, so you‘re pretty on the money with that timeline. They wouldn’t leave WWE yet, not since they won the Raw Tag Titles for Roode & Gable for their first main roster titles. However, being champions didn’t exactly boost their status much, as a pair of NXT Tag Teams would debut only a few weeks later. The Revival would lose to DIY in their Raw debut, then the team of Ricochet & Aleister Black the week afterwards. They’d successfully behind the titles Black & Ricochet and Roode & Gable at Fastlane, and they would defend their titles at WrestleMania. Except the opponents they picked did not perform as expected, because Curt Hawkins managed to get his first win in 269 matches, getting him and Ryder the Raw Tag Titles and spoiling The Revival’s reign at only 55 Days. And if that wasn’t tough enough, after WrestleMania they’d enter a feud with The Usos, who routinely humiliated them. This includes Jimmy & Jey recording Dash shaving Dawson’s back, the same night they’d challenge Ryder & Hawkins to get their titles back and fail, as well as the Usos using “Ucey Hot” on them. According to the brothers “If you perspire, you’re on fire”, and after using it on The Revival without them knowing, the two got all hot and irritated, scooting their butts along the ring, trying to wipe down with a towel, before the Usos offered them water, which they only poured on themselves and made worse. They looked like absolute jokers. And there’s nothing wrong with looking silly for a storyline, but when you’ve lost as routinely as they had during their main roster run and had so little momentum, being made out to be clowns in a feud with a team they theoretically should be on an even level with is no good.
S: Fucking hell, James. You’ve just flooded back a load of a whole load of bad memories from 2019 Raw. This was during the Wildcard Rule and my god were the shows all over the fucking shop, they were off the wall, being booked to shit and the storylines. Awful, you’re telling me this lower card, early PG-Era type shit is the best thing you can do for an Usos and Revival feud? Woeful shit.
JT: And once again, it was WWE front loading shit only for them to win in the end, to the interest of no one. How would this Usos feud end? Well the Revival would only win back their tag titles in a triple threat with The Usos and Hawkins & Ryder! They’d also successfully defend the titles against The Usos at Extreme Rules too. But their reign, much like the last one, wasn’t long for this world as The OC would win the Titles from them in a Triple Threat in July featuring the Usos, with their reign lasting 49 Days. Again, having a short tag title reign isn’t necessarily bad. I mean Edge & Christian, The Hardys and The Dudleys all won the belts multiple times in the Attitude Era but would only hold them for a cup of coffee each time. What matters is that they did things as Champions, and The Revival didn’t do that in either Raw Tag Title run.
S: Yeah for real, they were just about as uneventful Tag Champions as you could ask for. Apart from them losing the belts, I couldn’t name you anything memorable that they really did during their two Tag Title reigns, I’m sure they had some decent matches with Ricochet and Black but I can’t remember them.
JT: After that whole debacle, the two briefly one the 24/7 Title only to lose it like 5 minutes later, and then they were off to SmackDown after Summerslam. On the blue brand, they began teaming up with Randy Orton as part of his feud with the New Day, leading to Dash & Dawson becoming SmackDown Tag Champions. Funnily enough, they’re at the moment of writing, the only team to win the Raw, SmackDown and NXT Tag Titles. As per usual though, the good times didn’t last as Orton would lose his feud to WWE Champion Kofi Kingston and he was drafted to Raw while Dash and Dawson stayed on SD, where they’d drop the tag titles after 54 Days. It’s a shame, because I kinda like the FTRKO Trio.
S: It really is one of those short lived trios that definitely could’ve done a lot more. I think the two of them teamed up with Orton was a suitable grouping to be honest, the group certainly looked cool on paper and on screen, it’s just the fact Orton needed a team just for the Kofi feud is why he was there really.
JT: Oh definitely, it was just a matter of circumstance. And sometimes that’s just what you need, but I guess nobody in the office saw a long term future for the group. After that group dissolved, they competed for the Title against the New Day and lost at TLC 2019, helped King Corbin against Roman Reigns in a group that would never fully materialize, lost a four way #1 contenders matchup on the January 31st SD, and just like that they’d had their final WWE Match. In the next few months they appeared in a few segments, but were taken off TV after a discussion with Vince McMahon. That discussion was Vince pitching a totally new character to Dash & Dawson, which the duo found very unflattering and literally laughable. As in Dash literally laughed out loud at Vince at the proposed characters. Apparently the two were set to wear lipstick, bright colors and tassels and carry glow sticks, with Wilder also wearing suspenders and a large “Shatter Machine” sign on a chain necklace. I have no clue what that’s supposed to be or if it’s parodying something. It genuinely baffles me. Dash & Dawson claimed they’d work the gimmick if Vince demanded it, but they would nevertheless not resign when their contracts expired in June. Clearly seeing their intention to leave the company, WWE took them off TV permanently until they were released in April. And just like that, the sagas of Scott Dawson & Dash Wilder ended.
S: I remember hearing the rumours that Vince wanted to dress them up like that alright, I don’t know if that idea was gonna make them androgynous exotico wrestlers or anything, which I’m all for by the way but like, why? I don’t know what the meaning behind this is. If you turned them into a Rockers parody then yeah, I honestly think I could get behind that but I guess that was Vince’s last stitch attempt into getting them to stay, great negotiation tactic friend.
JT: Yeah I think there was a chance they would’ve stayed had he pitched something better. I’m not sure if they would’ve gone for any rebranding but I feel like if he had shown some sort of plan that led to them getting a significant run, they might have stayed. But probably not, after all, they had a score to settle. After a weird and pointless legal battle between them and two independent wrestlers over the use of the name “The Revolt”, Dax Hardwood (Dash Wilder) and Cash Wheeler (Scott Dawson) debuted on May 27th 2020 episode of Dynamite, sawing The Young Bucks, and going by the name “FTR”. Of course, FTR stems from a joke on Young Buck internet sketch/vlog YouTube channel Being The Elite, where people on the show would say “FTR” with others having no idea what it means. Of course, the obvious joke was that it stood for “Fuck The Revival” as back when Dash & Dawson were riding high, The Bucks themselves claimed to be the best tag team in wrestling rather than Dash & Dawson. Light internet jokes went back and forth, and now years later they finally showed up on the same show as them. Now I’ve got a simple question for you Seán, and that is simply, what do you think of “FTR” as their tag team name?
S: I mean it sounds kinda cool, three letters acronyms are always welcome in wrestling. Great acronyms such as DIY, BWO, OOC, WWA, 3MB, they’re all welcome in my wrestling really. Now I believe, and I may be wrong here, I believe that “FTR” is meant to stand for Fear The Revolt, right?
JT: Yeah I believe for legal purposes, that’s what it stands for. Hence the lawsuit by the Indy guys. That said, FTR’s lawyer said that it’s basically a stand in acronym for whatever the creative story is at the time. Plus, it’s a cheeky little nod at the past, I think it’s perfectly fine. I also think “Top Guys” works as a tag team, but honestly FTR is probably the best you could’ve hoped for after “The Revival”, which to me is just one of the most succinct and perfectly representative names in the history of wrestling.
S: Yeah “The Revival” is such a top notch tag team name in wrestling history, it’s such a perfect name for the characters and motives of the team. That and the style of wrestling they bring to the table. With the team name though, it’s definitely a cool name and I love three letter acronyms in wrestling.
JT: Now onto their actual run as FTR!! So in AEW they saved The Bucks, they would seemingly become allies with them, teaming up against the likes of The Butcher & The Blade as well as the Lucha Bros. They were also involved in pushing the issue between The Bucks and then tag Champions Kenny Omega & Hangman Page. In August, they hosted Tag Team Appreciation, with The Brainbusters and The Rock N Roll Express showing up alongside them. However, with a scuffle between Ricky Morton and Tully Blanchard breaking out, FTR chose their side: Attacking Morton & Gibson and having Tully join them as they completed their heel turn. This would lead to a string of victories, ultimately earning them a Title shot at All Out, where they’d defeated Hangman & Omega to become AEW Tag Champions. Over the next two months they’d defend the titles against the likes of Best Friends, SCU, and The Hybrid2 before facing The Young Bucks at Full Gear. Finally the dream match happened!! And they were defeated, meaning that yet ago, they had a title reign that didn’t even last 3 months. Funny how even if they jumped promotions, that happened again.
S: Yeah I do feel like they were probably deserving of a longer title reign if you ask me, I think they had the belts taken off them too soon if you asked me at the time but given how things have panned out across the board in AEW since, I can see why The Young Bucks were given the titles. A good match was had between the two but probably should’ve been given a month or two longer with the belts perhaps.
JT: Yeah it definitely makes sense for their run to have gone the way it has, it just feels like they could do more. But maybe it’s better to just succeed at simplicity then try and go bigger and get an overblown and poor story. After their feud with the Young Bucks ended, they were sort of in the background, but on purpose. You se, while FTR were debuting and doing their thing in 2020, MJF was cuddling up to Chris Jericho in his Inner Circle faction. With vignettes of him meeting on his own with other members of the faction, as well as creating a rift with Jericho and Sammy Guevara, it seemed like he was ready to take the group over. On the March 3rd 2021 Dynamite, FTR teamed for the first time with Shawn Spears, who was also being managed by Tully Blanchard. On March 7th’s Revolution PPV, Jericho & MJF lost a tag title match, prompting Jericho to call for a “War Council” on the next Dynamite. On that March 10th Dynamite, Guevara returned to reveal that MJF was planning a coup, but the members of The Inner Circle would all remain loyal. However, MJF revealed he wasn’t going to take them over, he had been forming a group of his own. The lights went out and came back up with FTR, Spears and Tully attacking The Inner Circle alongside MJF and his bodyguard Wardlow. Thus, The Pinnacle was formed!! Since then, the two groups have been inseparable, battling on many occasions in many ways. The biggest of which was in The Match Beyond (War Games) that The Pinnacle won, and in a Stadium Stampede that the Inner Circle has won. Lately it has broken down to a more individual level, with Jericho & MJF looking to end things on their own, and FTR entering a feud with Proud N Powerful (Santana & Ortiz). And that about catches us up to the present. What do you think of The Pinnacle just in general as a faction, as a vehicle for FTR, and just their feud with The Inner Circle?
S: I think The Pinnacle is a really cool faction to be honest with you, it’s a way to get two groups of baddies under one banner with Tully’s men being linked up with MJF and Wardlow. I do like the dynamic of the faction, you’ve got the veteran mastermind manager in Tully. You have the tag team in FTR, you have the heater and almost wildcard in Shawn Spears, the powerhouse in Wardlow and the man which the faction is built around in MJF. It works for MJF to have a faction and for FTR, it’s a good vehicle for them because they could always have backup in their corner to help win the Tag Titles back.
The feud with The Inner Circle has been mostly good if you ask me. I think the build up to Blood and Guts was great, the match itself was fantastic. The injury angle with Jericho was well done but he did come back a bit early, I suppose that’s the problem with having a special episode of Dynamite so close to a big PPV in Double or Nothing. Stadium Stampede was fine in my opinion, nothing wrong with it, nothing amazing either. Do like how the feud has gone to the individual level with Jericho having to go through his five labours and PNP facing FTR in what should be a brilliant affair so yeah. That’s my thoughts on The Pinnacle for ya.
JT: First, I feel like as a group The Pinnacle are kind of like The Dirty Dogs, in a way. For better and for worse. As individuals I don’t much care for them. I don’t care about Spears as a singles guy, FTR are good but I feel like I just don’t connect to them like I used to (we can circle back around to this). MJF is a good talker but I feel like his matches don’t quite match up to the expectations he has a top guy, and that sometimes I feel like his whole thing can hinge on low hanging fruit like “Haha wrestling fans are virgins” and “I bang your mom”, which I don’t find incredibly creative. Wardlow rules though, I won’t say a bad word about him. That said, like the Dirty Dogs, this feels like the best possible use of them. They gel well together, they’ve got a similar sort of energy, and at worst if the thing they’re in stinks, I can skip the whole segment and I won’t have to worry about another one of them popping up in another unrelated storyline.
