NXT Takeover from the CAPTIOL WRESTLING CENTER

[Coffey]

If that Ember Moon comeback was the big return, immediately following the Toni Storm video, that's pretty damn lackluster. Needless to say, following the Toni video made it feel like Ember was set-up to fail as well. 

[KawadaSmile]

6 minutes ago, Coffey said:

If that Ember Moon comeback was the big return, immediately following the Toni Storm video, that's pretty damn lackluster. Needless to say, following the Toni video made it feel like Ember was set-up to fail as well. 

This is fair. On the other hand, it brings some much needed life into the women's division. 

[sek69]

I can't help but keep noticing they have to have randos sitting at the commentary table with Vic to try to hide that Beth and Barrett are not there in person.

[KawadaSmile]

Yeah, they beat the shit out of each other alright

[C.S.]

The match happened. The match is over.

That's about all I can say, because I was barely able to muster up the interest to focus on it and watch it properly.

Finn has never done it for me, and Kyle O'Reilly is a generic indie guy.

WTF with this ending though?

Who was that throwing Cole toward the ring?

[sek69]

British Brock coming out to drop off Adam Cole's corpse was not the ending I was expecting to the show.

[MoS]

1 hour ago, KawadaSmile said:

They're gonna rename him Nano Gargano.

Very few comments actually make me laugh out loudly. This did. Well done, bubba.

[EricR]

I thought the main event delivered far more than these NXT Epics usually do. O'Reilly's kneebar was some Volk Han shit, and I think it would have played well as a finish. I thought it stayed engaging over the (probably too long) runtime. 

[KawadaSmile]

6 minutes ago, EricR said:

I thought the main event delivered far more than these NXT Epics usually do. O'Reilly's kneebar was some Volk Han shit, and I think it would have played well as a finish. I thought it stayed engaging over the (probably too long) runtime. 

Yes. It went a bit too long for me, but I enjoyed it a lot. O'Reilly works so snug it's a joy to watch.

[SirEdger]

4 hours ago, C.S. said:

The match happened. The match is over.

That's about all I can say, because I was barely able to muster up the interest to focus on it and watch it properly.

Finn has never done it for me, and Kyle O'Reilly is a generic indie guy.

WTF with this ending though?

Who was that throwing Cole toward the ring?

That was Ridge Holland. Been moved from NXT UK to NXT recently

[EricR]

Ridge Holland is nothing but a great addition to the NXT roster. They need a guy that can be a convincing wrecking ball like him. A much more interesting replacement for the guy he presumably replaced, Lee. 

[Coffey]

I can feel a rant, a tirade a diatribe building up within myself. I have not went off about professional wrestling in a long time. In all honesty, I just don't really ever feel that connected to it anymore like I used to. I used to spend a lot of time, effort & energy with professional wrestling & honestly, I have lost the passion over the years & became a bit apathetic to it all. I still follow, but mostly out of habit & a lot more seldom & leisurely than I used to. For example, I've still only watched the first night of the G1 Climax. What night are they up to now, eight? I watched this show tonight because the whole thing would begin & end before I had to leave for work. I wasn't interested in the late NFL game & the NBA game didn't start until 9 PM my time. I only knew about the PPV in the first place because of Twitter. As I said earlier in the thread as well, I don't follow the weekly TV, so I didn't have any idea of the angles or matches or anything heading into the show. Other than a quick Google search to see what the card even was, I went in completely blind.

I have been watching pro wrestling all of my life. Or at least since I was like six or seven years old, so for over thirty years anyway. Just like a lot of the other regulars around here. We fell in love with wrestling because, for whatever reason, it grabbed us. It pulled us in. Be it a match, a character, a story... whatever. Somewhere along the way, something caught our attention & never let go. I still read about wrestling daily on social media. I listen to a lot of wrestling podcasts when at work. I talk to my friends about wrestling. But it is almost always in the past tense. Reminiscing or being nostalgic about the good ol' days. 

Wrestling is a business. A carny business, but still a business. And the goal of all business is to make money. 

Wrestling used to sell tickets, so you would create cards with draws that people wanted to see so they would buy a ticket. Well, right now, there's a pandemic, so no one is buying tickets or attending live shows. Well, wrestling used to sell Pay-Per-Views. So they would use the TV to build up angles & feuds so that people would pay to see the resolution or continuation of those stories on the big shows. Well, until WWE made WWE Network & got rid of Pay-Per-View. OK, well WWE have to sell their programming to networks so they can make money! Despite them currently already having the contracts, eventually they'll have to re-up. Oh & they're publicly traded now too. 

