-So, Oba Femi has officially vacated the NXT Championship. Admittedly, that was a cool hook for the show this week, but the segment that was delivered around it this week wasn’t good. Ava announced a six-person ladder match to crown the next champion. Qualifying matches will start next week to find the six competitors for the match. I don’t hate the ladder match idea, but the field is weak.
The next champ
-Ricky Starks is going to be the next NXT Champion. Mark my words on that. Because that is such a certainty and the promotion has a clear goal to keep Starks as the guy in the promotion, a more meaningful singles match against one of the up and coming babyfaces on the show would have played better in terms of featuring the right talent around the top title. Sure, it would kinda suck if you’re Myles Borne, but it just isn’t his time yet. Starks is the project with Femi officially being called up to the main roster.
-I don’t know about everyone else, but when I watch Kelani Jordan I still see a miscast babyface. Jordan is a natural protagonist and when she tries to play a bad guy out there, it really feels like she is pretending.
-Oh. Good. There. Was. A. Speed. Championship. Match. This Week. Yay.
-I got a kick out of Lexis King saying he was working on being the top star in NXT. Needed a good laugh and that certainly provided it. King has a spot in NXT as a low card comedy heel. Absolutely not at the top of the card in any fashion.
My guy!
-Elio Lafleur! My guy! I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t very much looking forward to his NXT debut. The gimmick is out there, but there is an authenticity there so far that resonates with me.
-It’s not that I’m a huge fan of the fact that I’m calling this out, but Ethan Page is kinda right. There have been multiple NXT and NXT North American Championship dual title holders throughout the history of NXT. Why does it all of a sudden matter that Page holds the North American title and wants a shot at the NXT Championship? I don’t hate the idea of that secondary title being tradable for a top title match after a certain amount of time, but that has to be part of the show’s ecosystem and it isn’t.
-Not a bad promo from Blake Monroe, but pretty much the same thing she’s been saying since she got to NXT. That character needs depth. Monroe vs. a returning Jaida Parker is a nice mid-card feud in the NXT women’s division.
-Ok, I like Shiloh Hill, but they have to make the out of touch and all over the place promos matter more. He can have that promo style and cadence, but if he regularly ends up saying nothing of note, nobody is going to listen or care.
Remember, there’s a crowd
-Here’s my advice to Izzi Dame — remember that you are cutting a promo in front of a group of people in the crowd that are reacting to you. The words that Dame said were fine, but she didn’t appear to feel any of them. She said them, but didn’t deliver them. There is an art in capturing the audience’s attention during a promo and Dame missed on that. She might as well have just read off a script in the ring because that is how disconnected she was from the audience.
-Joe Hendry vs. Dion Lennox was a fine main event, but Hendry gets more and more neutralized each week. If you were worried he would become “just and entrance,” he’s proving your worries right. There is another level there for him to reach, but he has to get out of the entrance comfort bubble in order to do it.
What did you think of this week’s episode of WWE NXT? Let us know in the comments!
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