Then, I feel like my issues that I had with the feud have been sort of cleared up. Like I wasn’t super into doing Blood & Guts first and then the Stadium Stampede, but I suppose you can’t swap it around because War Games is a heel match with its horrific violence and brutally, and Stadium Stampede is a silly wacky squeaky babyface match. I felt like there wasn’t anywhere to go since they had already done their big blowoff matches, but I’m okay with it now since it’s clear it’s less about faction vs faction and more Jericho vs MJF. They’re going towards a personal ending between the two of them, and that makes the things I was less happy with better.
S: Yeah I totally agree, the way the events have been ordered in this feud have been weird but like the fact it’s gone off into four separate feuds does help overshadow the flaws that it had in its first two or three months as a feud. Also, Wardlow for first ever AEW Top Hoss Champion to be honest.
JT: Anyway to circle back to my gripe about FTR, I feel like the sterile WWE environment almost suited their characters better. I’m glad they’re happier now and they get to do good work on a more consistent basis again, but I feel as characters they’ve kinda lost their way a bit. Like, in my opinion, they don’t feel quite as much like that old school wrasslin tag team simply by way of getting to do crazier spots and as AEW is prone to do, talk about smarkier things. Then again, when I think about this, I don’t have like huge instances to point to really substantiate what I’m saying. So maybe I should keep away from their twitter like I do with other folks whose twitter page bothers me. Love ya Becky Lynch, but I can’t bear to see the constant trash talk.
S: Yeah, Twitter trash talk had it’s place for a time but nowadays, mehhhhh I’m just not into it anymore. Tweet a promo you did in a park or at the back of your gaff or something. Keep it verbal please.
JT: But importantly, if I don’t like it, it’s not necessarily their fault. If I find them annoying on twitter like The Young Bucks or Chris Jericho or Becky or Seth Rollins, I just mute them or block them and they’re off my screen. Twitter doesn’t equal real life, what they do on twitter and what they do in ring really don’t really intersect (except in very certain cases and that involves real life drama stuff with politics and sexual harassment and that is a whole can of corn we don’t need to open).
S: Agreed, let’s not open that whole can of worms, that’s a whole topic for some other day. Boy, we sure had loads to talk about there, didn’t we?
JT: Damn straight. And we’ve got 2 more matches to go after this, we never shut up!! 1000 years Power Hour!!
S: James and Seány 100 years Power Hour, James and Seány reviewing some things, James and Seány running around and looking at the picture of the TNA Title by the Mayor’s bedside locker and just being blokes!
——————————————
Asuka La Vista Bayley
JT: Moving on we’ve got the NXT Women’s Championship on the line!! It’s Bayley, trying to repeat history in Brooklyn, going up against the undefeated, unstoppable, undisputed Women’s Champion and Empress of Tomorrow, Asuka!!
S: It’s a rematch from TakeOver: Dallas, a result which seemed inevitable but shocking in the way things panned out. From the Lone Star State to The Big Apple. We go from the Gulf Coast to the East Coast. Back 2 Brooklyn, can Bayley go back to back with two big victories in the Barclays? Or is it just Asuka’s time?
JT: Pretty simple build to this one. Ever since Bayley lost to Asuka, she’s been struggling to be able to compete due to poor health, in part due to the fact that Asuka is such a beast and really destroyed her own route to victory, and in part because Bayley wants to rush back and get her title back. This has also allowed the NXT Writers to keep her off TV for the most part, able to keep her relatively strongly booked but without having her there as an option to face Asuka until now. Bayley is finally at 100% and ready to face Asuka, trying to learn from the last time, while Asuka looks to put a stamp of supremacy on her reign. Luckily for Bayley, she’s in friendly territory and she’s got people in her corner!! Who is it that we see at ringside?
S: It’s Ric Fla- nope, he’s been shuffled backstage now and he’s likely having himself a good time and naitching about. It’s not Ric Flair but we have got the current Raw Women’s Champion, SASHA BANKS! We’ve got SmackDown Live’s, Becky Lynch! And kept away a few metres down because she’s a heel is Sasha’s opponent for SummerSlam, Charlotte Flair! The Horsewomen are here.
JT: Real funny bit about that is Charlotte getting booed because she’s a heel and she’s facing Sasha, but she just has this face of “Ah c’mon guys, I’m an NXT original!! You really gonna boo one of the Four Horseman at NXT? I’m the only one who gets booed? Tough crowd”.
S: She should’ve tried starting an NXT chant or channel her inner Mr. Burns and say “Are you chanting boo or woo?”
JT: Bayley’s got her friends behind her and a friendly crowd, as I’d argue she gets one of the biggest pop of the night as she comes out. It’s the Classic Bayley entrance with the Bayley buddies. Happy, smiley, kid friendly, basically she’s female Cena stuff but without the childish humor and more of a dork. The crowd doesn’t mind it though, as she gets loud “Bay-ley” chants mid entrance, and more Bayley Buddies around the ring. She is beloved by the Brooklyn crowd, myself included! At the show, I wore my purple & yellow “I’m a Hugger” Bayley shirt!
S: Oh wow! I never knew you had one of those t-shirts, gotta say, it’s an all timer for NXT shirts. It’s a simple one but my god is it a classic. You were repping the huggers, my guy.
JT: Her whole arc into Brooklyn I just captured me, and I rooted for her ever since. It got harder at times, which he can get to later, but at this stage of the game I was completely on board with Bayley. Which is tough for this match, because I was also completely on board for Asuka. Just a total superstar as we see here tonight, coming out with her big robe, decorative mask, colorful tights and hair, as well as a big white cloth that she pulled along with her tonight. She was someone I immediately got on board with from every angle.
S: Awh man, the way Asuka is presented here is just on another level, she just looks like an absolute superstar with this entrance and THAT theme song? Holy shit, that song is just an incredible piece of work. It’s so cool and she just looks so damn cool as well.
JT: Proper final boss going against our underdog hero, who will come out on top?
S: I think it’s time we find out and run this bloody match down, don’t you think?
JT: Let’s do it. The crowd is split and loud to start things off with “Let’s Go Bayley/Let’s go Asuka” dueling chants. Bayley tries some quick pin attempts but not even close. She hits a jumping clothesline in the corner, Bayley goes to whip her across but Asuka reverses and sends her in instead. Bayley takes that in stride, jumping to the second rope, but as she jumps and turns, she gets caught with a Rising Knee to the face!! Bayley holds her nose and rolls out of the ring, and as she slides back in, Asuka immediately starts hitting her with hip attacks. Asuka sends Bayley to the corner and hits a Hip Attack. Bayley falls to the apron, and Asuka gets her with a Octopus Hold in the ropes!! She’s forced to break, and so Bayley gets breather and with her restored breath she is able to grab Asuka’s head and slam against the turnbuckle pads repeatedly, but Asuka slams her in once and she goes down. Bayley slams the mat in frustration, with the clear story being that Asuka is just overwhelming.
S: I do like that she’s selling how fucking elite level Asuka is with the frustrating slamming of the mat because it’s just a very human reaction. You take any sportsperson ever and when they’re opponent is typically playing on another level or is showing a form which is overwhelming, they tend to get annoyed with their own performance.
JT: Yeah that’s a key part of this story too. It’s not heel vs face, Asuka is still likable and a goodie. It’s just underdog vs champion, person vs force of nature.
S: That last one is a great way to describe it, great shout there James.
JT: So Bayley sends Asuka over the ropes to the apron, but as she tries to go for a Shoulder Thrust, Asuka moves out of the way and nails her with multiple kicks, then Asuka lines her up and gets one more running kick right to the face. Asuka slams Bayley off the turnbuckle but Bayley starts to fire up, bouncing her off instead. She gets a Suplex, then a sliding elbow to the back, sliding clothesline, then jumping knee drop! 1-2-Kickout. She rushes Asuka into the corner, Bayley Buddy “woooooo” taunt, then a jumping elbow in the corner. She tries to send Asuka across, but Asuka sends her across instead, and so Bayley goes through the ropes to the apron. Bayley ducks one right hand but gets caught with another seconds later. Asuka lines her up, goes for a Hip Attack, but Bayley side steps!! Bayley clobbers her while she’s hung up, then yanks her down across the second rope throat first. Bayley back in over the top to the second rope, then back down on Asuka with a Crossbody. The crowd is getting behind the Hugger with a “Bayley’s gonna Hug You” chant. She goes for another crossbody, but Asuka moves out of the way this time. She follows up with a Shining Wizard to the face of Bayley!! 1–2–Kickout!! Asuka looking for a Superplex, Bayley slips through and hangs Asuka upside down!! Bayley springs off the middle rope and comes down with an Elbow!! 1–2–Kickout!! I love that little extra spring Bayley does sometimes, she’s not a high flyer but she knows how to use the ring to her advantage.
S: Yeah when she was in this iteration of her character, the way she’d move about the ring was really unique, the way she’d use the ropes sometimes using multiple steps and bounces was really cool and this elbow was a prime example of it.
JT: So back to square one as Asuka and Bayley are just shoving each other before Asuka starts to hammer her with strikes. Asuka hits the ropes, Bayley just throws herself at her. Bayley hits the ropes, Asuka cuts her off with a Hip Attack. Asuka hits the ropes again, Bayley with a Running Knee!! Bayley goes to run, Asuka grabs her leg and takes her down to the mat. Asuka gets a Stretch Muffler in, but Bayley rolls her up into a Bridging Cover: 1–2–Asuka kicks out and manages to grab hold of her Ankle!! Bayley tries to roll out of it but Asuka refuses to relinquish the Ankle Lock!! Bayley manages to kick free, but Asuka knocks her down with one shot. Asuka lights up Bayley with kicks to the chest as the crowd chants for both of them. Asuka hits Bayley but Bayley just yells at her to “Hit me in the face!” and Asuka obliges with slaps, but Bayley still manages to fight back with elbows of her own. She is now just hammering Asuka with strikes of her own but Asuka won’t go down, and instead hits a Spnning Backfist as they both collapse. Asuka goes for a Kick, Bayley tries to lift her for a Powerbomb, but Bayley topples before she can pick her up. Bayley tries to pick her up again, and can’t quite get a Powerbomb, dropping her with almost a Styles Clash!! 1–2–Kickout!! And just out of the kickout, Asuka goes for the Asuka Lock!! Bayley reaches for the ropes, Asuka sits back and locks it in!! Bayley sits back up!! She manages to fight to her feet and hit her with elbows!! She makes space, AND HITS THE BAYLEY TO BELLY!! 1—2—KICKOUT!! Bayley signals for it again, charges in, and Asuka catches her with an Armbar!! She takes her for the Asuka Lock!! But Bayley stands again! She tries to wrangle her down to the mat, but Bayley rolls through and gets Asuka’s shoulders down!! 1—2—Kickout!! Asuka is quickly back up and quickly hits a kick!! But Bayley does go down, instead she fires up and slaps Asuka!! Asuka responds with another High Kick!! Bayley falls to her knees, Asuka lines her up and hits another!! She covers: 1—2—3!! Bayley never stopped fighting but she just couldn’t withstand the onslaught of the Empress as Asuka retains and remains undefeated. So Seán, what did you like, what didn’t you like, what are your overall thoughts?
S: Aside from the little hiccup suffered from the attempted Powerbomb, which was recovered very nicely, I thought this match was quite fucking brilliant if I’m being honest with how. I like that even though Bayley is one of the best women that NXT have ever had, Asuka is just the absolute final boss and is unlike anything that the NXT Women’s Division has ever seen before. I really enjoyed this match, I thought these two worked so fucking well with one another. I haven’t watched their match from Dallas in a long while but I remember being really high on this when this happened and being of the opinion that this second encounter was better than the first. There were so many lovely looking moves in this match, I always like seeing the Stretch Muffler being busted out, or as we’re used to hearing it called, THE BROCK LOCK. I thought the finishing exchanges with Bayley finally finding ways out of the Asuka Lock, hitting the desperation Bayley to Belly and ultimately falling short to TWO Buzzsaw Kicks was just a brilliant end, going out like a gunslinger. Loved this one.
