NXT MAY 30TH 2018
Recap of the closing angle last week, with Ciampa, Gargano and Candice. It was announced both Ciampa and Gargano wouldn’t be there tonight, but would face each other at Takeover Chicago in a street fight, pending them both signing contracts.
The show proper began with Aleister Black coming out. Black said there was some dispute over his next challenger, but he only needed one shot to make his opponents Fade To Black. Lars came out and said the dispute was over, because Regal had given him the match at Takeover. He told Black that he’d never faced anyone like him, because there was no-one like him, he was looking at the next NXT Champion and there was nothing he could do about it. Lars then grabbed Black by the throat and blocked the Black Mass, before hitting the Freak Accident and posing with the belt. Pretty standard segment, but Lars did fine on the mic. It seemed like they might have edited out some what chants, because he suddenly sped up halfway through, as people do when they’re talking over them. If that did happen, he certainly didn’t let them phase him.
They showed a tweet from Candice, saying she didn’t support Gargano signing for a street fight at Takeover.
War Raiders vs. George Hickson and Cody Vincent
Squash. War Raiders looked pretty good and won with Fallout.
Video package for Shayna versus Dakota.
EC3 was shown arriving earlier in the day.
Cathy interviewed Lacey on her win over Kairi Sane last week, pointing out that they were one and one and next week would be the rubber match. Lacey said the result would be exactly the same as next week and she didn’t care that Kairi was the Mae Young Classic winner, because she had a woman’s right with her name on it.
EC3 vs. Fabian Aichner
So, they chose this match to have Gargano come out during the crowd in the middle with his contract and announce that he’d signed it, before leaving. The distraction allowed Aichner to hit a big dive on EC3 and get a near fall on him, before EC3 recovered to get the win with the One Percenter. Seemed like odd placement unless EC3’s going to be doing something with Gargano after Ciampa.
The second part if the Bianca Belair sitdown interview, with her talking about her family and then her own athletic background. The story was she was so much better than everybody that she did enough to get by, until her parents told her to embrace standing out and she went on to become a standout college athlete. And now in NXT, she’s not going to lower herself to make the rest of the division feel better about themselves.
Ricochet vs. Chris Dijak
Dijak is a bit of a blind spot for me. He got a chance to do a couple of aerial moves and it looked like it was going to be a chance to showcase himself a bit. Then Ricochet hit a really impressive deadlift suplex, nailed the 630 and just won. In the, very, short time they got they certainly maximised their minutes and for what it was, it was good. The fact Dijak did a flip might be enough to get people’s attention for next time he comes out, but I’m interested to see what else he’s got when he gets a bigger role.
Ricochet addressed Velveteen Dream after the match, saying Dream liked the spotlight and he kinda deserved it, but the spotlight shows your flaws too and his attack last week didn’t show how good he was, it showed how much of a punk he was. Dream interrupted as Ricochet began to mention Takeover, saying tonight was Ricochet’s spotlight, but last week Dream showed that anything Ricochet could do he could do better. Ricochet dared him to come to the ring and Dream teased doing so, before deciding the only place with a big enough spotlight for the two of them was Chicago. Dream repeated the line about anything Ricochet could do he could do better, so Ricochet proceeded to do a massive flip out of the ring and tell Dream to show him, which left Dream speechless. The segments between these two have really landed and I’m hyped for the match at Takeover.
NXT WOMEN’S CHAMPIONSHIP
Shayna Baszler (c) vs. Dakota Kai
Story was as you’d expect, playing off the feud, with Kai being scared early and Baszler toying with her. Baszler focused on the leg, doing a version of the stomp to the elbow, but on Dakota’s ankle instead. Dakota tried to show some fight as the match went on, with little success at first. After surviving a long ankle lock, Dakota finally managed to fight back and rallied at the end. Baszler countered the over the back lungblower though, catching Kai in the Kirifuda Clutch for the submission win. Good, story driven TV match.
Baszler put the choke back on after the match until Nikki Cross, who’s involvement in the feud hadn’t been mentioned up until this point, ran out and pulled Baszler off of her. Shayna backed down from fighting Nikki, so Nikki ran and stole the belt to try and goad her back into the ring. Shayna came back to get the belt but Nikki grabbed it back and challenged her to a title match, with Dakota as the referee. Shayna was much more willing to try and grab the belt off of Kai than Cross, but Cross hit a fisherman’s neckbreaker on Shayna when she did so. She then covered Baszler and had Kai count, before running off celebrating with the belt. I liked the idea of Nikki using the belt to goad Shayna and the whole ‘Shayna’s a bully but she’s scared of Nikki’ dynamic, but Nikki actually thinking she won the title verged into being a bit silly. The show did end with Nikki mouthing “your move” to Shayna, so maybe it was just supposed to be mind games, but we’ll see.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING: It felt like this show took forever to get going, with a lot of short, simple segments and squash matches. It wasn’t until Ricochet showed up that things really picked up. Ricochet versus Dijak was short, but at least it was spectacular. The best thing on the show was Ricochet and Dream’s confrontation, while the main event was solid.
NXT WEEK: Lacey Evans versus Kairi Sane and Danny Burch against Roderick Strong.