NXT returned last night (February 10) from the Capitol Wrestling Center (CWC) in Orlando, Florida. You can find the results on the live blog here.
The finals are defined
This week’s main event was a Dusty men’s semifinal match between The Grizzled Young Veterans and Tommaso Ciampa & Timothy Thatcher.
The game was a solid one, which made sure to demonstrate how GYV really worked as a true team. Although T&T were not off the same page, it was clear that vets are extensions of each other. This influenced the submission when Zack Gibson grabbed James Drake, who was prone to submitting Ciampa’s Willow’s Bell, preventing movement. This allowed vets to hand over their double team finisher ticket to Mayhem. Gibson covered Tommaso while Drake prevented Thatcher from separating him.
The Grizzled Vets have always been a block to the finals, as it looked like they were in line for a significant advance before the pandemic hit and they returned to Europe.
On the other side of the bracket, MSK defeated El Legado del Fantasma to join them in the final.
This match opened the show and was really fun. Both have a very fun style and it went well with this fight. The launch of the MSK has been as strong as possible. They were able to show personality and use their unique style within the NXT tag format. Advancing to Dusty’s finals immediately establishes them as a legitimate threat in the division, whether they defeat the Grizzled Young Veterans or not.
This will pit a talented, but bland (by design) team at GYV against the exact opposite of MSK. And while Vets are those jumps without redeeming qualities, they are always good in the ring. This final should deliver a match worthy of a Dusty Classic final.
The other final
The dusty women’s finals were also set this week.
Shotzi Blackheart and Ember Moon defeated Candice LeRae and Indi Hartwell to advance to TakeOver. It was a really fun fight, although with a little bit of talent in this match, it shouldn’t be surprising. Moon, Blackheart and LeRae are all great fighters. Hartwell is still quite new to this, and this is obvious in many of his matches. But here, she was solid, even drawing an impressive trampoline elbow.
My “complaint” about this match was more about her position. Last week, Raquel González and Dakota Kai marked their ticket to the finals. This means that the outcome of this match was never in doubt. Heel-to-heel fights are very unusual, so Camino had few chances in this match. Combinations of face and face are more common. If Ember & Shotzi won first, it would not be impossible that Kacy Catanzaro & Kayden Carter could have won their match. This is not a problem with this match. It is more a matter of how they chose to do this.
We learned this week that the Dusty Cup winner will have a chance at the female tag team title “eventually”. The winner on Sunday must try to get that match before Nia’s hole is completely healed.
The Perfect Jerk
Johnny Gargano continues to find new life as the cowardly heel.
To try to avoid facing Kushida at TakeOver, he told everyone he broke his arm. To make it clear, he made the Way bring him to the ring in a wheelchair, explaining that he is such a powerful walker that, if he cannot swing his arms, he cannot walk. I’m going to buy.
It was all classic comedy jumping, something that still surprises me how well Johnny plays. From instructing Way to turn the wheelchair facing the camera to the video screen, to provide an x-ray with the wrong member identified, it was all hilarious.
William Regal interpreted the killjoy, revealing that he knows that Gargano is allowed to compete and pointing out all the fallacies of Johnny’s argument. This allowed Kushida to sneak behind the Path, leading to a comical revelation when the heels noticed him in his ranks.
Kushy faced Austin Theory late in the evening, a fight that ended in DQ when the American champion attacked his opponent. After the fight, Dexter Lumis prevented this from becoming a two-on-one defeat and the night ended with Lumis and Kushida making two submissions.
Although Lumis has enough reason to dislike the Way, he feels a little bit battered here. I would call it the fifth wheel, but technically it would be a fourth wheel, which is the perfect amount of wheels.
Choosing the Wrong Fight
Tian Sha stable seems to have its first program.
To begin with, I think Tian Sha is the stable name. After last week’s original video, it was possible that this was Mei Ying’s name after she sold her soul to a dragon to become immortal. But, as Tian Sha is on the video screen when they all come out, and that Wade Barrett referred to her as Mei Ying this week, I’m using him as the stable’s name until I see something suggesting otherwise.
Their first rivalry will be against Kacy Catanzaro and Kayden Carter. The KCs were at the side of the ring when Xia Li was crushing Cora Jade, trying to reach a woman they thought was his friend. (This is a classic movement in wrestling, establishing a friendship after the fact, although such a friendship was never actually shown on TV.)
To make matters worse, Carter got in Ying’s face, predictably disturbing the Queen of Darkness. Mei even smothered Boa until Li effectively disposed of Kayden and Kacy.
I’m not sure how this is going to go. At the moment, Tian Sha has an active fighter in Xia Li. Ying just watches and Boa doesn’t fight. Not that he was going to fight one of those women, but it’s strange that they didn’t give him some zucchinis either. Maybe NXT doesn’t think he’s as ready as Xia.
So now, a woman is going to fight a tag team. Unless this is the vehicle for putting Mei in the ring. Since she only watches the fights, it will take a little more work for her to reveal the soul of a dragon.
Everything else:
– Cameron Grimes returned to Full Sail very rich, investing in GameStop and then in dogecoin. This is a humorous twist for this character. He’s still an arrogant idiot, but now he’s super rich. It’s a fun wrinkle that will be fun to follow. I also wait when he loses everything.
– The two fights for the main title received the video package treatment. Which is good, but the two matches did not have real heat. They could have benefited from yet another segment to try to add a little more drama to those games.
– Santos Escobar sent Joaquin Wilde and Raul Mendoza to attack Karrion Kross. Of course, Kross destroyed them. (Only the result was shown.) Escobar will face Kross next week.
This was a solid show. None of the angles of the main title had any new additions to them, both represented in video form. This meant that the Dusty semifinals had to win.
And, in general, those matches were all good. Although I think next time, they should space the Dusty male and female tournaments. I understand why they want to run them at the same time, but these past few weeks seemed like an exaggeration from the tag team. The other option is to announce it earlier and extend the rounds for a longer period of time so that they do not have to package all episodes with them. That wasn’t a big problem as they progressed through the tournament, but there was a bit of fatigue from the Dusty Classic even in this episode.
In addition to establishing what Dusty’s two finals would be, this show did nothing to add to Sunday’s TakeOver. Johnny Gargano is always fun.
Serie B
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