NXT RETRO WORKRATE REPORT (January 23, 2013)
NXT RETRO WORKRATE REPORT – January 23, 2013
(by PHIL RIPPA)
I haven’t done one of these in a little bit. I realized I need to get cracking if I want to finish 2013 before 2016. Please don’t make me regret picking you over Mass Effect.
WHAT WORKED
Alex Riley shows up and looks exactly – EXACTLY – like Stevie Richards. That is making me laugh way more than it should.
William Regal – Color Commentator. I mean this week he tried to put over Alicia Fox’s hand strength. And then he says he is homies with Snoop Dogg. He is amazing.
Dusty Rhodes ability to keep a straight face when dealing with some of these idiots is amazing.
There was a sudden block of Diva related items that all ran together and none of them were terrible but nothing really really stood out. All of it together can mesh together up here. It covered…
Alicia Fox vs. Sasha Banks. A couple of noteworthy things but they are sprinkled throughout the rest of this report
The Paige video package was a good idea (though whoever produced it needs to work on fading out the faux Marilyn Mason music as it made it tough to actually here Paige talk).
I am not on the Aksana train like I know a lot of the board is but it had Renee Young randomly making her debut as backstage interviewer so I guess things are looking up.
Vader’s boy Jake Carter shows up on my TV screen for the very first time. That gets him on this side of the column. He has to wrestler the hateable Corey Graves so I am fairly sure the only nice I am saying is “Hey! Vader’s kid”. Fuck – Carter is doing a happy douchey frat boy gimmick. That is so very wrong. God, maybe this deserves to be on the other side of the column. Oh and this match legit put me to sleep so I had to go back and watch it again. Really the only reason this is staying here is because I am too lazy to cut and paste.
Hoo Boy – Bo Dallas. He is jibber jabbering with Joe Hennig (SUCK IT INTERWEB~!). This works because Hennig shows far more charisma in this then all the other times I have seen him on Raw or Smackdown. They will be wrestling the Colons in the tag tournament next week.
Another tag tournament match is Adrian Neville/Oliver Grey vs. the good pairing of 3MB (Heath Slater and Drew McIntyre). This is fun because Neville and Slater aren’t afraid to get into a contest of who can sell better and who can bump crazier. Grey seems like a guy I could enjoy watching but knowing he is going to cripple himself shortly makes me feel like I shouldn’t invest the time. God you would think McIntyre would be a better catcher but nope. He makes up for it by bringing the power. This is fun with Neville/Grey getting the “upset” which makes sense that if you are pushing that team giving them the win over the “name” team works.
HEY! It’s my boy Big E Langston. And he is already fighting enhancement talent in non-title matches. Axl Keegan is a Killer Kolwolski trainee according to Regal so that means Triple H will call him up before Chris Hero. Regal keeps talking about how he would have loved to travel with Langston so he could pass on his knowledge and I am thinking if that had happened there is no way the Internet (or my pants) could have contained the aftermath. Conor O’Brian interrupts the 5 after party to babble about him returning in two weeks so I already hate him.
WHAT DIDN’T WORK
Really? The show has to open with a Shawn Michaels self agrandasizing mic segment. Nine months later and RAW is starting the same exact way. He is here to announce the creation of the NXT Tag Titles and the tournament for them. Of course, he mealy mouths his way through it.
First match of the tournament is the Wyatts (Rowan and Harper of course) vs. Yoshi Tatsu and Percy Watson. I am assuming you can figure out who is advancing here. Tatsu plays Ricky Morton which is interesting but if you stop and think about it, it is better than he is selling than Watson. I probably should like this more but the hot tag to Watson is totally underwhelming and then Harper’s clothesline to finish it isn’t as decapitating as it should be. So sad.
Sasha Banks nickname is the small package??? Yeah… that seems like… not a well thought out idea.
Tony Dawson was baffled by the sight of a chinlock. To the point that Regal flat out said “If you don’t know that, you shouldn’t be out here.”
That teaser for Conor O’Brian was fairly ridiculous. Though I guess after having to suffer through two pathetic seasons of the old version of NXT, they kinda sorta had to repackage him.