w. josh

Somehow Fenix managed to not break his arm there, just a dislocation. I assume JE are transitional champs to get to FTR (or Black/King).

Pretty sure it was a top rope version of Pete Dunne's X-Plex.

If there's one guy in professional wrestling who does not have to worry about a loss hurting his credibility, it's Bryan Danielson. Miro should absolutely beat him. Punk, on the other hand, is always going to need booking to prop up his "Best In The World" claim. And his first loss should be to one of the new pillars, not a guy with as many miles on him as King.

Lio as Youtube stock tip grifter is different enough from a "silver spoon" gimmick that I think it will work.

In general, I would like more wrestlers with full names and nicknames in WWE. The Hulk Hogan area was filled with that, but ever since they've been shortening names or exclusively referring to wrestlers by a nickname. Give me a guy with a normal sounding name and a nickname that gives him a gimmick (or is just weird as hell, like Dogfaced Gremlin). Makes them feel more like fighters/pro athletes as opposed to Disney characters. That said, we all know Lee is going to lose his name and just be The Bearcat in a couple of weeks. If he's lucky they don't put him in a furry singlet.

The Soholdiers.

So Joe Gacy is a woke heel? Shocking.

Riddick Moss (which is a pretty good NXT name) did his initial Florida loops under the name...Digg Rawlis.

I actually like the overall look now, but the excruciatingly bright lights during matches is maybe a bit much. I think this was a fun enough show, but one of the biggest draws of NXT over the last few years has been that it's the one WWE property with consistent logic and attention to detail. Everyone else has already covered the dumb stuff happening with little or no explanation on this show. It was painful to go from great storytelling to "The Blonde Khali, who has never even been mentioned on NXT television before, gets a shot at the title because he saved KOR from a locker room attack." Wanting to highlight new talent instead of career indie dudes is a completely reasonable choice. And there's real entertainment value in watching Steiner's kid and the Creed Brothers throwing pasty dudes around like sacks of flour for the next couple of months. But they're going to have to do a better job of actually introducing the new kids and creating some sort of internal logic for matchmaking.

"AEW is really starting to get some mainstream momentum. How should we respond?" "Put Randy Orton in TWO main event feuds, pal!"

The Breakout Tournament is pretty interesting given this new (apparent) reset. It's clear the company is more interested in producing more guys like Odyssey Jones and fewer guys like Blake Christian. Seems odd, given that dynamic, that Joe Gacy and Josh Briggs lost.

"New format" sounds like a return to NXT as a faux-reality competition show, which wouls be great as a content farm for reaction GIFs and terrible for everything else.

Jericho's slow metamorphosis into Terry Funk is unexpected, but preferable to going the Shawn Michaels route I suppose.

I just cannot imagine having Keith Lee and Karrion Kross on your roster and thinking Kross is the guy with the big future.

Time to pool our resources and start a fed.

The fact that a company with a system that produced The Revival, American Alpha, The Street Profits, and Heavy Machinery is still running "singles guys with nothing to do right now" tag teams on top is...something.

This fucking company.

So how many people with credible sexual assault allegations got kept on while three women that everyone seemed to love and respect got cut, exactly?

If we no longer have to call a large adult man "T-Bar" anymore I'll consider this PPV a rousing success.

As someone who doesn't watch NXT UK, my big takeaway from this was "Holy shit, when did Pete Dunne get so jacked?"

Randy Orton doing a Rust Cohle gimmick MIGHT be an acceptable use of him in 2020.

There is absolutely no excuse for Randy Orton winning a World Title at this stage of his career, especially if the plan is for him to keep it until Edge can come back and beat him.

Paul Ellering outlived both members of the LOD.

The worst thing about Retribution (well, after the names, the look, and T-Jakovic's voice) is that an easier sell is RIGHT THERE. Some NXT workers got tired of waiting around for their opportunity while watching others catch breaks, so they took matters into their own hands. No need to give them stupid Prison Break names or pretend no one has ever seen them on WWE programming before. Just acknowledge who they are and make them look like bad-asses for taking initiative.

Yeah, I think they want to avoid a situation where Adam Cole is regularly shown standing next to Dominic Dijakovic.