JT: Yeah I really like that it ended with the kicks too, because it feels like there’s this knowledge she has that she won’t be able to get her to tap out, and she won’t be able to apply it deep and get her to pass out like last time. So here she’s just kicking Bayley until she stays down because the only way she can win.
S: True and the fact she kept reaching the ropes, finding ways to escape and knowing that she’d never tap out too is the reason why she just kept hitting her with move after move until she just stayed down. What did you think of this match and what was it like experiencing this encounter live?
JT: As a Bayley fan it was bitter sweet considering the segment that comes after the match (that we’ll talk about soon). But just as a wrestling fan it was a great experience. I adore both of them, but I was rooting for Bayley because it is fun to root for the underdog in a match like this. It was just a hard hitting, well wrestled, exciting match with a crowd around me that was chomping at the bit for every big moment. It was just a great match made all the better by just experiencing the energy love.
S: I’m glad we both really enjoyed this match, it’s really one which I’d urge everyone to check out for real. It’s a brilliant encounter but James, would I be right in saying that this match holds a very special place in your heart as a wrestling fan?
JT: I’d certainly say so, seeing two of my favorites duke it out in an incredible match with special circumstances. Real special circumstances as we’ll come to tell you in just a second. Is that what you’re leaning towards?
S: Yeah more or less and just getting to experience the match live which I’d imagine was just an awesome experience.
JT: Oh yeah of course, pretty much all wrestling is better live. The only time it would be worse would be if something really horrific happened, or if it was a bad show and you didn’t just waste PPV/Network money but the extra money to buy tickets. Otherwise, it’s always amazing to see live wrestling. But of course, there are bigger circumstances for this match. After the bell, After the match, Asuka helps Bayley up, and Bayley hugs Asuka. Bayley points to Asuka, and then Asuka holds her title high and exits.Bayley is left alone in the ring as the crowd claps for her and chants “Thank you Bayley”. She walks up the ramp, points to the NXT logo, and that was to this point, the last NXT match of Bayley and the end of the Four Horsewoman era of NXT. Yeah Charlotte would come to NXT later, but this is the end of them as the rising stars in WWE. She handed the ball over to Asuka, now it’s her turn and the next generation’s chance to run with it. Bayley was one of my all time favorites at the time, probably my favorite Women’s Wrestler of all time. So seeing such a definitive end to that period of her career was a big deal to be there in person for.
S: I can imagine just how special of a moment this must have been for everyone in the Barclays to see this live. The year prior to this we got to see one of the most emotional matches in NXT history where Bayley took the ball from Sasha, the last of the Horsewomen in NXT as the rest were being called up while this year was the official end of her NXT run. A truly special moment for one of NXT’s most special and beloved wrestlers of all time, I mean that, she was adored by the NXT crowds every time.
JT: So then, how about a quick little run through of Bayley’s main roster career?
S: Let’s do it man, the floor is yours. Take it away.
JT: Literally the first Raw after this show, Bayley was brought up onto the main roster and set up in a program with Raw Women’s Champion Charlotte. She would face her in a Triple Threat with Sasha Banks for the title but be unsuccessful, and was then sidetracked fighting Flair’s sidekick Dana Brooke. She brushed Dana aside with a win at Hell in a Cell, and then led Team Raw Women to a victory at Survivor Series, with her and Charlotte as the only survivors. Clearly threatened, Charlotte attacked Bayley right after the match. She’d go on to beat Nia Jax to get a title shot at the Royal Rumble and didn’t win, but pinned Charlotte on Raw in a 6 Person Intergender Tag Match to get another shot. And this time, she wouldn’t miss. With help from Sasha Banks jabbing Charlotte with a crutch, Bayley would defeat Charlotte to become Raw Women’s Champion. She handed Charlotte her first PPV loss at Fastlane again thanks to Banks, and then at WrestleMania 33 she’d outlast Charlotte, Nia Jax and Sasha Banks to retain her title in a Fatal 4 Way Elimination Match. Things were going well for Bayley, maybe a little oddly timed with her winning the title on Raw rather than at the Rumble or Mania, but she was still doing well. That was until she ran into Little Miss Alexa Bliss. At Payback 2017, Alexa would beat her for the title to end her reign at 76 Days. Not great to lose, but recoverable. But then came the miserable, sleep inducing “This is Your Life” segment. For over 10 minutes, random actors playing people from Bayley’s life just shat on her, making her out to be a weak willed loser. This included her “childhood best friend” and “first boyfriend” just making out. Anyways, Bayley came out to stop the humiliation, and after briefly getting some payback on Bliss, Alexa smacked her with a Kendo Stick she had hidden under a table, leaving her standing tall. Basically for weeks, they made Bayley to be a loser who couldn’t get mean when she needed to. On top of being humiliated by Bliss in this segment, she got her ass handed to her on multiple occasions. But that’s okay, at Extreme Rules in a Kendo Stick on a Pole she…..was once again too soft to really use the Kendo Stick, got her ass kicked by Bliss and couldn’t win the title. I like to think that I’m pretty rational about these things, and I don’t use it often, but this was a pretty bad burial. Not an unrecoverable burial, but the momentum Bayley had before and after this feud with Alexa Bliss and especially the This is Your Life and Kendo Stick match, is palpably gone.
S: Oh absolutely, that was the general mood surrounding Bayley at the time and because of this momentum killing burial of her, the responses for her died down so much. Like people need to remember how much the wind was taken out of her sails and how damaging this whole feud was to her. Like it really hurt my investment in Bayley for a long old time, let me tell ya. This was probably the most damaging a feud could’ve been for someone without completely burying them and pushing them down the card. As a result of this, this feud would honestly hurt Bayley’s momentum for a solid eighteen months, if not two years. James, I want to know, being the big Bayley fan that you were and how she’s one of your favourites, what did you think of this really damaging storyline?
JT: I was annoyed as both a Bayley fan and just a writer honestly. The whole thing was centered around “Bayley is too soft to take it to Alexa”. So as I write I feel like there’s just a distinct lack of payoff when the bad guy says something about the hero and then yeah, the bad guy was right. You didn’t even have a moment of Bayley Y’know, like beating her with the Kendo Stick after the match as a snapping moment, or beating her but clearly relenting because she can tell she’s really hurting Alexa. It just feels like an incomplete story. And as a Bayley fan, it upset me because this was a character I was really invested in. She was this character who always kept pushing herself to achieve her goals, even when those goals seemed impossible. And all this feud did was basically take that character, have somebody say “she’s a loser!” and then Bayley herself pretty much confirms it through her actions. And the worst part of it, that was it! She never got back at Alexa, she never adjusted to Alexa’s criticisms, Alexa was just right and took her title and Bayley just moved on. I think it’s crucial that if you book a storyline where a heel calls the opponent a loser, the face has to win in the end, or has to snap and turn over a new leaf. Otherwise you’re left with a storyline like this where Alexa says Bayley’s a softie and a loser, Bayley confirms it with her actions, and then the crowd goes “Wow Bayley is a loser”.
S: And that’s exactly how I felt about this storyline! They set out with it to make Bayley look like a total loser and that’s how they made me look at Bayley for fucking ages, it did no one any favours. They damaged the stock of who could’ve been their next or even first women’s wrestler to properly capture the pre-teen and grown up demographic and they squandered it and they probably cost themselves a bunch of merchandise money too if you ask me.
JT: I mean maybe there’s a chance they get the actual blowoff at Summerslam (which didn’t happen because Bayley got a separated shoulder), but that feels unlikely to me considering how they never actual had her go over Alexa. Her career persisted as she unsuccessfully challenged for the title in a 5 Way at No Mercy, then she was eliminated by Tamina at that year’s survivor series, a far cry from her sole survivor status the year before. She’d beginning teaming more with Sasha Banks and they and Mickie James would feud with Absolution. That said, Sasha still wasn’t to be totally trusted, as Sasha tricked her and eliminated her from the 2018 Royal Rumble. In the Elimination Chamber for the Raw Women’s Title, after teaming up with Sasha all match, Sasha pushed Bayley off a pod causing her to be eliminated. This caused tensions between the two to real start to bubble over, leading to multiple brawls between them. But rather than settle things with a match, they got friendship counseling starting the return of DOCTOR SHELBY!! Sadly, these vignettes weren’t nearly as good as the Team Hell No vignettes of 2012, but it still worked to get Banks & Bayley on the same track. They’d team up with Natalya to defeat The Riott Squad at Evolution and continue to see success leading all the way up to the debut of the Women’s Tag Team Titles. Yet, as we mentioned when discussing Billie Kay, people’s big moments come at the expense of others’ moments. At WrestleMania 34, The Iconics won the tag titles, ending Bayley & Sasha’s at 49 Days, the shortest reign in the title’s history up until Asuka & Charlotte held the titles last year (which honestly almost feels like a way to clean up the record books and avoid that distinction for Bayley & Sasha). What do you about the way Bayley & Sasha’s title reign ended up?
S: I definitely think they should’ve done more with them considering they were the first ever Women’s Tag Team Champions if you ask me but considering Sasha was on her way towards taking a four month break from wrestling considering she was completely frustrated so I understand why the reign was what it was.
JT: Yeah I suppose it was a fair decision to make and they had a little angle where Sasha wasn’t returning Bayley’s calls to explain the absence of Sasha. Still, tough break for Bayley. So she remained on Raw while Sasha got drafted to SD, but things surprisingly worked out for Bayley. She’d go on to win the Women’s Money in the Bank at MITB 2019, cashing in on Charlotte the same night to become the first ever Women’s Grand Slam Champion!! She’d even manage to make defenses against Alexa Bliss, Nikki Cross and Ember Moon, she’s finally making headway! And then to the surprise of everyone, in late 2019 she would turn heel for the first time in her career, helping Sasha Banks attack Becky Lynch with a chair. She’d use this momentum to retain her title against Charlotte Flair at Clash of Champions, but at the subsequent Hell in a Cell PPV, lost her title again. And then, she completely snapped. She ripped up the Bayley Buddies, she changed her look entirely, she changed her look entirely. And in a rare occasion of WWE doing a heel turn right, her new attitude allowed her to actually regain her title from Charlotte on SmackDown! From there she’d go on to successfully defend her title against Lacey Evans, Naomi, Tamina, Nikki Cross and Asuka, easily surpassing Charlotte’s 149 Day title reign record. And if things weren’t good enough, as part of her feud with Cross, she and Banks won the Women’s Tag Titles again in June and actually managed to hold the titles. So once it felt like Bayley & Sasha, now rechristened The Golden Role Models, were being portrayed like the Power Couple people had thought of them for years. So Seán, what do you think of this whole Bayley heel turn, rebrand and team with Sasha in 2019-2020?
S: I think the whole rebrand and heel turn of Bayley has been nothing short of a rejuvenation for her career really. She’s been every bit of excellent in her current role, the way she gradually grew more comfortable and stemming into uberly confident and fits the role perfectly just shows how good this character has suited her. I think her and Sasha were definitely up there as the MVP’s of that empty arena/PC Arena/Thunderdome era, they just made the absolute best out of a shitty situation. Bayley has been funny, her character has developed so much and she’s had some proper good matches too with Asuka, Sasha, the five way at Mania 36. Just a big success for all involved really.
JT: I agree, I think it’s a shame they fumbled her super babyface run. It should have never gotten to this point. But since it has, we gotta applaud how she’s totally flipped our understanding of her as a performer. Who would’ve thought that someone who came off as such a natural babyface has the ability to have such a great heel run? Honestly I remember comparing her to Sami Zayn when they were both in NXT, and now I think that comparison still works now.
S: Very true, you always would believe Sami and Bayley to be lifelong babyfaces during their WWE careers but with their heel turns they have proved that they are excellent in either disposition and full credit to Bayley for making this character work. She’s been incredible in this role.
