With another Wednesday comes another show for the black and gold brand. This happens to be the go-home show for TakeOver: Toronto, a full preview of which you can expect to see very soon. But for now, here’s a quick recap and review of what went down on the August 7th, 2019 edition of NXT!
Street Profits opened the show for a contract signing for their NXT Tag Team Title defense against the Undisputed Era. Hilariously, Regal is there waiting in the ring with the world’s tiniest table, atleast the smallest they’ve ever used for a contract signing. It’s easy to make a gag on this being a deterrent from putting each other through it, but that’s probably the actual reason. Or atleast, it’s there to keep people from expecting it, so they won’t be disappointed to not see it. Wise in a way.
The Profits introduce their challengers themselves, calling them O’Reilly Autoparts and Lawrence Fishburn. Out come TUE, who don’t find this very funny, rightfully so. Though the chant of ‘autoparts’ from the crowd is nice. Fish and O’Reilly run down the Street Profits for not being on their level. Fish says not only are they better than them, but they’re funnier too and asks Kyle to tell them the joke he told him earlier. Kyle replies, “The Street Profits… are the NXT Tag Team Champions!”
Profits mock laugh along for a bit before turning serious.
They proceed to put TUE over huge for their consistent history of success, listing some of the teams they’ve beaten, Authors of Pain, Sanity, Burch & Lorcan and Moustache Mountain. They even say they might just be the best tag team in NXT’s history. Ford then goes off saying that the world sees them now, and as far as they’ve come in their lives, ‘what makes you think losing is an option’? Ford says the only option is to win, win, win.
This was very similar to a mid-2000s Cena promo. Goofiness at the start, fire at the end. All in all, I think the Profits came off looking really good.
Vignettes play throughout the show, starting with one for the North American Title triple threat match between Velveteen Dream, Roderick Strong and Pete Dunne. Video packages for Io Shirai vs. Candice LaRae and Mia Yim vs. Shayna Baszler come up as well, with the latter including interviews from Yim and Shayna running each other down. As usual, effective stuff.
We then go into our first, and as it turns out, only match of the night.
Joaquin Wilde vs. Shane Thorne
This is taking place because Thorne was unhappy with the Breakout Tournament giving all these new guys an opportunity that he’d never received. It’s a pretty solid match, though not one with a ton of heat. Wilde got the flash early, getting the advantage of a lengthy wristlock sequence before getting a lucha-style middle rope arm drag into a rolling dropkick. Nicely done stuff.
Attempt at a Standing Sea Fire DDT gets countered into a solidly executed Brainbuster, leading to a heat segment. Thorne keeps him down with kicks and uppercuts. Cover gets a 2. Wilde fights out of a reverse hammerlock, tossed to the apron but flips in to hit a clothesline, shades of Hangman Page. Leads to a shine Thorne hops to the second rope only to get taken off with a powerbomb.
Roll through for a leaping DDT, but Thorne tosses him away and nails him with a chop. Tries to keep up the advantage but gets hit with a pop-up double upkick. Thorne runs the apron for a curved dive through the middle ropes. Wasn’t perfect but made contact well enough. Runs into the ring and goes over the top with a Tope Con Hilo for good measure. He then heads back into the ring and surprisingly goes for a count out. Thorne makes it in at 9, but rolls right back out. This lures Wilde in but Thorne takes advantage, pulling him to the floor and tossing him into the barrier, steps, ramp and apron. After whipping him into the ring, he nails him with a running knee strike to the head. Cover gets 3.
Winner: Shane Thorne
This dude has been floating aimlessly since his partner Nick Miller left to tend to his family. It’s nice to see him finally start to get built up a bit, and he’s working a simple gimmick of a guy who’s fully willing to play dirty to win, which is just fine.
Harley Race vignette plays, same one that was on Raw this week I imagine. It’s a beautiful tribute, no doubt about it.
Matt Riddle comes out for his advertised main event match with Killian Dain, but Dain comes out of nowhere with a huge crossbody during Riddle’s entrance. He rains down punches. Riddle tries to fight back but a headbutt quells his attempts. Dain finishes with a Cannonball slamming Riddle into the steps. He just leaves after that and the match is called off.
Wonder if Riddle will come out and call Dain out at Toronto instead? It’s not like them to advertise a match and not end up doing it like that, I’d assume the intent would be to save it for a bigger stage.
Breakout Tournament recap plays.
Ain’t hard to make these highlights look good, this tournament has been really cool. Lotta fresh names having really good matches, nothing to hate about that. Grimes/Myles is the final and will take place next week, taped ahead of TakeOver: Toronto.
Wouldn’t mind making an annual thing of this for NXT, honestly. Not like you’re gonna run out of talent to debut anytime soon.
We get a replay of Fandango returning to make the save for Tyler Breeze last week. We then see the below clip of Breezango promising a makeover:
Breezango vs. Forgotten Sons will also be seen next week.
We close with a lengthy vignette taking a look at how Cole and Gargano are spending their time ahead of their blowoff match this Saturday. Cole continues his Baybay Championship Tour, and we see highlights of his defenses at live events. Gargano meanwhile helps out trainees at the Performance Center and spends time speaking with former NXT Champions Seth Rollins and Finn Balor. We also hear from Kevin Owens, Tyler Breeze, Jason Albert and William Regal discussing their thoughts on the match. Johnny also acknowledges for the first time on the show his intent to never be ‘called up’ to the main roster and instead make NXT the place to be.
Closing thoughts:
As a wrestling show, this is probably the poorest showing NXT’s had in a while. They’ve been on a pretty hot run for a while, actually for the past year or so I’ve been really into these episodes by and large. But this one was strongly focused on being a hard sell for TakeOver much more so than being anything stand-alone.
And on that level I think it succeeds. It makes the main event feel like a huge deal, and a good job of building the rest as well. Looking forward to this Saturday.
