While WWE NXT has put on some of the best wrestling shows the last couple of weeks, they’ve been losing the ratings war with AEW’s Dynamite. In response, news came out that the WWE is going to move NXT from Full Sail University within the next five months.
For better or worse, NXT’s future is larger venues, but last night may have been an attempt to avoid that. Instead of their fifteen to twenty minute matches, NXT adopted the Raw and Smackdown blueprint of shorter matches to fit in more. Basically, they sacrificed quality for quantity, and it showed.
In short, NXT blinked
- Imperium (Fabian Aichner and Marcel Barthel) dominance. Aside from Walter last week, the Imperium matches have seemed too easy. Sure, they take some abuse early on, but they give as good as they get, then hit a spurt at the end to bring it home. They epitomize what every coach tried to teach their team on how to perform. The thing is, it’s making them too good. While they may be heels, a feud with the Undisputed Era may be in order at some point to determine which faction is the best overall. It just feels flat when they try to put on a good show while rolling over their opponents.
- Io Shirai. A great match that ended way too soon teased us unmercifully when Rhea Ripley came out and challenged Shirai. Though Shirai seemed ready to go, she slipped out of the ring and headed to the back. It was well done, just a cruel tease that would’ve been perfect following the short match.
- Keith Lee and Dominick Dijakovic. While a good throwback type of match, the pacing seemed off as both started fast but seemed to wear down. A longer match than most of the others, they looked like they were trying to fill a time quota instead of perform. A couple of extremely slow motion punches from Dijakovic was the epitome of this. At least, it was balanced by Dijavoric’s selling on his injured left arm that Lee spent most of the match working on. The ending gave us a triple threat match for the North American championship next week, so it wasn’t all bad. Plus, there were definitely a lot of potential between them and we could see how their other matches were classics.
- Short matches. Seriously, of all the parent company’s policies to follow, why this? NXT went from having longer, exciting matches to shorter, disappointing ones. Hopefully this was just a blip on the radar, but they couldn’t have picked a worse time. It was said that Vince McMahon would let Triple H to run it on his own until ratings fell. Have we seen the rise of Darth McMahon in NXT?
- Moving into position. This is something that’s been prevalent in WWE’s other brands, and it’s kinda annoying. There was a time when the wrestler still standing either dragged their opponent into position or reached them with an awesome display of athleticism. Now, as in the case of Priest, for example, they roll toward the corner and even reposition themselves in other ways. It’s often subtle, but Priest lacked that. The truth is, we all know they work together to put on a dance of sorts for our entertainment. There’s no denying that, but seeing so many doing this lately really messes with one’s suspension of disbelief. Kinda like how suicide dives and other leaps miss or graze a person and force the commentators to sell it. Thankfully, NXT’s dives have been mostly on and look believable. Hope that’s not another change.
- The crowd seemed quieter. Previous editions of NXT had the crowd nearly blowing the roof off, but this week they seemed subdued. Yes, they had their moments where their cheers and chants were loud, but they never came close to drowning out the announcers like they’ve been doing. This is a tough one as the WWE could be suppressing the sound so the announcers can be heard. The bad part about that is when we hear the fans getting loud through the TV, we get excited and want to watch. Suppress that in any way, and it’s less exciting for us at home. It’s contagious.
Final thoughts
As good as NXT had been doing, this was about as rough an episode as they could’ve put on. The matches were quick, and some seemed to lack effort or heart. While the latter could be for numerous reasons like injuries, wanting a methodical pace, or being told to keep it slow to eat time, it doesn’t change the fact that it happened.
As sad as it is to say this, NXT started to feel like it’s undergoing McMahon’s meddling. If it is and the one product the WWE has that fans love is taken to the same low as Raw and Smackdown, it’s not going to be good for the fans. Especially with AEW rocking it every Wednesday. Sadly, the day of McMahonism in NXT are probably upon us.
