#RIPAnimal 🖤❤️ pic.twitter.com/0Or9uIRn3f
— WWE (@WWE) September 24, 2020
Rest In Peace to Road Warrior Animal and deepest condolences to his family. They better have face paint in Heaven.
Io respectfully hurt Shotzi, known jumper of people backstage Kyle O’Reilly chewed out Ciampa for jumping someone backstage, Drake Maverick got punched in the face again and Damien Priest is still North American Champion.
This Week: Who became the #1 Contenders for the Men’s and Women’s titles? How many limbs does Jake Atlas still have? Will anyone notice that Mia Yim, Mercedes Martinez, Shane Thorne and Domnic Dijakovic are mysteriously missing?
Important Real Life Stuff
Ok, so there was an outbreak of COVID-19 at NXT, apparently due to someone throwing a party (I knew that hot tub was a bad idea Priest(to be clear, this is a joke)), which has lead to Creative getting shook up, classes being canceled and we are now hearing it may have been spread to the main roster via a bunch of NXT folks being Retribution stand-ins. Reportedly, “both staff and trainees” have tested positive and it’s a bad situation all the way down. So bad that “talents and staff working at the PC or on NXT tapings will not be allowed to work Raw or Smackdown tapings at the Thunderdome in Orlando until further notice.”
WWE has released a statement about their protocols for COVID testing:
“As part of ongoing testing protocols, WWE completed its second round of weekly COVID-19 testing on Tuesday. Individuals that tested positive will quarantine for 14 days, receive medical care, and then will only be cleared when they are symptom-free and test negative. Additionally, extensive contact tracing has taken place and other individuals have been placed in 14-day quarantine, and will then only be cleared after they test negative.”
So if anything felt weird or rushed or out of nowhere this week, it’s possible that it was due to this happening. Hopefully anyone infected is able to make a full recovery and hasn’t spread it to anyone else.
POP: Fall Gals
So because it’s a wrestling show on a Wednesday we just go straight into the #1 Contender’s Battle Royal for the NXT Women’s Championship. Unfortunately the match is happening sans Tegan Nox due to Candice LeRae Nancy Kerriganing her (to possibly cover up for a real injury, the NXT Injury Report says it’s a “torn ACL” but they’ve mentioned real and kayfabe injures in those videos before so it’s hard to tell).
But we do get the usual faves like Rhea and Dakota, some low key faves like Indi Hartwell and a whole bunch of trainees from the PC like “Gia” and “Ellie”. I’m 90% sure they picked their names out of a hat (Oh, hi Catalina/Carolina!).
For a long time I thought I hated Battle Royals. But it turns out, I just hate WWE main roster style Battle Royals because both NXT and AEW have shown me how fun they can really be. Multiple women get to shine in this match. Rhea and Raquel are hossing all over the place (Rhea even gets a funny little comedy spot with Aliyah where I believe she rips off a fake eyelash before tossing her out onto Robert Stone during the break). Kacy Catanzaro does some next level Kofi/Naomi/JoMo style spots where she like, lands on her back and does a handstand, then does a curl to get back into the ring, it’s wild.
In fact, Kacy just refuses to be eliminated, at one point she jumps back onto the ring from the guardrail and Indi just lazily kicks her back onto the guardrail. I literally laughed so hard I got a headache. It finally comes down to the final two, Candice and Shotzi and unless i’m forgetting a match, I think this is the first Battle Royal i’ve seen that ended on the stairs with Candice basically flipping Shotzi onto the floor. So it’s Candice vs. Io at NXT TakeOver: Untitled. This was a dope ass match.
POP: Survive, He Let Him
Aight so Atlas is pissed because Ciampa sonned him a couple weeks back and he wants to fight about it. Ciampa only sonned him so hard because ever since Karrion Kross made him feel like the Johnny Gargano of his story, he’s felt this need to remind everyone exactly who the hell he is. This didn’t even feel like a match as much as it did a fight. You really felt that these two wanted to beat the hell out of each other.
Ciampa ends it with both the Willow’s Bell and the Fairy Tale Ending just to put some stank on it. This match wasn’t here for a long time, but it was a good time, and with that look back at Atlas as Ciampa was walking away, is it possible that Tommy Entertainment has gained some respect for someone?