What the fuck happened to WWE? I honest to god don't even know what the fuck their business model is anymore. They have employees trying to fuck kids & they put them on the Network special shows. They have talent doing third party activities & they're trying to get a cut of it. Like every decision they make feels super scumbag but my point is, regardless of that, what is the business model? They're not selling Network subscriptions because they give those away for free. They're not selling Pay-Per-Views. They're not selling tickets. No live events to hock merch at. So their revenue right now is just the TV contract money & Shopzone merch? Did the Saudi Arabia thing fall through too?

I dunno, man. WWE feels like they're in trouble to me. There's not always going to be a Fox TV deal on the table like that.

So anyway - it was dead at work tonight so I had a lot of time to think & reflect on the NXT TakeOver show that we all watched. Here's the thing, it wasn't a bad show. It had matches that weren't bad. The issue is that come tomorrow? No one is talking about this show anymore. Just like a weekly RAW or weekly Smackdown. Just like any other throwaway show. And that's why I was talking about the business model. WWE right now knows that they're not selling tickets, or PPVs or Network subs. So they're just coasting. They're just filling time. They're keeping everyone even keel. They're basically just taking up their hours of programming with warm bodies. Yeah, the wrestlers do moves but no one really has a character, no one has a real angle, no one is doing any sort of emotional grab to pull on the heartstrings of a viewer & get them interested in any of the shows. Even the fans just watch out of habit, not because wrestling has grabbed them anymore. It's just apathy all around. You can't just see it, you can feel it when watching the shows. They're... lifeless. Not just because the seats are empty either.

Gargano Vs. Priest, aren't both of them heel? Io Shirai Vs. Candice LeRae, aren't both of them heel? Kyle O'Reilly Vs. Finn Balor, aren't both of them heel?

Where are the fucking babyfaces? Where are the people that the fans are supposed to cheer for & support & care about & rally behind? It was just people out there doing spots. Forty people in that arena & some jobber is still trying to start "Fight forever!" & "this is awesome!" chants while they pipe in crowd noise over him. And that pretty much sums it up, pandemic or not. It's like that scene in the documentary Anvil: The Story of Anvil where they go on "tour" & end up playing in some basement club to a packed house of eight people & there's one oblivious dude there headbanging like it's the best shit he's ever seen. That's us, the fans still watching & sticking around. We're that headbanging out-of-touch burn out still maintaining hope that "it'll come back around, man!"

WWE isn't coming back around. They're just waiting for Vince McMahon to die. Nothing is changing until then. Nothing happens until then. They're just killing TV time. Shareholder meetings & conference calls & shit. A bunch of non-fans being placated with bullshit jargon & showing them numbers that they don't know what the fuck they mean but "well they're higher than last time, pal!"

WWE is the Tylenol of pro-wrestling. The rest of the industry lives & dies, crashes or thrives based off of how WWE is doing. New Japan has a brief case that they "cash in" for the Wrestle Kingdom title shot, which is a 2-day event now. AEW is breaking thrones & cutting glass ceiling promos. There's 200 Indie shows during Wrestlemania weekend. But WWE isn't the golden goose anymore. It's not even wrestling anymore. It's wanna-be business men, that are in the wrestling business, that want to be anything but in the wrestling business, trying to convince non-wrestling people that their product is not wrestling. It's live sports! It's live programming! You can't DVR us! We're X amount of original hours a week/month/year! For years, YEARS the only people that stuck with wrestling were the *gasp* wrestling fans. Hey, we like wrestling. Hey, we'll pay for wrestling. Hey, we'll watch wrestling! And we've just constantly been beaten over the head & told it's not wrestling & our opinions don't matter, we don't know what we're talking about, we're losers/mom's basement/marks whatever. And now the fans that were always there through thick & thin, they're leaving. They're leaving in droves. They got tired of being told they didn't matter or being told to go do something else by going & doing something else that made them feel like they mattered.

So you had this NXT TakeOver show & work rate wise, the matches were OK. But ultimately, it was just another two & a half hour reminder by WWE that they're not really in the business of selling professional wrestling anymore. It was more like watching a boxing exhibition or something at a local arena where you don't know or care about the fighters but see a couple of good shots that make you think "damn, he has a pretty good right hook."

You can see there's talent. There's talent all through WWE, up & down the card. The black people are killing it. The women are killing it. The Latinos are killing it. There's so much talent but WWE isn't really providing them a platform to thrive. They're just clocking in, doing their time & clocking out. There's no over the top stars anymore. There's no draws anymore. The events don't feel like special must-see shows anymore. There's no reason to feel like if WWE comes to town you have to buy a ticket because there's nothing on the show you'll be disappointed in missing. When you put on RAW, the actual RAW show feels like the commercial break that just happens in between the ad breaks you're supposed to be watching instead. It just feels so completely artificial that it has lost anything & everything that ever made it feel special. The wonder is gone. The magic is gone. The real life behind the scenes is more entertaining than the fiction they try to come up with & put on the screen. 