JT: Yeah and it’s not only been good for her, it’s been good for the other two. The Golden Role Models lost the Tag Titles to Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler in August, and then lost a rematch on SD a few weeks later, only for Bayley to turn on Sasha and attack her! Character growth!! After years of having Sasha be the one to turn on her, Bayley got paranoid and attacked her before she could get her first. This would lead into Hell in a Cell 2020, where she and Sasha finally had their big one on one Main Roster match, and they did it in the Cell. Bayley lost her title in that match, but she could take solace in the fact her reign with the SmackDown Women’s Title lasted 380 Days. After her feud with Sasha wrapped up, she began a feud with Bianca Belair, becoming the first person to beat Bayley on the main roster. However, Bianca would win their rematch, and then eliminate Bayley from the Rumble after Bayley lasted nearly half an hour. Her rivalry with Bianca really helped elevate her to the main event, with Bianca going on to win in the WrestleMania 36 main event against Sasha Banks for the SD Women’s Title. Bayley meanwhile would Host WrestleMania, then go on to challenge Bianca for the title at WrestleMania Backlash and then Hell in a Cell in the Cell, losing both times. She was set to face Bianca again at Money in the Bank, but sadly on July 9th WWE announced Bayley had suffered a torn ACL and would be out of action for 9 months. Her presence on WWE TV will be greatly missed, as she has become one of the most well rounded performers in WWE in the past year.
S: Oh for sure, she’s been nothing short of excellent. She was one of the shining beacons of the Thunderdome era who used having no fans to her advantage and made chicken soup out of chicken shit, it’s a testament to her really. She’s been fantastic, I feel like she totally got shafted out of a bigger role for WrestleMania 36 and it’s really a shame that she got injured just before her big I Quit Match with Bianca Belair at Money in the Bank in front of fans but hopefully she can come back better than ever and pick up where she left off.
JT: I greatly look forward to whatever she does when she comes back, because I’ve come to learn that she’s capable of more than I had initially thought. She might do the same thing, or something new, either way, it’ll be fun. So, Asuka retrospective then?
S: Absolutely, let’s run it down.
JT: So with this successful defense, Asuka keeps her undefeated streak intact. She would continue to successfully defend her title including defenses against Mickie James, Nia Jax, Nikki Cross, Peyton Royce, Billie Kay, Ember Moon and Ruby Riot. For 510 Days she was Champion, until injury forced her to vacate the Title. Nevertheless, that meant she went up to the Main Roster with a spotless record. She debuted on Raw in September 2017, and would defeat Emma at TLC in her main roster debut. She would be the Sole Survivor for Team Raw at Survivor Series, eliminating Tamina & Natalya. She would spend the rest of the year into the start of 2018 defeating Dana Brooke, Alicia Fox and even Alexa Bliss in a non-title match. She would ride this wave of momentum into the Royal Rumble, where she would eliminate Nia Jax, Ember Moon and finally Nikki Bella to win the first ever Women’s Royal Rumble. She would defend her title opportunity against Nia Jax at Elimination Chamber, win the first Mixed Match Challenge on the side with The Miz, and then challenge Charlotte Flair at WrestleMania 34. With the SmackDown Women’s Title on the line, in the Louisiana SUPERDOME BROTHER, Asuka would suffer her first loss in the biggest match of her career, tapping out to Charlotte Flair’s Figure 8. Suffice to say, this was a little unpopular online.
S: Yeah this was definitely what the spawn was of the “Charlotte Flairs Always Fucking Wins” meme which we will never see the end of but for good reason, it’s a good meme but it’s also so true as well. The match was pretty damn awesome to be honest but having Charlotte go over? By submission? Man, I don’t think it was the right call at all but it’s not like they’re having her lose to someone like Carmella, right?
JT: Yeah it’s something I was mad at the time about but something I’m a lot more mixed on nowadays. Like obviously, seeing Charlotte beat her was irritating. Like for one, Charlotte winning doesn’t really do anything other than continue to cement Charlotte as the top woman in the company. And having her lose by tap out after being so unstoppable also didn’t help. But at the same time, you’re right that at least she lost to someone who is a big deal and who wasn’t going to fall down the card later. Furthermore, she had to lose at some time. And what’s a bigger place to pull the trigger on that then at WrestleMania? Otherwise what, Asuka does her undefeated thing on the main roster for another year until next WrestleMania? And if so, who actually beats her?
S: Maybe Becky Lynch given how much her popularity exploded in the next few months following Mania, it definitely feels like with Asuka’s streak that they were almost booked into a corner in a way really. Could’ve been much worse, could’ve been better. Charlotte really didn’t need it but sure look, it’s done now.
JT: Yeah no point in spilling milk over that dead horse again. But you did remind me of another dead horse!! Because after over 900 Days in WWE as a whole, she had finally lost. And so she’s not lost before, time to open the flood gate of Ls!! After Carmella cashed in to beat Charlotte for that title, Asuka went after Mella, and lost back to back PPVs because of that fucking creep James Ellsworth. Ain’t that great? It felt like she went the whole rest of the year just without doing much, just kinda floating around. That was until she won a Battle Royal to earn a shot at Becky Lynch’s SmackDown Women’s Title at TLC in a TLC match also featuring Charlotte Flair. In the show’s main event, thanks to perfectly timed interference thanks to Ronda Rousey, Asuka pulled down the Title to become SD Women’s Champion!! She’d make Becky Lynch tap out at Royal Rumble 2019 and then Mandy Rose at Fastlane, and then WHAM!! OUTTA NOWHERE!! CHARLOTTEWINSLOL out of nowhere on a SmackDown to set up the WrestleMania 35 main event as a double title match. Now, I’m okay with putting Charlotte in that main event given the storyline. And honestly I’m okay with having her winning the title for the final WM Main Event outcome. But they should’ve figured out that main event sooner. There’s no need to have Asuka win the belt and/or have her beat Becky. If you’re gonna have Charlotte as Champion, she could have won at TLC, or she could’ve won the Title off Asuka at the Rumble. Having Asuka lose just on a random SmackDown felt like just totally pushing Asuka aside after investing into her big time. Like, beating Becky clean in the middle of her hot run? Almost nobody did that. And they let Asuka do that, just to push her out of the spotlight at the last second.
S: Yeah this was when people were really starting to get pissed off with how WWE would always pull the rug out from underneath Asuka just when she was starting to gather some big time momentum. The fact they just slapped the title on Charlotte like that while Asuka gets relegated to the Women’s Battle Royal which she doesn’t win?! And for some reason Carmella does?! Why like? Shoutout to Gail Kim tweeting, in response to a fan’s question about Asian wrestlers in WWE and right before Asuka lost to Charlotte in which she said “They don’t know how to use Asians”.
JT: I’m gonna talk about this later, that I kind of disagree to an extent with Gail overall, but certainly not in this case. It really felt like they didn’t see anything in her all year, then they suddenly hit their head and realized they have one of the best in the business on their roster, only to then fall back into old habits and just toss her aside again. Even though Asuka was struggling on the main roster for the most part, she got a friend at least! Managed by Paige, she and Kairi Sane formed The Kabuki Warriors. They’d chase The Iconics for a while, then briefly Bliss & Cross before a short hiatus, returning in September to defeat Sonya Deville and Mandy Rose. This would put them in title contention again, and at Hell in a Cell 2019, Asuka would use green mist to steal the win and the Tag Titles from Bliss & Cross. They’d confirm their heel turn by going after Becky Lynch and Charlotte, and later kicking Paige out of the group with some green mist (it’s not like she was really much of their act anyways). This would lead to the Kabuki Warriors defeating Becky & Charlotte in TLC for the Tag Titles. Asuka would then challenge Becky at The Rumble for the Raw Women’s Title, with Becky getting her win back this time. At WrestleMania 36, they lost the belts back to Cross & Bliss. Yet at 171 Days, the Kabuki Warriors had the longest reign in the history of the titles.
S: Yeah I figured they had one of the longest reigns with the Women’s Tag Titles alright because their reign was just not interrupted. Still can’t believe they main evented a PPV as Women’s Tag Champs for the actual belts, that’s pretty cool but we know it was to set up Becky vs Asuka. I remember that match they had with BlissCross was actually pretty damn solid but like, so awkward because Mania in an empty warehouse is very weird and it always will be.
JT: Plus it was the last run of Kairi Sane’s career, so it’s nice that she got to be a protected and relevant member of the roster before retiring. Idk if that would have been possible without Asuka.
S: I do have my doubts too if she would’ve been used correctly as a singles competitor but the fact she got to be a team with Asuka was nice to see when they won the Tag Belts. I also remember them two being super entertaining as heels as well, especially Kairi wearing her baseball caps and trying to hypnotise people with her awesome hypnotic umbrella.
JT: Yeah a full time heel Asuka run was a lot of fun, especially with Kairi backing her up. After WM, Asuka was put in the incredibly odd 2020 MITB Ladder Match. Yet, she managed to climb all the way up Titan Tower and pull down the briefcase to become Ms MITB. But her win was not as advertised, because it wasn’t just for the briefcase, it was for the Raw Women’s Championship!! After a touching moment together in the ring, Becky relinquished her Title to Asuka as she stepped down due to pregnancy. Just through the genuine reaction she had (breaking kayfabe in the process), she got turned back face as Champion. As Champion she defeated Nia Jax at Backlash 2020 but then had a No Contest after Bayley interfered in her match with Sasha Banks at Extreme Rules. As a result, she got put in a match where her title could change hands by DQ or countout. And due to the circumstances of the match, she lost her title when she got counted out to save Kairi Sane from a brutal attack by Bayley (which would be her last appearance in WWE). However, at Summerslam she would win her title back from Sasha (though failing to beat Bayley for the SD Women’s Title). She’d keep her title through the fall, helping out Lana in her rivalry with local bullies Shayna Baszler & Nia Jax. She was set to challenge them for the tag titles with Lana, but after Lana was injured, Charlotte subbed in at the last second, allowing the two to become Tag Champions. She’d lose those titles back to Nia & Shayna not too long afterwards but she would manage to hold the Raw Women’s Title all the way till WrestleMania 36, when she’d lose to Rhea Ripley. Since the end of her 231 Day Title reign, she has been a little directionless as she failed to win her title back and failed to win MITB. But back to my point about what Gail said earlier, I can see why she’s said what she’s said, but when you look at Asuka’s resume, it tells a different story. Asuka is a Grand Slam Champion, the longest reigning NXT Women’s Champ and Women’s Tag Champion ever, with MITB and Royal Rumble wins, as well as the longest undefeated streak in recent memory.
S: It’s an insane resumé that she accomplished in what? Less than six years with WWE? It’s simply amazing really and she’s been thoroughly deserving of all those accomplishments. She’s a walking legend of women’s wrestling who still kicks ass, can still have cracking matches and has charisma for days without even having to speak English and she has the crowd going crazy, like she could rant in Japanese on the mic and the crowd will react because they know it’s someone showing emotion! I get where Gail was coming from at that time in 2019, I really do but I do think as well that Asuka has had some brilliant matches and carved out a great career for herself in WWE.
JT: I definitely think Asuka is an exception to the rule as far as how Asian people, especially Asian women are booked in WWE. And Asuka has definitely had the problem of stop/start pushes while in WWE, but I think it’s emblematic of just how special a performer she is that she has managed to overcome it. Like considering she doesn’t speak English (at least not enough or comfortably enough to cut promos), every time she gets put back in the spotlight again she knocks it out of the park. She’s truly one of the greatest in WWE History if you ask me, and she might just be my favorite women’s wrestler EVER. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about her.
S: I absolutely agree with everything you’ve said there, she’s just managed to do amazing no matter what position she’s in and the fact that she literally has no flaws as a wrestler and a character and no one has nothing but praise for Asuka just says a lot about how celebrated she is going to be in about ten years. She’s the coolest, she has a YouTube channel all done in Japanese, she used to be a freelance graphic designer and a video game journalist for Microsoft and supposedly Nintendo too and she makes loads of Simpsons references so she’s literally the greatest.
JT: Asuka!! A winner inside and outside the ring.
