NXT MARCH 14TH 2018
DUSTY RHODES TAG TEAM CLASSIC ROUND 1
Sanity vs. Riddick Moss and Tino Sabbatelli
Sanity were represented by Wolfe and Young here. The writing was kinda on the wall here, with Moss and Sabbatelli having completely out of nowhere dissension last time they were on TV a month ago. Things seemed to be going alright for them here as they worked over Wolfe, but Moss ended up hitting Sabbatelli accidentally, leading to Young making a comeback. Nikki took out Moss and a back suplex/flying neckbreaker finished off Tino for Sanity to advance. I still don’t see the upside in splitting Tino and Moss right now, but that’s clearly where this is heading.
Ciampa showed up post match. Since the last show, everybody had found Gargano signs to hold up. Same routine as last week, with the crowd shouting down Ciampa when he tried to talk. Aside from a couple of people each week who didn’t want to play along because they’re so epicly cool, the crowd are making these segments work. That and Ciampa’s acting, as he gets more and more frustrated.
Lacey Evans vs. Dakota Kai
Short match. Evans tried to work on the arm straight away, but got caught with a roll-up. Or, as it’s known, The Shayna Baszler. Obviously this was way too short to draw conclusions from, but I thought there were promising signs that these two would work well together in a full match.
Instead, Shayna came out post match and stalked Dakota until Ember came out. Ember said it didn’t matter if she had one arm or two, Shayna started this, but she’d end it at Takeover New Orleans. The two would then brawl, with referees having to pull them apart. Shayna probably shouldn’t have been overwhelmed by Ember as much as she was in a fight here. She did eventually lay Ember out with a cheapshot punch, only for Ember to come back with a kick. As Ember went for the Eclipse, Baszler caught her and went for the arm, only for Dakota to re-appear and kick Shayna to make the save. Ember then hit the Eclipse to lay Shayna out.
DUSTY RHODES TAG TEAM CLASSIC ROUND 1
Street Profits vs. Heavy Machinery
Solid match between the two babyface Performance Center product teams. They worked some comedy in early and kept things at a good pace once they got into the action. Heavy Machinery got the better of the match for the most part, before Street Profits prevented the Compactor, Dawkins caught Dozovic with a DDT and set up Montez for a big frog splash for the win. Street Profits face AOP in the semi finals and their last match was a decisive AOP win, so we’ll see if they get more this time.
WWE UNITED KINGDOM CHAMPIONSHIP
Pete Dunne (c) vs. Adam Cole w/Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly
Interesting pairing here. Dunne was obviously the de-facto babyface here. Whether they’re planning on making him an actual babyface any time soon, I’m not sure. The segment last week setting this up and the fact they even made this match suggests that maybe that’s where they’re going, but Dunne is basically the one foundation heel the UK division has, for whatever that matters. Fish and O’Reilly were a distraction at ringside, but it didn’t really do Cole a tremendous amount of good, as Dunne had the majority of the match anyway. Presumably Cole controlled a bit of the match, but it was all during commercial and it made for a match where Cole kinda got his ass kicked for 90% of it. The end of the match was a bit more even, with Cole getting some big moves in, but it didn’t really match up with the rest of the match. Dunne avoided Cole’s knee to the back of the head, which suggests he’s going to be doing it to the back of the head from now on. Which is good, because it looks way better. When Dunne went for the Bitter End he got distracted again and laid out Fish and O’Reilly, but got caught getting back in the ring and hit with the Last Shot for a near fall. Dunne would then snap Cole’s fingers, but as he went for the Bitter End again, O’Reilly interfered for the DQ.
Strong tried to make the save from a three on one beatdown but got overwhelmed, until Dunne recovered to allow the pair of them to clear the ring. Strong offered a handshake to Dunne, which Dunne didn’t really accept, but didn’t completely reject either.
Show ended with a contract signing for Almas and Black. Almas didn’t come out with Zelina, with Zelina claiming he wasn’t there. Black moved the table out of the way and sat down so they were “on the same level”, which Zelina didn’t appreciate. She signed the contract and after Black suggested that Almas was worried about “coming up short”, she slapped him. Black signed and calmly left, with Zelina yelling at him all the way. Black then said he was happy that Zelina came out alone, because he didn’t, bringing out Candice to attack Zelina, hitting Zelina with a swinging bulldog to close the show. Black came off SO much better here as cool and wise-cracking than he did during that segment with Killian Dain where he was trying to be mysterious and dark. Unfortunately, he’s probably destined to be mysterious and dark on the main roster, if not before and that’s a one way ticket to a Bray Wyatt feud. Until then though, hopefully we get a bit more of this Aleister Black instead.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING: A decent all-round show, with nothing truly stand-out. Cole and Dunne was good, but I had some issues with the layout of it. The other matches were solid but short, the contract signing was a fine contract signing but nothing too memorable and the Ciampa segment was effective but similar to last week. Not a waste of an hour but nothing that’s truly can’t miss.