-No surprise seeing Trick Williams and Carmelo Hayes defeat the LWO this week to clinch their spot in the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic finals at NXT Vengeance Day this weekend. All roads pointed there for Williams and Hayes and now the stage is set for some kind of turn. With NXT’s Stand and Deliver show over WrestleMania weekend looming large, they have to get to the meat of the feud sooner rather than later.
Oba Femi
-Oba Femi is such a blast to watch right now, but they are swimming upstream in an effort to keep him as a heel. Femi has an excellent opportunity to showcase the kind of matches he can have with a more than suitable opponent across from him at Vengeance Day in Dragon Lee. It’s his first time on a major WWE stage and based on everything we’ve seen so far, he’s about to step up to the plate and jack a home run.
-Ridge Holland … ehh. Lexis King … ehh. Ridge Holland vs. Lexis King … ehh.
-Lyra Valkyria and Roxanne Perez have built up their title match at Vengeance Day effectively. I have to buy a vowel on the Tatum Paxley stuff, though. Paxley’s relationship with Valkyria seems incredibly forced and written to be deeper than the audience has actually seen week to week. Paxley’s involvement all but guarantees that Valkyria will retain her championship, so that the Paxley vs. Valkyria match on the horizon can have bigger stakes.
Roxanne Perez main roster bound or bust
-As for Roxanne Perez, she’s destined for the main roster - ready or not. Nothing in NXT is going to help her grow at this point, but the main roster will. It can be a fresher start for here there too after a back and forth tenure on the developmental brand.
-Ariana Grace is without question one of the worst acts in all of wrestling right now. It’s that bad. She shouldn’t be getting wins over obviously better talent like Fallon Henley.
-I know Lola Vice is the flavor of the month in NXT, but after Elektra Lopez’s strong promo last week, she’s shown a much higher ceiling than Vice. Lopez jobbing to Vice in a mere three minutes won’t hurt her long term, but shows who the NXT machine is behind and that focus is misguided based on what we’ve seen the last two weeks.
-Vice getting wins and a push. Grace with the same. I’m all for trying new faces on the show, but when there are other new faces that are clearly more polished and more ready, it surprising to see the booking power go elsewhere.
Chase U! Chase U! Chase U!
-Chase University has been saved! Thanks goodness for Jacy Jayne and the women of the school, right? This was fine, but certainly not the best Chase U segment. Hell, I’m curious where it all goes. Can Shawn Michaels and the writing team get a match out of this at some point? Andre Chase vs. Duke Hudson? Chase & Thea Hail vs. Hudson & Jayne perhaps? They’ve got to close the story with something in the ring and hopefully that is still the endgame. Sidebar — how about Chase’s hair this week? Premiere level stuff.
-Sorry, I can’t get behind Noam Dar beating Von Wagner in any real way. It’s so off the face of the earth impossible that it was laughable trying to see NXT brass book things that way. Wagner isn’t a great character or anything, but has a higher ceiling than the pesky Noam Dar.
-Joe Gacy and Dijak brawled throughout the entire show with Ava Raine seemingly unable to do anything about it — Except booking them in a match for Vengeance Day. Classic pro wrestling. The brawl worked though and the last two weeks have done a nice job of building up a blood feud between both men. We’ll see what the match can do for both of these guys and their trajectory in NXT and WWE throughout the next few weeks.
The end is the beginning
-An excellent go-home promo segment to hype the Ilja Dragunov vs. Trick Williams NXT Championship main event at Vengeance Day. Dragunov wove together all the storyline points including their history, Dragunov canceling the match because of injury earlier in the year, and Carmelo Hayes claiming that Dragunov is playing mind games with Trick. They addressed all of that during this segment, but did so in a way that was true to both characters and that left both likable going into Sunday. Looking ahead, this main event and the Dusty Rhodes Classic Final will be the game board for the Williams and Hayes pieces to play on moving forward. It ends and begins between those two this weekend at Vengeance Day.