S: Absolutely, she’s just the best. What time is it, James?
JT: Well I say it’s time to get to our, MAIN EVENT!!
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Thy Kingdom Come
JT: Our big show closing match has got the NXT Championship on the line!! It’s the King of Strong Style, Shinsuke Nakamura, facing off against the reigning, defending NXT Champion, the Samoan Submission Machine, Samoa Joe!!
S: From the nation of Japan to the Nation of Violence! James, holy shit. How much of a dream match was this for us at the time?
JT: Oh it was a big time dream match! You’re talking about guys who had spent years competing outside of WWE but never crossed paths. Joe dominated in ROH and built TNA Impact into a respectable promotion, while Nakamura survived New Japan’s darkest days and came out at the top of the pack during its resurgence. Both are hard hitting, but agile and charismatic wrestlers, having a very special first ever match. The video package highlights the story, with Nakamura rising through the ranks by beating the likes of Sami Zayn, Austin Aries and Finn Balor. Meanwhile Joe has finally captured the NXT Title after pursuing it for nearly a year straight. And as such, he’s not exactly willing to give his title up or even face challengers. He says that Regal forced him to jump through hoop after hoop after hoop to just get a title match, so he objects to Nakamura gettin one after debuting only 4 months ago. But Regal isn’t intimidated and gives Nakamura the match, and Joe says he’s going to run through Shinsuke. Meanwhile Shinsuke has been playing mind games. As they got into a heated confrontation that caused security to separate them, Nakamura just gave Joe a squeeze on the nose to just poke the bear. Nakamura vows to become NXT Champion while Joe vows to destroy Shinsuke. The crowd is just buzzing to see these two face off. But before we see them, we see the stars are out at ringside!!
S: By ringside we get to see the previous NXT Champion, the longest reigning at this time and one of the combatants fighting to become the very first WWE Universal Champion at SummerSlam, Finn Bálor! Who just turned 40 years old as of this writing! Fucking hell, how is he 40? Oh yeah, the stars of Holy Foley, Noelle and Mick Foley are there too. Holy Foley, it was no Legends House.
JT: Yeah Finn’s here not only as a reminder of what he did at this event last year, retaining his NXT Title in the main event ladder match, but because he’s got a big match the next day!! He’ll challenge for the Universal Championship! Man, what a what if story that could’ve been. On top of that, I’ve got a funny in-person story to tell. Did ya notice how there was some booing when the camera was on that there Foley clan?
S: Oh wow, I did not. Why were people booing? Was Frank The Clown in frame?
JT: Nope, just whoever was in charge of camera duty cut to Finn for about half a second before cutting back to The Foleys. He thought he was quick enough, but the cut was just long enough for the crowd to collectively go “WAIT FINN YES——no booo bring Finn back!!”
S: Poor old Mick and Noelle, they’re like Batista when Daniel Bryan was hot in this instance, they should’ve done it with Finn and Rollins if you ask me. Both former NXT Champions, now vying to become the first ever Universal Champion but first, they’re here to watch two of the world’s best battle it out for the same title they made famous.
JT: Oh man that would have been great. But hey, at least we got to see both GMs in our arc despite not watching a single main roster show! After that whole ordeal, the lights go out and a violinist appears on the ramp, and already everyone in the building can tell what happens. He starts slow, but gradually picks up the tempo, playing his notes as they continue to build and build for one last, long high note, and then a pluck. Then the lights go red, he plays the and he starts to play the intro for Nakamura’s theme song. Nakamura comes out to flashing white lights, grooving with the music like only he can in his red leather jacket and pants. The crowd of course, is singing along with the chorus, serenading their King of Strong Style as he makes his way up to the ring, then in it, then as he does his classic pose on the ropes, closing it out with his YEAH-OH Slash down to the ring as his entrance ends. I’m not even kidding when I say Shinsuke Nakamura’s entrance is one of the greatest WWE has ever put together. Not just the song, but the lighting, the choreography, all of it.
S: It’s certainly up there as one of the greatest entrances that has ever existed in WWE. Like it’s probably the best of the 2010s really but man here, he just looks like a million dollars. Like we all know some and have seen of the amazing entrances that Shinsuke has had in New Japan and looked like a megastar there but to do it in WWE and fit so well with WWE’S big affiliation for amazingly done entrances. The theme song, the pacing and timing of the entrance. It’s all golden.
JT: Especially when you have special occasion entrances like this with the violinist. Like the second his theme song took off, I saw people talking about this sort of entrance, and the fact that it is as good as you would’ve imagined is just special. Like you said, he looks like a million bucks, and an instant big deal.
S: And we go from one of the most brilliant entrances to one of the baddest entrances on this show because my word, Samoa Joe just looks like a bad motherfucker when he comes out, doesn’t he?
JT: Yeah Joe just marches down to the ring with murder on his mind. Joe is an expert at looking dead serious for his matches, and tonight is no exception. He’s practically ready to fight Shinsuke before the bell even rings, but they’re separated for now. Also the “Joe” chants in time with his theme song is an excellent chant.
S: It really is in time with the entrance perfectly and the chant just makes him look like a fighter ready to just kick some ass. It’s well cool.
JT: Now just before we get to the match I gotta ask you about the elephant in the room, and by that I mean this version of the NXT Title that was in its last 6 months of existence.
S: Are you asking about the actual design of this initial NXT Title belt?
JT: Yeah, what do you think of this original NXT Title design?
S: I think this belt definitely has its place in history and it is associated with lots of wrestlers but it does have that first design energy about it, doesn’t it? It’s got a really big awkward looking strap with undersized side plates and a giant “X” plate in between a smaller “N” and “T”. It always looked like a belt which just needed a proper clean, like the gold just looked dirty. However, the design is associated with so many great wrestlers and it has its place in modern wrestling history.
JT: That’s for certain. It looks fairly dumb in my mind, especially compared to the superior Women’s & Tag Titles, but I feel it also helped feed into the idea that NXT was this smaller, special thing. It doesn’t have the big, elaborately designed title, it didn’t come out of the huge arenas. It had this silly little “this is the first idea I had and we have to get the belt by Sunday” design that you couldn’t associate with anywhere other than NXT. But of course, now that the age of Takeover shows at the PC is over, they’ll be upgrading soon enough. And that’s about all the lead up as we have for this match. Seán, are you ready to get into our final match?
S: Let’s do this man, let’s wrap this bad boy up!
JT: Crowd firmly behind Nakamura, singing his theme as the match starts with a lock up. Joe puts Nakamura in the corner and saunters back, then each man goes for a kick but they each block their opponents shot, only for Joe to slap Nakamura disrespectfully. Each man trying to get on top of a mount, it’s aggressive grappling but nobody gets control. So Joe instead goes for a wrist lock, but Shinsuke with some fancy footwork to get out of it only for Joe to get right back in control. Nakamura can’t push Joe off the headlock, so he starts nailing Joe with knees to the mid section, knocking Joe down. Now it’s time for some disrespect from Shinsuke, as he gives Joe some Good Vibrations in the corner. Joe rolls out of the ring and pulls Nakamura out with him, hitting him with chops and punches but Nakamura throws him into the apron, only for Joe to come back with more chops. Neither man is willing to give in right now, but each is trying to get the first decisive hit of the match. Joe rolls Shinsuke back in, then runs in with a Back Elbow then Enziguri in the corner. Joe tries to grab Nakamura on the apron, but Shinsuke with a High Kick, then he hangs Joe over the apron to hit a Knee right to the face. He looks to follow up with a Knee Drop to the back of the head, but Joe moves and Nakamura hits hard on the floor. This leaves him hobbled for long enough that Joe can hit the ropes and then fly through the ropes with a huge Suicide Dive!! Partner, we’ve seen a lot of dives through the middle ropes over the course of Power Hour history, but none of them have been by a guy as big as Joe!! He’s a damn jumbo jet flying right at you!! That’s one way to shift the momentum of a match.
S: Awh man his Suicide Dive is up there as one of the best, you’re just getting hit by a fucking tank of a man. It’s probably one of the best dives in wrestling because it actually looks like a devastating move and could conceivably change the momentum of a match. That’s not a diss at dives in wrestling but I’ve seen a lot of crap looking dives to know that Joe’s is fucking amazing.
JT: So after crashing into Nakamura, Joe throws him back in the ring. Shinsuke tries to fire up but Joe runs him over with a back elbow, then a chop to the back, kick to the chest and crisp elbow drop . Joe then begins to light up Nakamura with kicks to the chest and then just tries to wear him down with submissions. Nakamura manages to fight back up to his feet but before he can get any further momentum going, Joe sweeps his legs. As Joe continues to pour it out, he lifts him up and brings him down with a Powerbomb, transitioning to the Boston Crab, then into an STF. Nakamura manages to get out of that and then manages to pin Joe, which he kicks out of, and Joe has to hit an Enziguri to buy some time against him. Joe tries to send him across but Nakamura holds onto him, goes under his arms, then hits a knee to Joe’s gut, then hits a Spinning Enziguri!! Both men are down but it’s clear that Shinsuke is the one with all the momentum. Both men get back to their feet and as they do, Nakamura is clearly starting to roll with his strikes, sending Joe back to the corner where he hits a running knee, hangs Joe up top, and hits a Rising Knee to the gut. He picks Joe up for an Inverted Exploder but Joe fights it off, only for Nakamura to stun him and hit the ropes, but Shinsuke runs into an Atomic Drop and a Big Boot, but Nakamura moves out of the way of the Senton. Again, we’re pretty far into this match and it’s still a dead even. This is one of the mostly evenly fought matches I can remember seeing.
S: Yeah this match is just a complete 50:50 contest throughout it really, especially up to this point. It’s almost at a stalemate from the opening bell, it really makes for an interesting viewing and definitely more interesting than what I remember it being at the time. I like how when one of them thinks they have the other in a vulnerable situation, it then results in the offensive being on the other end. Really good stuff.
JT: Trying to slow Joe down, Nakamura gets Joe in a Guillotine choke, which Joe tries to counter by lifting him up, which Nakamura himself counters by taking him down to the mat delivering deadly knees to the upper body. This forces Joe to retreat to the corner, so Nakamura charges in, only to run into a signature corner Uranage by Joe (kind of, they don’t quite do the move as smoothly and cleanly as usual). But after that rang Nakamura’s bell, Joe now smells blood in the water. He puts Nakamura up top for the Muscle Buster, but Nakamura fights back, sending Joe out of the corner, giving him space to jump off the middle rope with a Flying Kick that catches Joe flush!! Back to square one, the two start trading elbows, Joe nails body blows, a bunch of slaps, then clobbers Shinsuke with a lariat!! Joe lines him up for a Discus Lariat but this swing leads to Nakamura catching him for an Armbreaker!! Joe has got his hands grip, preventing Shinsuke from pulling back on it, so Shinsuke tries to go into a Triangle instead, but Joe manages to and turns it into a Texas Cloverleaf!! He wrenches back on the hold, but Shinsuke manages to get the ropes. I think an overlooked aspect of both of these guy’s games that they show off here is that they both know submissions really well, and know how to counter them in a moment’s notice.
S: They just get each other’s styles don’t they? They know what moves they could counter with their own, they know what submissions they should bust out at certain stages in the match and they just get one another. Really forgot and took for granted at the time how fucking well these two lads worked together. That reversal by Joe where he countered the Triangle Choke by Nakamura into a Texas Cloverleaf, just beautiful stuff and very easy on the eye.