POP: Better Than Holmes & Watson
Fandango’s suddenly dressed like Sherlock Holmes for some reason but that isn’t important. What is important is ½ of every Team in NXT is yelling at him when Regal walks by and SherDango suggests that 2 guys from each team team up with each other and face the other two, and then the two teams that those guys represent fight each other to become the #1 Contenders. It sounds more convoluted than it actually is.
Basically, it’s “Danee Birch” & “Robert Strong” vs. “Fabio Acne” & “Ryan Bulldoza”. It’s an interesting dynamic as none of these guys like each other or are used to teaming with each other so this situation is ripe for all kinds of shenanigans. We already know all 4 of these guys are great singles wrestlers as well as Tag Team wrestlers so the quality of the match was never in question and no one disappoints here.
Strong and Birch get the W thanks to Birch and I then realize it has been a long time since I’ve heard Danny Birch’s solo theme song. Hell, for all I know it’s a new theme song. Either way I like it. It’s 12 Punch vs. Undisputed Era to decide who’s gonna face Breezango for the titles.
Johnny B. Priest
There was a match with Damien Priest and some guy, Priest is really good at wrestling. Now onto the important part. Johnny Gargano superkicks Priest after the match, then joins his wife in taunting Io Shirai, which seems like a poor decision (“I don’t know what you’re saying lady, but I don’t like the way it sounds” is a Top 10 line of the year). Priest then shows up and slugs Johnny in retaliation so it looks like we’re getting some mixed tag action very soon. That’s gonna slap, bruh.
What The F*** Was That
All I was able to parse from this actually kinda intriguing package was that someone is coming, they’re coming October 4th, 2020 (hey that just so happens to be the same day as NXT TakeOver: I Don’t Know What To Call This), and they might be a former NXT Champion if that dialogue means anything. That can only mean one thing.
All I Do Is Swerve
Isaiah Scott shows up to remind us that he’s beaten the current NXT Cruiserweight Champion twice now (and is the only person to pin him in NXT period) so he deserves another shot at his title. I assume Regal showed up after he filmed this to yell at him about demanding title matches.
POP: Starring Tom Hardy as Ridge Holland
I’m not entirely sure what he said in that hype video, but I do like the way it sounded! This week Antonio De Luca is being fed to gamma irradiated Shane Thorne and brother got TROUNCED. I’m usually not a big fan of squash matches, but they do have their uses and their place in wrestling and hey sometimes watching a guy get walloped all over a wrestling ring is satisfying.
POP: Boom Eternal
The Gauntlet Eliminator match is basically a 5 Man Gauntlet Match, but someone comes out every 4 minutes whether someone was eliminated or not. I love that this match to determine the next guy to face Finn for the NXT Championship is full of guys who have not really been in the NXT title scene at all.
Kyle and Kushida start the match with some basic groundwork and strikes but the match really starts to pick up once Bronson Reed shows up (I guess he yells “COLOSSAL” before he does a splash in the corner now which is hilarious to me, but would probably KILL in an arena full of people). It’s crazy how much I’ve turned around on Reed lately. Before I thought he was cool, but he didn’t make much of an impression on me but that man is GOOD (Cheers for the Road Warrior Animal memorial Power Slam).
If there’s one thing NXT is really good at when it comes to multi-person matches, it’s having every person in that match really shine, to the point where sometimes it can be hard to figure out what result they’re going to go with. I mean coming into this match, I really thought Reed was gonna take it because they’ve been building him up like crazy lately (Even though my heart wanted Grimey. You’ll make it to the moon one day my guy).
Once Kyle was able to eliminate both Reed and Thatcher, I knew the Journey to the Moon was once again deterred. Their back and forth had me on the edge of my seat though, alas, Kyle submitted the King of The Moon with a heel hook. It was very close, but hey, at least my favorite member of (and low-key probably the shoot best member of) Undisputed Era won. Kyle vs. Finn for the NXT Championship might just be Match of The Year material, man.
Here’s hoping ya beat that finger pointing dork.
As always, if you enjoyed this, please share this among all your shareables and if you wanna talk about this weird thing we love called wrestling with a bunch of other cool folks check out our Discord.
Next Week:
Shotzi Blackheart vs. Dakota Kai
*checks notes* Wait, that’s all they announced? huh