I just want to also add. I fucking love professional wrestling. It has been my whole life. One of the only constants I've ever had in my life. If I am ever feeling down or need to pass some time, I can always put on some Terry Funk or Harley Race or Stan Hansen & just sit there & watch, smile & enjoy myself. I still love talking about it & hearing about it. I can still really get into it & watch it & have a good time with it. I even kind of regret not pursuing a job in wrestling in some fashion when I was younger. But the disconnect nowadays is real. I get more enjoyment from shoot interviews or wrestler autobiographies than I feel like I get from the shows anymore. Something is just missing. It's not just that I have just gotten older or that times have changed. 

[Dav'oh]

Excellent, excellent piece. No doubt you were speaking a lot of other people's truth, too.

Were you being a bit harsh on the lone headbanger? I haven't seem the film but it sounds like he was the one having the most fun 

[Al]

I've mentally checked out on current wrestling as well. But this year/pandemic turned everything completely on its side. I think WWE's business model right now is to tread water and I can't fault anyone for that.

[cm funk]

Solid show top to bottom with all the right people going over.

- had high expectations for the main event.  thought it pretty much delivered and O'Reilly was great selling his ribs/a liver shot, as well as targeting Balor's leg.  very good match.  Alvarez thought Balor legit injured his jaw on a knee and they rushed the finish.  I'll have to watch it back and look for that

- the ending did nothing for me.  I haven't been watching NXT so I don't know how strong the UE breakup teases have been, but Alvarez thinks it's inevitable that Strong/Fish will turn on Cole/O'Reilly.  I would welcome that.  The group has had it's run, and working against each other would have excellent, fresh matches.  He also thinks this will play out with Strong/Fish being behind the Holland attack and splitting off with him, to which I say great!  As it was it fell flat with me after a great match, but I'll wait and see....

- Loved Kushida destroying Dream.  Hope this Kushida push continues for a while.  I've soured on Dream like everyone else, but tbf I don't know exactly what did or didn't happen with him, just that WWE has been very dodgy/cagey about it which given their track record makes it feel like they're covering something up.  I do have to give props to his Doc Brown getup tho....I loved that.....and I thought he was pretty good in this match selling his arm (and being an idiot heel still doing his elbow drop on it and fucking himself up worse)

- I was constantly being distracted by the disjointed commentary.  Barrett was great, but if they're going to do it remotely it would be so much less jarring with just him and Joseph.  With 3 people via skype or whatever it doesn't work, and nothing against Beth but she was the weakest link.  Also, what the fuck was up with the random people sitting next to Joseph at ringside pretending to be commentators or something?  I thought the woman was Sasha Banks at one point! 

- The ending to Escobar and Swerve sucked.  Good in idea, awful in execution, made even worse by Joseph saying he hit the back of his head on the "exposed turnbuckle from earlier in the match".  WTF was that?!?!!   First, the turnbuckle wasn't exposed at any point in the match.  It's like that's the story he had in his notes but the wrestlers didn't do it and he just said it anyway.  Second, he didn't hit his head on anything, but if you were going to pretend he did it would have been the post.  So this was a really shitty ending to a good match

- I loved Io and Candace and really liked the ref bump off of Candace blocking the moonsault and the stuff with Johnny coming in.  I think Johnny and Candace are great together as heels and they're fine losing and whining about it, it's a great role for them to get other people over.

- It was weird the way they had Toni Storm cut her promo and then follow that with Ember's return, but I think it's going to play into the story.  Clearly done for a reason.  It looks like it'll be a 3 way program with them and Io, which breathes a ton of life into the division.  If Storm is the heel which I think she will be, she'd be a great choice to beat Io for the title and go into a program with Ripley.  I think Storm and Ripley can both be huge superstars and they should be the focus of the division going forward.  Storm also has enough size and strength to be believable kicking a babyface Ripley's ass from time to time.

- I thought the new look of the performance center was great and will be a huge upgrade for the weekly TV.  AEW is just better overall in my opinion, but this can only help NXT

[Blehschmidt]

I used to enjoy NXT so much, and now like the rest of WWE's programming I find it to be a total chore. 

At first I thought it was the move to 2 hours and the feel of Vince being on it that was the problem, but the more I think about it, I think it's the fact that the product has ground to a halt.

Before you saw the guys for six months to a year and they moved on. The roster seemed to constantly change like an old territory and it was refreshing.