JT: Just in general I think both guys do submissions really well. They make their holds look snug and they know how to transition into them with ease. Speaking of which, Joe tries for the Coquina Clutch but Nakamura pushes him back into the corner, then snaps him over, only to charge right at Joe, who catches the sliding Nakamura with a knee right to the face!! 1–2–Kickout!! Even with the kickout, Nakamura still looks out on the mat, so Joe hammers him with elbows, then locks in the Coquina!! He’s got the arms around the throat and his legs around Nakamura’s abdomen, but Shinsuke’s limbs are too long and he gets the ropes!! Joe is frustrated but he knows he can’t lose focus. If he can’t get him with the Coquina, he’ll try with his next biggest move. He puts Nakamura in the corner and sets up the Muscle Buster, but Shinsuke fights back with shots, Nakamura slips off the top, goes behind for an Inverted Exploder but when Joe fights that off, he gets a German that sends Joe down right on his neck!! Nakamura lines up the Kinshasa, but he charges right into a Snap Powerslam by Joe!! 1–2–Kickout!! You said before that these guys really have very fluid wrestling, and I think that on top of that, they’ve got real snug and convincing moves on top of hitting those moves quickly and cleanly. This sequence just shows both our points off perfectly. Smart counters done with expert quickness, big powerful looking slams and throws, and especially that big knee by Joe looked excellent to me.
S: Oh man there were plenty of moves in this match which got a big reaction from me, a lot of them from Joe, a lot of them from Nakamura. I mean that fucking knee to Nakamura while he was sliding was just so sick looking and could honestly be used as a shock finish elsewhere in wrestling and good lord, that Snap Powerslam is up there as one of the best you’ll see. It’s him, Orton and “Black Reign” Dustin Rhodes. Just some beautiful looking stuff.
JT: Joe can tell that he is really close to putting Nakamura away, so he puts Nakamura up top for the Muscle Buster again. Nakamura tries to push him off but Joe comes back with an Enziguri!! Shinsuke is out up top, Joe picks him up and plants him with the Muscle Buster!! 1——2——KICKOUT!! Joe cannot believe that he kicked out, and goes to just do it again. He puts him on the top rope, and then lifts him into position again, but this time Nakamura kicks his feet, falling free as Joe falls down, leaving him prone for the Kinshasa, sliding and connecting right with Joe’s face!! 1———2——KICKOUT!! Nakamura just had his best move kicked out of too, but he still keeps up the pressure. He goes up top, lines up Joe and hits a Diving Knee to the back of the head!! Joe stumbles and falls down in the middle of the ring, Nakamura goes back to the corner!! He lines it up one more time, KINSHASA!!! Will this be enough?!? 1——2——3!!! Nakamura got it!! The King of Strong Style has been crowned!! We’ve got a brand new NXT Champion!! Seán, give all of us a run down of the main event as a whole!
S: I thought this match was really fucking good, like I had no recollection of this match being as good as I remember it. I honestly think this match is better as my memory serves it to be and it’s probably gotten better with age. It’s a really damn snug match but it’s snug in a way which is easy for the viewer. Each man in this match looked super tough coming out of it, especially Joe because if anyone remembers, he actually suffered a broken jaw on the first Kinshasa. Which is just one of the worst injuries anyone can sustain in my opinion. I think the fact it was one finisher kickout from each dude made it very palatable as well, instead of the numerous insane levels of kickouts which would begin to happen in years to come. Like it only took two finishers to win the match, delightful. They worked so well together too, they just had really good chemistry in what was only their first match, which is a testament to how good they are. Big old thumbs up from me and definitely go out of your way to watch this match. How about you James? Your thoughts on watching it live but also your thoughts on rewatching it for this show?
JT: I remember when I saw this live, I wasn’t disappointed but I wasn’t totally blown away. I figure I was tired then (as was the crowd) and it wasn’t a huge blockbuster match like others. After watching it now, I still find it hard to place my feelings on this one. Like I think all of what you said is true, it is hard hitting, it is a nice snug match, it doesn’t go too far into finisher kickouts that it becomes overbearing and long winded. Yet, I still feel like I end up wanting to like the match more than I do. Like maybe it’s because the match is so evenly fought, but it almost feels like it lacks momentum. As in you don’t get that feel of ebb and flow as much as you would from a match with a more standard formula. Which again feels odd for me to say because I like how conceptually it works to make both guys look good. I also feel to an extent they should have fired more of their big shots earlier than they did, so the match feels a little backloaded. Like the Kinshasa/Powerslam spot is good, but Joe’s Powerslam is like a middle of the match move, not one that you genuinely will end the match with, as good as it is. What I mean by this is it feels like they didn’t do much early on and then at the end they compensated by doing a bunch. Maybe this just depends on how I write up my sections for this blog of ours, but I felt myself just looking for something to talk about in their middle sections and not finding as much as I might find in better main event matches. Finally, though I do think that I appreciate their conservatism with finisher kick outs, I definitely prefer when it’s not one then the other then the ending, in the way they had the Muscle Buster Kickout, then the Kinshasa Kickout and then the finishing sequence. But maybe that’s a ridiculously smarky thing to gripe about.
S: I don’t necessarily disagree with your point about the way finisher kickouts were done to be honest, in fact I think you make a really good point. I do think sometimes that if you’re going to have two finisher kickouts, have them fairly spaced out by a few minutes or even a good amount of moves in between. I definitely get what you’re saying.
JT: Yeah unless someone has a really protected finisher, I know that one guy’s finisher gets kicked out of, the other guy usually is going to kickout of other’s finisher (if they wanna book them to look strong anyways). If you space it out and find a creative way for the person who has already kicked out to hit their finisher, I think you’re more likely to catch fans by surprise. But if you just do it in a row, it just makes it a more obvious result.
S: It really does in all honesty. So what’s your final verdict on this match then, James? Thumbs up or thumbs down?
JT: Oh I’ll still give it a thumbs up, but I feel like it had moments where it was great but it wasn’t at that next upper level consistently enough to really have me raving.
S: I get where you’re coming from there. So Nakamura is the champion now and Joe is ultimately deleted but James, where are these boys nowadays and what are they up to?
JT: Well these two would continue to be involved in each other’s business for the rest of the year. Joe was not happy to lose his title after fighting so long to get it, so he went after Nakamura with a vengeance, including slamming Nakamura down hard right across the steel stairs. This led up to their rematch at Takeover Toronto, which Joe shockingly won with the Muscle Buster. I remember being really caught off guard about this, but Joe absolutely wasn’t. Though he was the first 2x NXT Champion, it was only for two weeks, as Nakamura would challenge him for the title on NXT from Osaka, Japan, with Nakamura defeating him in front of his hometown fans. Then much like how Joe & Finn Balor ended their rivalry, Joe & Shinsuke would close out their rivalry in a Steel Cage, this time with Nakamura winning and shutting the book on Samoa Joe in NXT. What did you think of the end of this rivalry? Because honestly I have some mixed feelings.
S: Same as you really, James. I’ve got some mixed feelings about the end of their rivalry in all honesty. I thought that putting the belt on Joe for two weeks only to have him drop it to Nakamura in Osaka really wasn’t necessary if you ask me. I mean I liked the build up to the match for Toronto and the match I remember being pretty good but the hot potato with the belt just wasn’t needed.
JT: Yeah I get what they were trying to do, making the Osaka match matter, giving Joe that little accolade, but yeah it felt very much like hot potato booking. I think if they wanted to make sure they had a reason to have another match, they could’ve gone for some sort of King Kong booking. Like a Brock Lesnar/Big Show/Braun Stroman type thing y’know? Like break the ring, have a big crash through the stage or a table, a big moment that’d be memorable and not too irritating as a none finish. Still, I think the problem was that they were booking for weekly tv rather than the PPV. They were so focused on making sure they had things to do on the NXT show for Japan & Australia that they kind of messed up the feud. Only kind of, the matches were still good. Also it didn’t help that since they did the Japan & Australia matches so close together. It felt like they really dragged things out to get to Toronto, and then just did two matches in short succession.
S: I get the gap between the first two matches though to be fair because Joe was always going to be on the shelf for about two months from his broken jaw so I don’t really blame them on that part but yeah, the matches from Japan and Australia were very close together, that we can agree on.
JT: Honestly they probably should’ve had the Australia Cage be like how Joe won the NXT Title for the first time, like just as a report from a House Show and a summary rather than the full match. Maybe, people would’ve complained about not seeing it if that did happen.
S: Oh you know they would’ve done this if this were the Hulkamania Era/New Gen WWF.
JT: If it were New Gen, you would’ve got the Cage Match as a Coliseum Home Video Exclusive.
S: You would’ve gotten it shot on a handheld camcorder and backstage Joe would’ve told us that losing his title was a pittance.
JT: Well since he was moving to where the big boys play as it were, should we talk about Joe’s main roster run?
S: Yes we shall, it certainly is a tale of ups and downs so take it away James.
JT: So after he lost in Australia, he presumably got left down under because he was off TV until the last day of January, where he’d show up on Raw to attack Seth Rollins on behalf of Triple H. In the process, Seth Rollins went down hurt, and I just gotta ask you, do you think that “injury” was an injury at all? What I’m asking is do you think it was a work to protect Rollins? Because I think there’s interesting arguments on both sides.
S: Oh wow we’re getting into wrestling’s unsolved mysteries with this kind of discussion now. On one hand, I feel like that the way he went down looked rather unnatural for a man to fall down where he would definitely injure his knee but on the other hand, it could be said that it was done more aggressively by Joe just so it’d look like he was legitimately hurt and would keep Rollins off TV for a while. I can’t remember the extent of the type of injury he suffered or “suffered” according to some but if it’s some sort of knee injury, being out for ten weeks would be a bit hard to believe. I think it’s up for debate really. Today I could say it was work, tomorrow I could say it was for real. I really don’t know.
JT: Yeah we’ll never really know. Like on one hand, him having a perfect excuse to not wrestle and not risk looking weak before he faces Triple H right before Mania is convenient. Especially since they could do the whole crutch motif in the build and match. It also prevented them from having Joe debut and then lose to Seth. But then again, they didn’t necessarily have to have him get hurt to make sure he didn’t lose matches, they could’ve done the crutch stuff, and Rollins would beat Joe at the first PPV after WM33 anyways (Payback). I think it’s just an interesting little side story we tend to forget about that I think is an interesting little cold case to look at. Ohhhh, Wrestling Cold Cases. BRB I’m gonna get a patent and copyright on that before someone else does it.
S: For all we know that’s gonna be something that the wrestling content bigwigs would end stealing from the little guys, isn’t it? I think this needs to be a regular segment on the show.
JT: Duly noted, I’ll keep my eyes out for any more potential Cold Cases on our timeline. So like I said, with Rollins out, Joe instead fought and defeated Sami Zayn at Fastlane and got his match with Seth at Payback, which he’d lose. He’d come back with a big victory in the Main Event of Extreme Rules, where he’d earn a shot at the Universal Championship, winning a 5 Way against Rollins, Roman Reign, Finn Balor and Bray Wyatt by making Finn tap out. He’d then enter a rivalry with Brock Lesnar for Great Balls of Fire. In the lead up, he would not only choke out Paul Heyman, but he’d actually choke out Lesnar himself, and have a big pull apart brawl on Raw. At Great Balls of Fire though, Lesnar would defeat Joe after one F5 to maintain his title. And I’d just like to ask you what you thought of this program and this match, because I have lots of opinions.
S: I thought the five way at Extreme Rules was really fucking good in all honesty, definitely a match that’s gone under the radar in the last few years. The programme with Brock was built up to perfection, it made Joe look like a cold blooded killer and a viable threat to Lesnar, the match itself I remember really enjoying because of how tense it was bit then Brock just won with a singular F5 and it completely soured me, a disgruntled 16 year old Seán who already was dealing with Jinder as WWE Champion on SmackDown. I haven’t watched the match since then, maybe my opinion would change if I gave it a rewatch but I’m not in a rush really.
JT: Yeah I really feel the finish is a shame, because it’s a really good match until then. Like I think Lesnar really does a great job selling, making the Coquina out to be the most dangerous hold in WWE. Like all matches he fights desperately to avoid it. But like you said, that finish. And I don’t think ending it on one F5 is necessarily a problem. The problem is in the booking before and afterwards. Everyone and their mother was kicking out of the F5 before that, and if they had used the GBoF match as a reset where it would take one against everyone, that was fine. But they didn’t do that, and it would get much worse with the Roman Reigns feud in 2018. So sadly, all it does is make Joe look worse. But otherwise I maintain that it’s a pretty good match, just not one that lives up to its exceptional build.
