The main event saved this show for me. For most of this week’s runtime, NXT ran with poorly executed soap opera. Now, wrestling is soap opera, at least WWE. The company is at its best when the wrestling and soap operatic elements complement each other and feel like they’re on equal footing. NXT started on the wrong foot with the Tony D’Angelo reveal—that’s later in the recap—and went downhill from there with stories that repeated themselves, strained credulity, or just contradicted.
The main event saved an otherwise incredibly mediocre affair by leaning into what NXT does best right now: Chaos at all costs. The ladder match featured Keanu Carver ripping a ladder apart, Shiloh Hill used said torn ladders as stilts, and the field buried Keanu under what felt like 20 ladders. It was an 1980s action movie come to life, especially in the end when Keanu rose from his steel grave to wreck everyone:
Keanu, despite the loss, dominated. They’re setting up him as their next monster and I like how they’re doing it. But Joe Hendry is the man of the hour. The ending with him sneaking up behind Ricky Saints while the former champ admired his handiwork a little too hard was perfect. It said everything about both men: Ricky is always too pleased with himself and will ease up on the throttle when he senses everything is breaking his way. Joe, on the other hand, never thinks anything is over until the bell rings. He’s always fighting even when it looks like he shouldn’t. He’s the right guy to carry that championship while the territory resets.
That’s the end of my positives for the show. There are moments but overall, this just isn’t a competent or coherent two-hour television program.
I summarized the show in the lede. NXt just isn’t it at the moment, at least in what they’re trying to do. It’s developmental so mistakes happen and people are learning. But they’re not getting the best material with which to work. If the show wants to lean into the soap opera, it has to follow basic storytelling tenets better. It needs to create compelling characters too, because drama alone isn’t enough to make me care about someone. NXT needs to get back to basics because it’s only January but it feels like this will be a very long year.
What say you, Cagesiders? Is Joe Hendry the right man to lead NXT into the next “new era”? Holla at us in the comments.
