WWE NXT (week two) Wrap Up

(Yeah I know, wrestling. Not even obscure Japanese wrestling featuring Japanese guys hitting each other with Honda engine blocks, either. But American professional wrestling- “ewwww” is what I’d probably hear most of you say if I were talking about this in person versus writing about it on the internet.  Big deal, it’s my blog. I’ve enjoyed wrestling for longer than I’ve known most of you. It’s something that makes me happy and satisfies my need for heroes and villains. I mean, it could be worse: I could be watching something totally rigged and appealing to the lowest common denominator like American Idol or The Bachelor.)

For the past year and a half Tuesday night has been wrestling night for me.  I know Monday is the typical professional wrestling night for most fans, but WWE’s ECW television show was a nice little callback to all of those glorious professional wrestling shows of my childhood: an hour long show featuring three or four matches highlighting stars that don’t typically see time on the big shows.  Sure, Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes were big stars, but you had to pay to see them wrestle. Instead, you got Manny Fernandez and the Rock n’ Roll Express wrestling. Those were the days.

On ECW, great workers like Dustin Rhodes (Dusty’s son wrestling under the name Goldust), William Regal, Christian and Zack Ryder (a great young star working a Long Island guido gimmick) were all heavily featured in matches that were always fun, told great stories and self contained: they didn’t build to the inevitable monthly pay per view show, because ECW was rarely featured on the big shows. Instead, these shows were just a weekly tribute to everything that I loved (and still love) about pro wrestling.

Much like everything else that I love, ECW had to be taken away from me. To the common fan (which in the WWE these days is a male around 12 years old), the show was a collection of unknown wrestlers having boring wrestling matches.  So three weeks ago ECW was forever retired.

In the show’s place, the WWE launched WWE NXT.  The show took upon ECW’s trademarks: an emphasis on week-to-week shows that don’t build to a pay per view matches, but instead of a lose collection of up-and-comers and also-rans, the show pairs the rookies with established WWE wrestlers for built in storylines and a degree of star power.

The first week’s show was great television. It focused on rookie Daniel Bryan (who for the last few years has been known as the best North American wrestler not working for a promotion with a national television show) and the WWE star The Miz. I watched the show and was immediately hooked. It also showcased a fresh announce team (ECW alum Josh Matthews and Raw lead announcer Michael Cole), fresh camera angles that made the matches resemble the WWE’s video games, and neat little vignettes that did a great job of introducing wrestlers.

So now that I’m hooked, I figured I’d try my hand at jotting down what I thought of the show each week, so here goes nothing.

This week’s show started with a rematch of last week’s way too short match between the troll resembling Darren Young and Daniel Otunga (who in real life is dating someone named Jennifer Hudson, who I understand is a big deal).  Otunga has all of the makings of a big star: the attitude, the swagger, and even the out of the ring pedigree, but he just doesn’t seem to know his way around the ring yet. Still, the match was decent and allowed Young to showcase his offense, while letting Otunga look like a powerhouse. The ending worked also, as it allowed Young to get his win back from last week and Otunga to cement his asshole persona with the crowd, which was important because he was getting residual cheers because of the WWE wrestler he is paired up with, R Truth, who is a very shiny man.

The next match did a decent job of highlighting Daniel Bryan yet again, along with showcasing Wade Barrett. It also helped continue the story set in motion last week with Chris Jericho, who is Barrett’s mentor and who also wrestled Barrett in the main event of the first show. The ending of the match was botched by Bryan missing a jump off of the ropes, but somehow both men made the flub work and it actually worked within the story of the match: Bryan’s ribs being so hurt that he was having trouble with the less experienced Barrett.  The post match beatdown reinforced the ongoing storyline for Bryan: the rookie with just as much wrestling experience as some of the vets learning that the WWE isn’t the independent wrestling leagues. A lot of the more hardcore internet wrestling dorks are going to crap on the match and the angle, but I dug it.

We also were shown a quick little vignette with Christian and his rookie (Heath Slater) and it allowed them to establish a little bit of tension between those two as well.  If there’s one thing that I don’t like about the show so far, it’s that seemingly every rookie has a beef with their mentor. That’s an easy storyline for fans to grab onto, but do we really need it for every person on the show?

The main event featured a tag match with Matt Hardy teaming with Justin Gabriel against William Regal and Skip Sheffield. Once again, Regal and Sheffield don’t seem to get along. Hardy and Gabriel seem to have none of those problems. Instead, they are treated like a decent little tag team.  The match was a great little tag, with Regal doling out most of the punishment until getting too wrapped up in arguing with Sheffield and allowing Hardy to get his big move in. The ending was nice, but after an hour of seemingly every rookie and mentor not getting along, the drama of the match was just kind of there, instead of a big shocking moment like they wanted it to be.

The show was a darn good one, and I’m digging every rookie except for Heath Slater, who seems way too whitebread for me to enjoy.  I’m hoping they continue to tell Bryan’s story and develop Otunga, Michael Tarver (another rookie featured on the first week’s show but not this one) and Gabriel (who is a great high flying pretty boy, something that the WWE doesn’t have).

So there’s week two of WWE NXT in the books. If you are a wrestling fan, I’d suggest checking it out. If not, just ignore the blog. Either way, take it easy.