S: Exactly because by WrestleMania 34, it takes SIX FUCKING F5s to beat Roman Reigns so in a way Joe is technically 1/6 of the man that Roman is and not only did Joe suffer from the one F5 booking method but Braun Strowman also did, I’d argue he suffered more than Joe did with that booking method if you ask me.
JT: Yeah at least Brock feared the Coquina, he just stomped Braun on multiple occasions. But speaking of Braun! He was doing much better in 2017, which can be seen as Joe got another shot at the title, against Braun and Roman and Brock at Summerslam. And legit, I feel this is one of the most underrated matches WWE has had, like ever. This match is an absolute barnburner, a total blockbuster match where guys go through the barricade and the table, and Braun throws Cole’s big comfy office chair at Roman!! It’s just 4 big dudes destroying each other for like 25 minutes, it’s incredible. Honestly, I’d put Joe’s run from Extreme Rules to Summerslam up there with any series of 3 matches from any other time in his WWE career. Just 3 great matches in a row.
S: Yeah honestly, three high caliber main events that he had which proved that he belonged in the main event scene on Raw with so many main event names that Raw had in 2017. As much as I ragged on the finish from GBOF, it was an actual good match just marred by a weak finish in my opinion. The Four Way at SummerSlam though, what a fucking barnstormer that match was and it was such a good match to the point where I think the fans would’ve been happy with whoever won. It’s a car crash of a match at its absolute finest, beautiful chaos.
JT: Joe would keep chugging along on Raw, joining the Raw Survivor Series team but unfortunately contributing not much as he was eliminated by John Cena without recording any eliminations for himself in 18 minutes of competition. He’d feud with The Shield and Intercontinental Champion Roman Reigns in December but would unfortunately suffer a foot injury in a match with Titus O’Neil right as 2018 began, putting him out of action until the night after WrestleMania. He’d come back, blow off his feud with Roman with a loss at Backlash, then get traded to SmackDown in the Superstar Shakeup. That would lead him to engage one more time with his oldest rival, AJ Styles. In this feud, he’d get under Styles by repeatedly getting involved with AJ’s family. He’d make references to AJ’s wife Wendy, he’d talk to his kids, but it was never enough to get the title off AJ. He challenged at Summerslam, Hell in a Cell, Super Showdown, and Crown Jewel but no cigar. This would be just a recurring theme of Joe’s career: He’d make things interesting but struggle to win any sort of title match or major feud.
S: The theme of Joe’s WWE run from 2018 to 2019 was literally “talk the biggest game of all the roster and then lose”, which would make him look like a chump and boy was the second half of 2018 until around early 2019 evident of that. He would lose just way too many big matches and matches in general.
JT: For example after that AJ feud he’d get dumped out of the Rumble in surprise fashion by Mustafa Ali. He’d then go on to win the US Title in a 4 Way match between Rey Mysterio, Andrade and Champion R-Truth, with a successful defense in a rematch at Fastlane. He’d defend his title in 60 seconds flat against Mysterio at WM35 (with the match probably being cut due to I believe an injury to Mysterio shortly before Mania), but then would lose the title to Mysterio at MITB 2019, only for Mysterio to for sure suffer an injury, forcing him to vacate the title and hand it over to Joe (who would attack him after getting his belt back). So finally, Joe will be off to the races? Not at all! Only 19 days later he’d lose the title to Ricochet at Stomping Ground. Honestly ever since WrestleMania 33, when Kevin Owens won the US Title, the title has just been a total mess of hot potato booking, undercooked reigns and just general bad luck. Really up until Lashley won the title in 2020, things were tough. That’s like 3 straight years of a sloppily booked midcard.
S: Oh god the US Title was just the biggest hot potato in WWE for those three years. I’ve done a quick count up there and from Owens until Lashley’s long old reign, there were a total of TWENTY-THREE title changes in the space of 40 months. Wowzers.
JT: And again, when the title wasn’t being swapped back and forth, you had like Ziggler vacating the title to show up a month later for nothing, AJ Styles hold it for like 4 months with 0 story or intrigue, a Jinder Mahal courtesy reign, etc. it was tough times.
S: And a Randy Orton reign just for the sake of him holding it for a grand slam. Same for Jeff Hardy too really. Just so many dudes were given the belt for the sake of it.
JT: Well, Joe managed to move on from that business as he went after WWE Champion Kofi Kingston instead. He’d challenge him at Extreme Rules unsuccessfully and then on the SmackDown special Smackville, he lost in a Triple Threat for the Title that also included Dolph Ziggler. From there he’d enter the 2019 King of the Ring tournament, making the Semi-Finals but losing in a Triple Threat to eventual winner Baron Corbin, who stole the pin off a Ricochet 630 Splash. In that match, Joe actually broke his thumb, causing him to be out of action for a while. In the meantime though, Joe joined the Raw commentary team in November, only to get back to in ring action to fight off Seth Rollins, and his goons AOP and Murphy in late December. He’d continue feuding with them into and past the Royal Rumble, with the feud only ending when Joe hurt his head during a commercial shoot in February and then violated WWE’s wellness policy four days later, resulting in a thirty day suspension. He’d return to commentary in April, and would commentate over Raw for the next year, until he was released in April 2021, which you and I talked about between ourselves between episodes. Honestly I thought it was part of one of our Recharge segments, but surprisingly it wasn’t. The damage has since been undone, but give everyone a little taste of how you felt about that, and how it felt after the way his 2019-2021 run had gone.
S: I remember just being a mixture of emotions really, mostly confused and just completely pissed off with the decision. It just made fuck all sense to me, like constantly Joe would have to lose so many big matches and suffer the most random injuries in the most bizarre circumstances, he was starting to remind me of my teenage self where I’d get injured in the most ridiculous ways. I remember being really happy for him once he started doing commentary and was excelling at it, he was reminding me of CM Punk when he did his brief few months on commentary in the final months of 2010 whilst healing from injury. He would give some really interesting insights of a wrestler’s perspective on matches, which was definitely needed for main roster commentary. It just made no sense to me that he’d be let go in the first place due to most likely “budget cuts” despite record profits in 2020 and a ONE BILLION DOLLAR buyout of the WWE Network by NBC’s Peacock service, like why would you let someone go who can pretty much anything you ask of him and do it really fucking well? Made no sense a few months back, will never ever make sense.
JT: Yeah I don’t think there’s a valid excuse for cutting him. I don’t care that he’s back now, it was still a lame ass, chump move. He’s a person not a piece of meat. So he did manage to get back into WWE only in June 2021, as a heavy for William Regal, someone who could enforce the rules. Of course, that lasted for about a month when as he continued to get into things with problem child Karrion Kross. After Kross attacked Regal in the NXT Parking Lot (the most dangerous place in the history of wrestling), Regal was set to fire him, but Joe instead offered to step down from his position so that he could fight Kross and give him his just deserts at Takeover 35. It’s nice that he’s back. That angle is kind of a mess, but at least he’s back.
S: Yeah it’s good to see him back but like why did you fire him anyways? Dopes. The match with Kross will probably be uninteresting because it’s Kross and he’s about as interesting as Father Stone from Father Ted, I just get the feeling that Kross goes over with his shitty ass Sleeper really.
JT: It would be satisfying to watch Joe choke him out but alas, I doubt that’ll happen. Maybe we can freak out about it when in the next Recharge we have. Anyways, onto Shinsuke?
S: Sure we might as well, he’s the last one on the docket sure.
JT: So once he finished up with his Joe, he entered a feud with Bobby Roode!! That’s right, there’s your missing link folks. At Takeover San Antonio, he’d lose the title to Bobby Roode then the rematch at Takeover Orlando, so he could be up just in time for the first SmackDown after WrestleMania, where he’d get the whole big entrance and pizzaz to interrupt Miz….and then doing nothing. Well at least he’d enter a feud with Miz right? Well no, Miz would get traded to Raw so he’d have his first feud with Dolph Ziggler. Joy. But he’d beat him at Backlash go on to enter the MITB Ladder Match, only to lose to Baron Corbin. They’d feud at Battleground, where Corbin would get DQ’d with a low blow, and Nakamura defeating him on the subsequent Smackdown. Then came one of the craziest graphics of all time. Shinsuke Nakamura. John Cena. Winner faces WWE Champion Jinder Mahal for the title at Summerslam. Even 8 months earlier, it’s the funniest shit ever, let alone if you showed someone that 3 years earlier. Anyways, Nakamura defeated Cena clean as a whistle to challenge Mahal at Summerslam, where he’d surely be crowned champion like at Takeover Brooklyn the year before? Well, no, he’d lose to Mahal thanks to Singh Brother interference. Well, I mean, he’d win the rematch after dispatching the Singh Bros? I mean he’d beat Randy Orton to get the Title shot at Hell in a Cell 2018, but not in The Cell, meaning the Singhs interfered and cost Nakamura the match AGAIN. To keep things going as oddly as frustratingly as possible, he’d also be the first person eliminated in that year’s Men 5 on 5 match. What a fucking mess of a first 8 months.
S: Just a fucking infuriating eight months for that man, honestly. Like we know that people say that he’s been sleepwalking his way through his WWE run at this point but like COME ON, just have him beat Jinder like for fuck’s sake. Just the most rinse repeat Championship Match formula during Jinder’s reign and that’s not his fault, he did all he could but fucking hell, it was the same bollocks every single PPV he was on and Survivor Series? *Roy Keane stare* Do me a favour… This of course was the show where Michael Cole coined the nickname, SHIN. I don’t like what, Shin said…
JT: Yeah it was beyond frustrating as a big fan of his. Like with Jinder Mahal, the annoying part is that all his matches were the same. I was willing to accept him being elevated suddenly, he had the presentation to be a main eventer. But every match was the same, and ended with almost the exact same “Singh Brother distraction then the Khallas” ending. That just hurt Shinsuke and it hurt any chance Jinder had to become a legit main eventer. And that Men’s Survivor Series match was such a dream match on paper, especially after they knocked the year before out of the park. Man that 2016 Men’s 5 on 5. But this one had every NXT Champion since the touring version of NXT had started (Finn, Joe, Nakamura, Roode) except Drew & Andrade, plus Triple H, Kurt Angle, Randy Orton and even Shane McMahon and Braun Strowman were good in these types of matches before. And then it was just such a fucking mess. It main evented over a superior AJ Styles vs Brock Lesnar match too!!
S: God I just remember being so fucking confused by the booking of that match not gonna lie, it was super stacked and it also had some new faces in there but the booking was an absolute shambles and the afters? God, talk about a story that went nowhere.
JT: Speaking of stories that go nowhere, back to Shinsuke!! Things would turn around for him at the exact right time as he won the incredible 2018 Royal Rumble, and promptly declared he’d fight AJ Styles for the WWE Title. Of course on the biggest day of them all, with potentially the most hyped WWE Championship match since, god I can’t even say when! Nakamura and AJ faced off and it was….fine? I guess? I mean I liked it but I also get the feeling I convinced myself to like it on principle. Oh, and Shinsuke didn’t win. And then he turned heel. And then he couldn’t win the title at The Greatest Royal Rumble due to Double Countout, then a No Contest in a No DQ Match at Backlash, before finally losing the feud at MITB in a Last Man Standing match. Talk about a disappointing feud to end all disappointing feuds.
S: That feud could’ve been so much more fucking awesome had they had Nakamura turn heel at Mania with a lowblow and a nasty Kinshasa to win the WWE Title, even if it’s just for two months, give him a bit of fucking legitimacy when he turns heel. He’s turned into a proper prick, he’s stolen the title and brought disgrace to what should’ve been a brilliant title match. I actually have only watched that match twice since it first happened and I’m convinced that it’s not a bad match because if you put that match on earlier in the show and swap it with Taker and Cena, then it would’ve gone over differently. They were put in a shite slot of a fucking seven hour PPV or whatever the fuck it was. Absolute insanity, the day we review a show that long will be the day we become a podcast and we reviewed Mania 32 with a 30 minute Rock segment.
