NXT RETRO WORKRATE REPORT (April 3, 2013)

NXT RETRO WORKRATE REPORT – APRIL 3, 2013


(by PHIL RIPPA)

Into April! Only Eight Months Behind!

WHAT WORKED

Poor poor crippled Oliver Gray. Replaced by Bo Dallas. Why they haven’t stripped them of the tag belts yet is beyond me. Anyway – it’s Dallas/Adrian Neville vs. The Wyatts. I have already mentioned how much I like Neville against the Wyatts, especially a Neville vs. Harper so the key really for me is as long as Dallas doesn’t muck things up this will be good. And it is. I could watch Neville selling Harper’s Big Boot on a loop. Adrian Neville – Face In Peril is better than Bo Dallas – Face In Peril. Plus, Dallas and his creepy eyes might as well be Robert Gibson so it all works. The Wyatts probably do too many jobs but now I am picking a nit.

William Regal shows you how to do a fucking announcer beat down. I am giddy because it means, I AM ONLY ONE FUCKING WEEK FROM REGAL/OHNO!!!

Summer Rae/Audrey Marie vs. Sasha Banks/Paige. Why yes thank you very much. The norm for women’s matches is that they are, at a minimum, fun and this meets that standard. The match is more a vessel to tell a larger story as Summer Rae still doesn’t want to fight Paige so when Paige gets the hot tag, Summer Rae does a 4.4 40 to the back. This leaves Paige to squash Audrey Marie and we move on. I do feel a little bad for Sasha Banks because she is so tiny compared to the other women on this show. Granted, Summer Rae is tall but still. Now, being tiny works in the context of this division as her getting the beat down looks good and makes the ladies offense look better.  Maybe a rematch could be longer and focus on the in-ring work. Also maybe someone could pick up Paige’s jacket from the aisle.

Connor O’Brian cashes in on the #1 contender status he won in the three way so him vs. Big E Langston is the Main Event. This will work just because they play the entire Langston theme so I am already happy. Everything else is gravy. Which is lucky since the match isn’t that good since O’Brian gets blown up applying pressure to Langston’s trapezius. This is a total burial of O’Brian as he gets beat in about five minutes and Langston even gets to do the five count on him. That makes me question why NXT bothered to spend two weeks on three ways trying to find a #1 contender when that is going to be the payoff but HEY! Like I said, I got the full Big E intro.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK

Tony Dawson “THIS IS OVER” Count – 4

Besides the reminder that I need to look up what song is used in the Mania hype video – I am so over it. Thankfully this was the last show before the PPV so this should be the last time I deal with it.

So yeah, the announce crew this week is Tony Dawson, Kassius Ohno and Brad Maddux. I write that sentence now; we shall see what side of the column they end up on. It is the bottom half. As a trio it is awkward because, ignoring the usual fact that Dawson is not good at his job, you have two guys who are working heel gimmicks attempting to doing the heavy lifting. Maddux especially was trying to do too much as he seemed to fill like he was supposed to be doing play by play any time Dawson took a breath. Maddux needed to be settled down but Dawson definitely doesn’t have the ability to do that. Ohno went long periods of time without saying a word. It was to the point that I would often forget he was there. Oh that’s right – he wasn’t because Regal beat the shit out of him. So yeah… I don’t need a Dawson/Maddux pairing on a regular basis.

How can I play Rockpocalypse when I don’t have Michael Cole telling me how to download it?