"WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED" getting yelled in the background is awesome

Can't have Borelor taking a televised loss

That being said, thank god

Was in attendance last night, absolutely fantastic show.

I haven't watched him on NXT, but saw Tommaso Ciampa wrestle a solid 25-min match at an indie show last night. He goes by "Psycho Killer" and did a great job of heeling it up in a fun way.

Watching the latest episode now.

Can't believe that Jamoke #2 got a defense chant over.

While I can't say that there was anything wrong with the match in a vacuum, am I really supposed to get that excited about Eric ****ing Young?

Not a big fan of the seemingly non-stop onslaught of all these guys from TNA in their upper 30s.

Here at NXT Live in OKC. Pretty good show so far. Aries wrestled at a very slow pace with Murphy, only disappointment so far.

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk

Not gonna lie, I don't think NXT is better than Raw right now

I've still got NXT > Raw, but only because of the commentary disparity.

NXT is a weird transitional phase. The roster has been basically decimated over the last 6 months. I mean NXT's roster isn't big and they've lost:

- Tyler Breeze
- Sami Zayne
- Baron Corbin
- Finn Balor (?)
- Apollo Crews
- Enzo and Cass
- Vaudvillians

That's basically almost all the usual main eventers and good midcarders. They have this huge gap between the people that are left and Nakamura/Joe, both of which who are huge stars compared to who is left.

It's an interesting dynamic, but it has really left NXT in an odd place. I think for the first time, I'm not really excited by any of the new midcarders. Like No Way Jose is...uh..what it is. Tye Dillenger is...okay I guess.

They still have a nice women's division and American Alpha, so it's still good, but it's definitely a different animal than it was before.

It isn't just that, they've stopped showing their work. When Zayn debuted he wasn't pushed to the very top of the card, he had to work his way up and develop his character so you can get behind him. They did the same thing with Neville, Breeze and Corbin and it made them much easier to identify with.

I know I sound like a broken record here, but a huge problem with this has been Balor. As much **** as we like to give Reigns for having the entire roster go under to get him over, thats basically what has happened for Balor, except instead of 5 hours of programming a week, there's only one.

So now, where before when the top guys graduated, NXT is in this spot where its Balor, Joe and a bunch of people we don't give a **** about because we've been dedicating time to the guys that have been moved up to the main roster, who also have basically feuded only with themselves and with Balor (whos character is basically "guy who sometimes paints himself and never loses"). Joe is basically the only guy on NXT's roster in the main event division who we really care about because he has developed his character so much from "Fat guy who shows up and he was good somewhere else" to guy hell bent on keeping this title he killed himself to get and nobody is going to take it from me.

They've really shot themselves in the foot by insta-pushing so many TNA transplants into important spots that used to be for guys who had been around for a bit and had a semi developed character. Now NXT is really really bad and not an easy watch.

Tough to argue with any of that.

The "everyone has left in the past year and things are tough" is certainly true for the women, but they've been starting to build that back up (albeit more slowly than I would like). The tag division is still doing okay (notice how every single tag team has been built from the ground up).

But the men....yikes. It's been nothing but the Finn and Joe show for WAY too long.

SO EXCITED FOR FINN VS. JOE AGAIN

NXT blows

Yeah good post Dar0, I haven't enjoyed NXT at all recently and it's mostly for the reasons you pointed out.

I watch NXT exclusively for the crowd chants and reactions

NXT is advertised to be all about young and fresh talent yet all their top guys are on the wrong side of 30.

The top guys in NXT right now are:

Joe - 37, Borelor - 35 this year, Aries - 38, Hideo - 35, Shinksy - 36, Eric Young - 36 and if they bring in Roode, he is 39. 4 of those guys are TNA made and the other 3 are NJPW. These guys should be main roster or not have a deal at all.

At least the guys in the CW tourn are young but it's hard to tell what they have planned for that and it's entrants at this stage.

I don't mind the age thing at all

I do mind the boring repetitive booking

I don't want to debate your list too much, but I think you can take the guy who has been out of action for over a year off of your list.

With that said, I also think that Bayley, American Alpha, and The Revival are all bigger stars than EY or Aries. But right now there is a lack of young talent on the men's singles side. I do think however you do need a few of the older guys with credibility on the NXT roster to work with the younger guys to help them learn.

NXT stopped being presented as exclusively about young wrestlers developing quite some time ago. The current branding is that it is a mix of veterans and young wrestlers.

Honestly if I was booking I would probably be breaking up AA pretty soon or at least giving both guys a singles push as both guys really look like stars and are fairly young still. They're also some of the only fresh stars on the roster and seem kinda OP compared to the rest of the division.


Or we can just do Joe/Borelor part XXXIIVI

Yeah I was only talking about male singles wrestlers, AA probably get the biggest pops in NXT right now. Point I was trying to make was that NXT is doing the exact same thing everyone has criticized TNA for doing although the ironic part is that they're doing it with the guys TNA started to neglect.

30s isn't old for WWE anymore. You can argue that it should be, but between the semi-main event and the main event at Mania, only one performer was under 46. Somebody can start in NXT in their 30s and still get in many solid years on the main roster.

And it isn't like the guys in NXT are barely mobile like Hall, Nash and Hogan were in 2010. Or that top guys in NXT are top guys in the company overall. The situations are so, so different.

I wasn't comparing those situations though, I was comparing it to TNA. Bringing in older guys and giving them almost 100% of the focus while neglecting younger talent. I realize it hasn't even been half a year of the barren roster but it's hard not to see the similarities.

I was describing what happened in TNA, so I find that response very confusing. TNA thought guys who were immobile, 50, and had a history of substance abuse would still be big draws. That was the issue. It isn't like having Eric Young and Samoa Joe around in NXT is going to hurt American Alpha's ability to draw once they move up to the main roster.