JT: If we ever do a show like that, might as well make it a commentary track reacting to the whole thing as it happens. It’d be more time efficient. But yeah, I 100% agree. Even if you give the belt right back to AJ, you at least get something out of this whole feud. Like, I know Bryan would turn heel and win the belt off AJ later in the year, but I doubt they ever knew they’d do that by the time Shinsuke turned. Instead, Shinsuke absolutely lost his shine. He lost his biggest series of matches again, and they took away his theme song that crowds loved. I loved his heel song, like I really think it’s a jam, but man, we now have the hindsight to see how heel Shinsuke vs Face Shinsuke is just night and day.
S: The song really was a banger but man, did it take away all of his crowd support. It’s a good heel move alright but I just associate this theme with him holding belts for a while and doing fuck all afterwards.
JT: Yeah with that in mind, I’m just gonna speed through Shinsuke’s last few years because there just ain’t a lot of stuff to discuss. He’d win the US Title from Jeff Hardy at Extreme Rules 2018, talking about Nak-America, and going out of his way to avoid challengers he deemed unworthy. So he’d fend off Jeff, then Rusev for a few months until losing it on the Christmas Day episode of SD to Rusev, ending the reign at 156 Days. But then at the Royal Rumble, he’d win the title right back, only to lose the title two days later in a fluke loss to R-Truth. Like literally Nakamura kicked out at 3.1 and they were halfway through going for another move when the Ref stopped the match. Then after feuding for months, Rusev & Nakamura formed an alliance due to frustrations dealing with R-Truth. They’d compete for the Tag Titles at WM35 but fail to win the titles. Nakamura would then go off TV for a bit, then come back and feud with IC Champ Finn Balor. It sounds cooler than it was. Nakamura won the IC Title from him at Extreme Rules 2019, defending against Ali and The Miz with new manager Sami Zayn. He’d take part in a match against US Champ AJ Styles and North American Champ Roderick Strong at Survivor Series and lose (shoutout to the rare heel vs heel vs heel match). He’d also form an alliance with Cesaro, with the two failing to win the tag titles from the New Day. Nakamura would lose the IC Title after 201 Days to Braun Strowman on January 31st, but in March he and Cesaro and Zayn would take on Strowman in a 3 on 1 Handicap match for the title, with Shinsuke helping Zayn win the title. The Artist Collective as they’d become known would continue to work to keep Sami at IC Champ while Nakamura & Cesaro would feud with The New Day. Cesaro & Nakamura would win the SD Tag Titles at Extreme Rules in a Tables match, holding them until losing them back to the New Day after 82 Days. Things would mostly stay the same until 2021, when things would finally change for Nakamura. But man, what a barren two and half year swath for someone who was once one of the most exciting wrestlers on the planet.
S: Just an absolute slog of a thirty months for him, wasn’t it? Like Christ above just talk about that WWE mid-carder syndrome where you’re probably guaranteed at least one title run. Proper Dolph Ziggler syndrome striking him here like. I mean the guy has a tradition for winning titles at Extreme Rules so Nakker, you challenge Roman Reigns or whoever is Universal Champion at Extreme Rules and you’ll finally win the belt, trust me, they’ll be fucked.
JT: Yeah luckily he finally turned a corner at the start of this last year. It was a bit start stop, but he got started with a Gauntlet match where he beat Rey Mysterio, King Corbin and Daniel Bryan, seemingly on his way to fight Roman Reigns for the Universal Title. Unfortunately, the Tribal Chief and Main Event Jey Uso beat him down and then put showrunner Adam Pearce on top for the pin to prevent Nakamura from getting the match. Still, it kickstarted Nakamura, who was turned back face in the process. He’d return back to his old theme and would continue teaming with Cesaro, taking his place in his feud with Seth Rollins after Seth took Cesaro out of action. Nakamura would lose at Fastlane, but soon enough he’d find himself in a feud with King Corbin, stealing the KOTR winner’s crown. They’d fight over it for a few weeks, stealing it back and forth. Shinsuke even got some help with this in the form of hype-man and guitarist Rick Boogs. This would lead to the Battle for the Crown match on June 18th’s SmackDown, with Nakamura winning the crown for good. He has since been rechristened King Nakamura, wearing the crown to the ring, along with Boogs playing him in. He looks sharp, he feels like he’s having a good time and is motivated, the crowd is behind him, and it feels to me like just a fresher version of his original entrance. Like, just going straight back to the original entrance felt a little lazy, but they’ve added real zest to it and I’m a big fan of the King of WWE.
S: I’m on the exact same train as you, sir because man am I really digging his new character as of right now. He looks like he’s having a great old time doing it, he looks really happy too and having Rick Boogs alongside him adds so much to the act. I love the attire too, the all white get-up just looks so fresh and sharp and we actually have a face King in wrestling that actually works! To touch on Rick Boogs for a second, I think he absolutely fucking rules to be honest with you, never have I ever seen a live guitarist so great sounding at a wrestling show and Boogs is a brilliant guitarist, that dude can really shred and I’m gonna say it now, the guy is in my boy stable!
JT: Yeah I’m really glad Boogs found a role. I remember when he had a very brief debut in NXT like a few years ago now, and then he just disappeared for ages. I was concerned he’d just get cut some day, which is a shame because as we’ve seen, he’s got a unique skill set. He’s a guy who looks unique, who can shred on guitar, and can hit high notes. Him going Shinsuke Nakamuraaaaaaaaa is a winner every time. They’re a cool combo and I hope that they continue to have a successful career together.
S: Absolutely! And hopefully he won’t be doing any jobs to Karrion Kross any time soon!
JT: Hmmm, King Karrion Kross. As a wise man once said, I like the alliteration but he might have to work on the acronym.
S: It’d be along the same lines as the Krusty Komedy Klassic, that’s for sure.
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Powering Down
JT: Alright and with that, we’ve put NXT Takeover Brooklyn II in the books! How it’s time to roll out the red carpet with Match of the Night, MVP and just our overall thoughts on the show as a whole. Seán, would you like to start us off with your overall opinion on this show?
S: This show I thought was a brilliant watch, it really was because unlike a lot of modern TakeOvers where it feels like every match is trying to be the show stealer, this show really gives me the impression that every match is designated to a certain role. The opener is to get the crowd hyped up. Ember’s debut was to put her and the Eclipse over. Roode’s debut was to put the shine on him with the added assistance of Almas’ incredible ability in the ring and the title matches were the biggest matches so they were given the most time and were the best matches. I thought this show was a very easy watch five years on from when I originally watched it. Like I watched this in one sitting and I didn’t take much notes for this at all because of how well a lot of this stuck with me. It feels like the show builds towards the big matches well with really solid but also warm up matches in their own ways before getting to the second half. Overall, a huge thumbs up and definitely would recommend. James, how about you?
JT: I’m obviously clouded by the bias of being there, but honestly watching it back isn’t entirely different from watching it live. Now clearly being there live is better, this applies for like every show you go to live. But rewatching this show was a blast two. I totally agree with your sentiment that every match has its place. Like the first 3 matches all went about 10 minutes or less, meaning that when we got to breeze through those early matches, leaving plenty of time for the matches with major consequences. I mean the tag titles went nearly 20 minutes, which only did good things for all 4 men involved. The Women’s Title got 15 minutes but then you gotta add another couple minutes onto that overall package with their big entrances and Bayley’s farewell. The main event got plenty of time to breath and be the biggest match of the show, and as a whole this is just a super well balanced show. You’ve got a mix of styles and tempos all throughout the show, with nothing close to bad and every match having some shining moment or moments to remember years later. A wonderful show, passing with flying colors. Big thumbs up from me too. But now comes the tough question of MOTY. Though, I think I know what yours is gonna be.
S: I mean it should come as no surprise to anyone that my Match of the Night is Andrade “Cien” Almas vs Bobby Roo- ahhhh I’m just fucking with you lot, of course it’s DIY vs The Revival for me. I think this match is truly underrated in my opinion, it really does not get as much love as I feel it deserves. I do think that the Women’s Title and the NXT Title matches were both fantastic too but this was honestly my favourite match on the card. I absolutely loved it half a decade ago and I still love it to this day. It’s an excellent match with the perfect contrast in characters with Dash and Dawson being proper nasty heels and DIY being the real loveable babyfaces. The finish man, just dramatic at it’s finest and not overbearing. Really do watch it. DIY vs The Revival for me. How about you, James?
JT: We gotta stop agreeing like this! My MOTY is also DIY vs The Revival. I explained some of the issues I had with the NXT Title match, and as good as Asuka/Bayley is, I think it just lacks that extra mile that the best of Bayley’s & Asuka’s matches go. The Tag Title match was my favorite match the night I watched it live, and it’s still my favorite on rewatch. The Revival & DIY just have such incredible chemistry together. The Revival slows down the pace in a way that DIY manages to do some selling and in a way that makes the build to the hot tag great, where Dash & Dawson then sell their asses off to make DIY look good. They were able to time things perfectly, they were able to do the expected stuff (like a hot tag denial) excellently while also having lots of surprising twists and turns that play off your expectations. This match elevated both teams from “This could be good” to “This is THE RIVALRY” that would justify more great matches between these two. There are 4 other solid matches on this show but this was still an easy pick for MOTY.
S: Yeah I agree with everything you said about the match and more to be honest, man. It’s to overlook this as being the Match of the Night, the fact this stands out on a really great show is a testament to how good this match really is. Huge thumbs up. Since I started with my Match of the Night just there, would you feel free to kick us off with who your MVP is for NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn 2 (Back 2 Brooklyn)?
JT: Yeah sure. So for my MVP, I’m going for co-MVPs actually. This happened all the time last season, but we haven’t had any tag matches this season until now. So that’s why The Revival should be very proud of their MVP status. I feel like the eventual 2 Out of 3 Falls Match was DIY’s match as far as story goes; but this one tonight was Dash and Dawson’s match. They control the tempo, they were the ones who had something to prove as 2x Champs against an opponent who already beat them before. I think the best spot of the night was the perfectly timed foot on the ropes by The Revival that fooled everyone in the building, so my MVP will go to them for proving they are exactly who they said they were. The best tag team in the world. What say you?
S: God dammit man, we’ve only gone and agreed with each other yet again! Yeah, this was set in stone for me by the end of the Tag Title match. My co-MVPs for this show have got to be The Revival. I mean just from the entrance to their exit they carried themselves like and looked like the absolute best team in the world and around this time, I’d definitely be inclined to say that they were one of the very best. For as good as The Young Bucks, ReDragon, Roppongi Vice, Sydal and Ricochet, Briscoes, War Machine and The Addiction were doing for themselves. The Revival were standing out among a large, diverse field of amazing tag teams which shows how damn good they were at this time. The little things they’d do like cutting the ring in half to prevent a tag, hot tag denials and falling in the ring and faking an injury to get the ref’s attention. Just absolutely beautiful stuff and the fact they came across like the ultimate baddies as well. Dash and Dawson are my co-MVPs for NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn II!
JT: So that puts wraps on 2 Takeover 2 Brooklyn, we’ve had our fun looking at where NXT was and where all it’s guys would go for better or for worse, but now I suppose it’s time to get back to our main timeline.
S: That’s right, James, we’ve got ourselves the Second Round of the Cruiserweight Classic to cover on the next episode of the Power Hour and by god, we’re going to be doing THREE EPISODES in one review, all eight matches from the Last 16 and boy are there some tasty looking matches in there.
JT: Who will survive to the next round, and who will feel the bitter sting of defeat? How were the matches that led to those outcomes? And how do those outcomes feel in retrospect? Well that’s our job to find out. But we’ll find that out next time, so make sure to tune in next time for CWC Round 2!! Until then, this is a bye bye from me James!!
S: And it’s an adios from me, Señor Seán!
JT: Until next time, keep a watch for that Big Brooklyn Train, rolling down the line!!
S: Cue the Big Tra- ayyyyy I’m walking here!!!
The JT & Seány Mc Power Hour 