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NXT Takeover XXXVI - 8/22/2021


Dolfan in NYC

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27 minutes ago, hammerva said:

Someone else on Twitter that only a moron wouldn't know what to do with a guy like WALTER.  Well unfortunately we will probably find out soon how much of a moron these people are.  can only imagine the 50/50 booking he is going to deal with 

 

I feel like WALTER has a good run in him as an unstoppable main roster heel.  What you do with him after that, I have no idea.  

There's probably good money to be made in letting WALTER run roughshod over the babyface roster, but I think he might struggle after he starts trading wins with Kofi or Jeff Hardy, or - worse - Vince decides his run as a heel monster has lost its legs and wants him to become a smilin' babyface like Drew or Cena.

Honestly, I don't feel like WALTER on the main roster is the slam dunk a lot of people think it is.

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Oh yeah, Walter doesn’t have a prayer on the main roster. He’s Indie big, not WWE big. Doesn’t have a great body (though he was looking pretty fit by his own standards last night). He’s not going to impress Vince. They’re definitley not going to let him beat the hell out of the main roster on a nightly basis to get over. He’ll probably get lightly pushed as a foreign heel for a while, then get fed to somebody and be just a guy in short order.

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21 minutes ago, EVA said:

He’ll probably get lightly pushed as a foreign heel for a while, then get fed to somebody and be just a guy in short order.

Hasn't that basically been the "monster" heel formula for at least 35 years now?

1. Debut big guy heel and push him as unstoppable monster. 

2. Rocket heel to top of the card and feud him with top babyface within a matter of months.

3. Job monster heel to top babyface at every opportunity.  Run out of ideas for heel since he's already feuded with the top babyface and been beaten multiple times.  

4. Push heel down into into midcard.  Turn heel babyface so he can be saddled with comedy gimmick and beaten by guys he would have squashed as a heel.  Discuss internally how heel's size is now an impediment since he's so much larger than midcard babyfaces as to make them look less credible.

5, Top babyfaces need new heel to feud with.  Find new monster heel and repeat steps 1-5.

Edited by Eoae
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13 hours ago, The Natural said:

Usually you get "Thank you, *wrestlers name*" and " We will miss you." Here it's the goodbye song and "Hardy" chants. As I said, brutal.

He’ll be the ace of the NWA midcard, having snoozers with Tyrus and Woman Beatin’ Bram by Christmas. I just hope he makes sure none of those guys get Scarlett’s number.

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8 hours ago, The Natural said:

I preferred WALTER vs. Ilja Dragunov II to the original. I still think the best WALTER match was WALTER vs. Tyler Bate at NXT UK TakeOver: Cardiff. I gave that the full *****.

I concur on the Walter/Bate point. I gave that one 5 stars as well. One of my favorite matches of the decade. I haven't seen Walter/Dragunov I yet so I can't compare that one to anything. I really enjoyed last night's match though. I haven't seen anything of Dragunov outside of what's been on NXT the last few weeks and he won me over. Was definitely impressed by him.

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Walter vs. Ilka was a damn good match. But I was wondering how people work with Walter. Like how many guys are like "ok, hit me as hard as you can". I can't imagine many would be up for having their chest turned into raw hamburger. Honestly I don't see Walter going to the main roster. One, I know he's said he doesn't like leaving Europe for extended periods of time. Two...we have everything said here in the last page.

He's big...but not WWE big. Plus like I said. His whole gimmick is "im gonna hit you as hard as I can". Who wants that every night?

I like Walter. But I can't ever see him on the main roster.

Rest of the show was good as well. It's amazing how much the show flows compared to Summerslam the night before which dragged on and on.

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I'd rank WALTER NXT TakeOver matches as follows:

6. WALTER vs. Pete Dunne. NXT TakeOver: New York. I need to watch this again. Haven't seen it since it happened.

5. WALTER vs. Ilja Dragunov. NXT UK TV, 29th October 2020.

4. Imperium vs. Undisputed Era. Worlds Collide 2020.

3. WALTER vs. Tommaso Ciampa. NXT TakeOver: Stand and Deliver.

2. WALTER vs. Ilja Dragunov. NXT TakeOver XXXVI. *****.

1. WALTER vs. Tyler Bate. NXT UK TakeOver: Cardiff. *****.

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Man, that WALTER/Dragunov match was incredible.  Easy MOTY for me and one I'll likely be seeing again soon.