Now we've had Gargano, Ciampa, Velveteen, and the 4 UE guys who have been there forever. We have Balor, Breeze, and Fandango there again. Uggh.

I sat and watched Takeover, and while all of the matches were fine matches, I found myself invested in Escobar/Swerve and Shirai/Lerae most of all because  they don't feel old hat like everything else.

Priest, Kushida, Kross, Escobar, Swerve, Thatcher, Grimes, Reed, Imperium. I could get back into a show built around these guys. 

But like everything else WWE, it seems they are only comfortable dishing out the same old shit.

[cm funk]

Balor coming back to be the ace of NXT is fresh to me and because he was gone so long every matchup is fresh.  Him and O'Reilly for example....

Ciampa isn't even really being featured

Dream shouldn't be on the main roster for a variety of reasons (still really green aside from the allegations) but it's not like he's being pushed.  They just had Kushida destroy him

Every old territory had their homesteaders....NXT has Gargano, Undisputed Era and Ciampa.  I'm fine with that.  They have good matches, help establish new talent and quite frankly would be wasted on the main roster as long as Vince/Bruce are booking.  Top to bottom the NXT roster is loaded with "fresh" talent and many of them are being actively pushed right now, I don't think that's the problem

Plus Undisputed Era looks to be splitting up, so much like Gargano going heel and doing a new act with Candace (which I really enjoy), they'll be going in a different direction with the four of them soon, which is good because I agree the stable has run it's course

I can agree with Fashion Police though.  They're a solid team but they feel out of place.  The tag team situation on the main roster is dire, I think they need to be moved back

Edited October 5, 2020 by cm funk

[C.S.]

Great post, @Coffey.

People (not here) are calling Finn Balor vs. Kyle O'Reilly a MOTY contender.

I did not care. 

I

DID

NOT

GIVE

A

SINGLE

FUCK!

I barely watched the match, to be honest. I couldn't focus on it. Why? Because there were no characters, there was no story, and there was no reason to care. Finn already doesn't do it for me, and now I'm supposed to muster up the enthusiasm for a generic ex-tag guy I've been given zero reason to give a fuck about before now? 

Look, I love the idea of new matches, but new doesn't always mean fresh, new doesn't always mean compelling, and it sure as hell didn't in this case.

Ditto for Damien Priest vs. Johnny Gargano. Priest is killed dead, DOA, Fang McFrost this motherfucker with such a stupid fucking name. And Gargano is beyond stale in the NXT setting. Bubba argued against a call-up, saying it would be even worse. He's right. But Gargano remaining in NXT a second longer would be death. Bring the guy up, even though he'll inevitably be a jobber on Main Event, and have him return to NXT in two years with a new lease on life, a completely different set of opponents, and a fresh playing field. Same for Ciampa. 

KUSHIDA vs. Dream...ugh. I don't need to rehash the obvious issues there. KUSHIDA is good though.

The Cruiserweight Match seemed fun, and both guys worked their asses off, but I had a hard time maintaining interest, because - guess what - if you treat a title like it means nothing for two years, I'm not going to be able to flip a switch and suddenly care. Santos and Swerve deserve better. Just get rid of the title, because it was killed deader than a doorknob years before it ever got to NXT.

Ember as the mystery person, immediately after Toni Storm appeared, was such clunky, clumsy, shitty, WCW levels of timing. I won't say I'm disappointed, even though I wanted Bo or Gable, but I will say the placement of the segment did her zero favors. It felt so forced and rushed, and it didn't need to feel either. Why not save Toni Storm for another time? Why did those two returns have to happen back-to-back? Less is more.

[rovert]

 C.S.'s opinion of Kyle is really weird to me. He's considered one of the best wrestlers in the World for many years now. He's hardly generic. In-ring he's above nearly all his peers. The Prime Target documentary on last week's TV really put him and his personal story over very strongly.

Expect Kyle and Balor's health status to be updated with worse news. And for Balor to be out for a while. Which will throw a wrench into their booking plans.

I think the Ember Moon and Toni Storm reveal was done the way it was for two reasons. Firstly to flip the script on the division and have a wow factor. Secondly, Toni was only on video and won't be able to appear in person for a number of weeks yet as I've been lead to believe she isn't in the Country and has to quarantine first. Ember Moon could appear in person and obviously going from talking about retirement five months to return would be a memorable moment. Ember on Twitter said she was in hiding/kayfabing in Florida for a month prior to this.

I assume Ember is there to keep Io occupied until Toni can show up.  

