NXT FEBRUARY 27TH 2019
Gargano opened the show. He touched on being part of Raw and Smackdown Live very briefly, before getting to losing to Dream last week and admitting he failed in his first test as champion, earning him a “Johnny Failure” chant. He said he still felt like a champion, but didn’t have a championship and began to say something about realising the only reason he’d had any success in NXT, before Ciampa interrupted. Ciampa said over the past week they’d both learned that Johnny was better with Ciampa in his life, pointing out that they won together on Raw and Smackdown Live, while Gargano lost to Dream after turning down his help. Ciampa said they needed each other and tried to convince him they should enter the Dusty Classic, bringing up that that was where it all started for them. Gargano ended up shaking his hand, with the crowd fully behind all of this.
Cathy spoke with Ricochet about having unfinished business with Undisputed Era. Ricochet said he and Black hadn’t forgotten what Undisputed Era had done to them and with Aleister by his side, he felt more comfortable fighting Undisputed Era’s odds. And he told Cathy that since Fish and O’Reilly were in the Dusty Classic, he was going to find Regal and tell him he and Black wanted in.
Gargano and Ciampa were shown bumping into Candice outside. Ciampa left them to it and Candice wasn’t happy, telling Gargano she hoped he knew what he was doing.
Vanessa Borne and Aliyah vs. Taynara Conti and Xia Li
This stemmed from Vanessa and Aliyah aligning two weeks ago, with Vanessa helping Aliyah to a win over Taynara. Conti started hot, until a distraction from Aliyah. This all led to Xia making a big comeback, only for Vanessa to get involved and the NXT BFFs V15.0 got the win with a swinging neckbreaker by Aliyah onto Borne’s knee. This was mostly fine, with a couple of awkward moments, but Xia looked good before taking the pin.
Velveteen was shown arriving and stopped to do an interview, but was interrupted by Undisputed Era. Cole said he was going to take the title from him and told the interview not to waste his time with Dream, he should be talking to Fish and O’Reilly about the Dusty Classic. Dream took exception to all this and asked how big Cole’s mouth would be without his entourage, before saying he didn’t have time for them.
Cathy was outside Regal’s office and said the final four teams were confirmed. A commotion interrupted this, with the camera showing Bianca and Shirai arguing and having to be separated.
Keith Lee vs. Dominik Dijakovic
Lee has new theme music. It might be a grower, but first impression was, I’m not sure. Essentially, this was a chance for these two to establish themselves, having not done that much in the grand scheme of things so far. It worked, because they had a really well received match. They did a monkey flip spot early with Lee landing on his feet out of it and it got a gigantic pop from the crowd, which they really sold. Dijakovic would get his own big moment later, with an asai moonsault, which ended up being the finish, as both guys got counted out from it. They both wanted to continue the match afterwards, but was kept apart by referees. If the idea is to get these two over by having them have matches like this with each other, seems like it’s job done.
The final four Dusty Classic teams were announced as Ricochet and Black, Lorcan and Burch, DIY and Moustache Mountain and the brackets were revealed, before Belair against Shirai was announced for two weeks time to see who faces Baszler at Takeover.
Sasha and Bayley came out as a surprise, to a big reaction. They soaked it up and talked about being back, before establishing that they’d be defending the Womens Tag Titles in NXT and saying they wanted to make the titles the most sought after and talked about titles in WWE. There wasn’t anything to the promo in terms of establishing anything new, but it was a cool moment.
Shayna Baszler vs. Mia Yim
This was non title and came about after the attack by Baszler, Duke and Shafir last week. The story here was Baszler missing a punch and hurting her hand, before Mia missed a kick against the steel steps and hurt her ankle, with those body parts then becoming the focus. They both did a good job of selling the injuries throughout, with the main focus being Mia’s ankle, but Baszler throwing in enough reminders about the hand for when it mattered. Mia was able to use the injured hand of Baszler to escape the Kirifuda Clutch once, but the second time, Baszler got a body scissors on Mia’s arms to stop her grabbing the hand and got the tapout win. A strong TV main event and you’d think these two would have a Takeover worthy match in them given the time.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING: Lee against Dijakovic was a strong showcase of what both can do and Mia against Shayna was a good main event. The segment was Ciampa and Gargano was some key story and Sasha and Bayley’s appearance was a nice moment, even if neither were particularly standout segments.
NXT WEEK: The start of the Dusty Rhodes Classic.