As for the show I so far saw that and Grimes/Knight which I liked.  I'll skip Cole/O'Reilly but in time will check out the rest.  I do feel bad for Kross though.  When he debuted people were starting to come around to his gimmick but after his injury plus the pandemic shows they just didn't care.  That hurt quite a lot and I don't feel good about his chances on Raw.

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I’m not as high on WALTER / Dragunov as y’all. I think I preferred the first empty arena one where you could really hear and feel every strike. In this one, I don’t know if the sleeper finish felt as earned. It felt abrupt.

I only caught the end of Joe / Kross, and boy, were they both gassed. Liked the muscle buster finish, but I don’t really know what you can do with Joe as champ, or if he can get better conditioned at his (my) age. He was slow. It’s concerning. 

Fun end to an era. Wonder what NXT is going to look like in 6 months.

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I'm no Karrion Kross fan but I'm starting to feel sorry for him: jobbing quickly to Jeff Hardy on the main roster, those chants after dropping the NXT Championship to Samoa Joe on this show and THAT gear he wore on last night's RAW.

Edited by The Natural
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Almost makes me wonder if something happened behind the scenes that made them want to hinder his chances so much.  He seems like a good dude and I know we joke about somebody being jealous regarding Scarlett.  But I wonder if there's something more to that at times.  And if not well then there's that goes into well-talked-about territory regarding Vince and I'm not going there this time.

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Karrion Kross sucked from his debut, not counting the jumping Tomasso stuff. The theme song, the entrance with Scarlett flailing around the ring when the song changes to death metal, her showing up mysteriously with clocks while Karrion does press conferences in suits, promos that don’t say anything, matches that are total snoozes, etc. 

Regal’s “I hope you kick his ass” line sounds more like a shoot than anything else, if we are reading between the lines.

Pestilllllence... you can’t ignorrreeeee 

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8 hours ago, HumanChessgame said:

Have Walter and Cesaro ever wrestled? Because that needs to happen.

Cagematch says they've only been in the same ring once - a battle royal in German Stampede Wrestling in 2008.  I used to have a bunch of GSW shows, but they're long gone.  No idea if they were in the ring at the same time or not.

Walter debuted around 2005 or 2006.  Claudio had moved to the States by then.

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This was a really fun show. If it's the last hurrah for this era of NXT, they went out on a good note. Knight/Grimes was fun. It seems like Knight's work is picking up now that he's in NXT. Dakota/Raquel was pretty fun and they were laying their stuff in. I think everyone knew WALTER/Dragunov was going to be brutal so they'd have to step it up to not look weak in comparison. Speaking of, the match was insane. I lost track of how many times I said "Holy shit" or some variation on the theme. Just two men beating the shit out of each other. Someone earlier mentioned pro wrestling being an illusion and how this was not that which was totally true. In some ways, I feel that's an obvious issue, especially in a WWE production. But on the other hand I had a good ass time watching these dudes leave it all in the ring. 

I even enjoyed Cole/Kyle. I'm not a fan of the Cole epics but this was a decently condensed version. Powerbomb onto the fully built announcer's desk was brutal. I'm sure that the whole crew was feeling like they'd been run over. Joe/Kross was okay. I don't like Kross in NXT (haven't seen his RAW stuff as I don't watch main roster very much) but dug him in the indies. I get why he and Scarlett would sign and roll the dice but it all feels like a bad decision in hindsight. 

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This was actually WALTER/Dragunov III if you count the match they had in wXw. I might have liked this better than either of the others. The first one didn't feel like Ilja should have won, the second one was torture plain and simple (I mean that in a good way), this one felt like Dragunov finally had WALTER's number and was laying in extra mustard on everything. I don't really get his finisher so I like the sleeper being used and the way they constructed that was simply perfect. I didn't mind the early wrestling either, felt very catch-style and less perfunctory (like say, a NOAH main) than trying to grind WALTER down a bit. Plus they stole spots from both Steamboat and Backlund which you can't really complain about. 

I will not defend the no-selling of a Sleeper Suplex however, that is just inexcusable. 

EDIT: Forgot to mention, Ilja is a bit of a goof with the emoting, but him putting the foot on top of WALTER at the end was also perfect. Funny thing is I saw that photo of him with the belt above and thought it was Hook, hahaha.

Edited by Curt McGirt
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