[EricR]

O'Reilly vs. Balor was a really great main event. It had some of the dramatic reactions that I dislike about modern NXT main events, but it was overall really great. CS is saying they didn't care about the match and thus didn't watch it, but somehow thinks that's the fault of the match? That makes no sense to me. "Yeah this movie wasn't very good, I didn't even bother to watch it." 

I'm not a huge fan of Balor or O'Reilly, but I also probably wouldn't have cared about the match if I didn't pay attention to any of it. How does that even count as criticism? 

[C.S.]

3 hours ago, EricR said:

CS is saying they didn't care about the match and thus didn't watch it, but somehow thinks that's the fault of the match? That makes no sense to me. "Yeah this movie wasn't very good, I didn't even bother to watch it." 

I'm not a huge fan of Balor or O'Reilly, but I also probably wouldn't have cared about the match if I didn't pay attention to any of it. How does that even count as criticism? 

I mean, if you're not gonna read my post properly, sure.

What I actually said was: the build sucked, the storytelling sucked, the characters suck, Finn does nothing for me, O'Reilly is generic (being a "good rassler" means diddly shit to me when there's little else happening there), so I didn't care about the match and therefore couldn't bring myself to focus on it properly. I never said the match itself wasn't good, as I obviously can't render a verdict either way - I just said I couldn't bring myself to give enough of a shit to find out.

Fair enough for you?

[cm funk]

It kinda comes off as complaining for the sake of complaining tbh

I was always taught as a kid, "if ya don't have anything nice to say......" etc.

I haven't watched any NXT tv in months, have been down on WWE as a whole, but I watched the show objectively and found a lot to like

I don't know man, what's the point of posting about how shitty something is and how you barely watched it?  why waste your time?

[EricR]

5 hours ago, C.S. said:

I mean, if you're not gonna read my post properly, sure.

What I actually said was: the build sucked, the storytelling sucked, the characters suck, Finn does nothing for me, O'Reilly is generic (being a "good rassler" means diddly shit to me when there's little else happening there), so I didn't care about the match and therefore couldn't bring myself to focus on it properly. I never said the match itself wasn't good, as I obviously can't render a verdict either way - I just said I couldn't bring myself to give enough of a shit to find out.

Fair enough for you?

I suppose it's fair, if not pointless? I didn't watch any of the build for a match, not sure what you're talking about when you refer to storytelling (is this a different way to say "the build", or the storytelling in the match you didn't really watch?), and the characters don't interest me much as I've never been a big fan of either.

I didn't know going into the show who was getting a title match, or honestly who the NXT champ even was. I typically skim through weekly shows watching for people whose wrestling I enjoy, skip past most promos and build, and then catch up on all that stuff through the promo packages within PPVs. Frankly, if I decided to not give a chance to any 2020 matches unless their characters, storylines, and builds were strong, I wouldn't be watching any 2020 wrestling except for Eddie Kingston (which might not be a bad idea). 

But if I did that, I would have missed out on dozens of matches this year that I thought were really good. And Balor/O'Reilly was one of them. I judged them on what they did in the ring, and what they did in the ring was strong. Writing a lot of words about how you can't be bothered to give a shit about a match seems like a waste of time to me.

But, I've always been far more interested in actual in-ring work, regardless of story or build. There are plenty of matches that I've loved that have benefitted from story, build, and character, but I watch most matches in a vacuum and judge them on that. 

[C.S.]

16 hours ago, EricR said:

I've always been far more interested in actual in-ring work, regardless of story or build.

That's where we differ. 

I can get into ringwork alone for maybe the first 3-4-5 weeks when I first start following a fed (NXT when the WWE Network was launched, NWA Powerrr, etc.). After that, you better have compelling characters and storylines for me to sink my teeth into. Good rasslin' alone in a vacuum isn't entertaining or meaningful to me, and I suspect I'm far from alone in feeling that way. I could see a so-called "five star match," but if I don't care about the wrestlers or story, I won't care about the match. 

All of that being said, I find it much easier to watch old stuff in a vacuum (a random NJPW or AJPW match I've never seen, revisiting an old WCW match I probably saw but have no recollection of, etc.). I don't know if that's because of nostalgia (even if it's a promotion I never watched regularly) or if things were just better 20 years ago.

I try not to be the bah-humbug, back-in-my-day old man, but even though the athleticism is far superior now, I'm not sure the actual work is. 

 

[Coffey]

7 hours ago, C.S. said:

After that, you better have compelling characters and storylines for me to sink my teeth into. Good rasslin' alone in a vacuum isn't entertaining or meaningful to me, and I suspect I'm far from alone in feeling that way.

It doesn't draw. You have to grab people emotionally. Make them invest into the characters & angles. Otherwise, they're just going to watch actual competition.