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| Portent or aberration? Photo Credit: WWE.com |
When it was announced that NXT would be following up the critically acclaimed and wildly popular NXT Takeover with another Network Special come September known as NXT Takeover, the smell of repetition birthed a vacuum. Sequel subtitles flew across the Internet in mock, jest, and slight allusion to the gap created.
The former two specials had sent out clear messages by their titles: ArRIVAL had done just that to a large segment of the audience previously clueless of the greatness that came out of Full Sail, delivered a MOTY candidate, and birthed the title reign of everyone's favorite high-flying Brit. Takeover, in addition to highlighting the NXT alumnae that were slowly creeping up towards the main event strata, put on a concluding trifecta of matches that could hold their own against any triumvirate that any big-time WWE PPV had put on in the preceding year or two.
But if Takeover II needs a theme heading in, no matter how unofficial? This episode may've provided it in spades: Adrian Neville v. the World.
Fresh off the standing O the new GM William Regal received upon taking over the stewardship, Neville agreed to face every man who'd interrupted him (Tyson Kidd, Tyler Breeze and Sami Zayn) in a fourway for the Special, with the white hats and the black hats main eventing in a tag set up by Regal backstage after acquiescing to the Champion's "bring 'em on" edict. There's an old edict that runs through certain industries that states one shouldn't get high off their own supply, and putting one's own back to the wall in the type of multi-man match that forfeits the Championship advantage and makes it so that you literally have to beat anybody lest anyone else beats anyone else and snatches up your pride and joy in the process seems to indicate the injection of some Albuquerque blue into the veins of the Man That Gravity Forgot. It'd be even further highlighted by how he and Zayn lost, but we'll get there when we get there.
Things were going so well between both teams that you knew it wasn't a matter of if but when the rifts happened, and when they did it made up the conclusion. Before that, however, was an unsurprisingly good-but-not-quite tag with the white hats getting off to a hot start with quick tags and the always visually arresting Neville corkscrew moonsault off of Zayn on all fours sending Team TyTy reeling. However, a quick counter gamengiri from Kidd and an apron superkick cheapshot from Breeze would put things back on their side of the ledger and leave the NXT Champion playing Morton for most of the rest of the proceedings until he could bring in arguably NXT's most popular star. Zayn cleared house with Michinoku Drivers (shoutout to Brennan for the proper call, BTW) and Exploders into the corner so it seemed good was going to beat evil. However, when Zayn uncorked the Helluva Kick Breeze dodged it and Adrian didn't.
Tyson being Tyson saw this as a grand opportunity to blind tag in, shove Breeze into Zayn's Blue Thunder, and then pin Neville after clearing the ring of Sami post-powerbomb. The great unspoken undercurrent as Kidd celebrated on the ropes was that by stumping for the quadrangle of doom, this was exactly the sort of thing Neville was putting himself right in the path of happening--not just losing, but somebody else profiting off of the work of another one of the three challengers.
And suddenly Tyson Kidd got a Helluva Kick of his own, and then the frame shifted around the picture. The only man standing was Sami Zayn, and everybody immediately noted at the announce table that this wasn't part of the usual emotional C.V. of the president of the El Generico Fan Club. Not only that, but something had him transfixed--the Big X. Slowly, he would grab it and hold it for the first time all year. For the first time since he'd seemingly beaten Bo Dallas only to have the old GM nullify it last year. The thing Tyler Breeze had gotten a shot at before him due to a (n inadvertant?) double forearm to the theme park. The thing Tyson got and failed to capture twice. His entire raison d'etre right in the palm of his hands, driving him to his knees, and with the bodies of everyone else that would stop him splayed out around the canvas they fired up the second-best cover of We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together and faded to black. Power corrupts and titles seem to change the men that tend to hold them, but...this is Sami Zayn. It couldn't happen to him...could it?
What that is is known to industry types as a cliffhanger. What happened between Bayley and Sasha Banks seemed to hint more at resolution. While not as good as their match previously in August this was another stellar effort between old rivals, and the matches served different purposes. The previous showed a 50/50 split won by counter-wrestling, whereas this was more along the lines of the familiar Stamford trope of "dominating heel walks into finisher" in maybe 40% of the time the more feted outing got. But when Bayley told Renee she was following the model of the "hang in there!" poster kitty to realize a childhood dream, it brought out the Flair of NXT.
Charlotte went out of her way to try to shut up the crowd, and to note Bayley was too nice and was going to embarrass herself going for the belt come ANvTW on the 11th. In response Bayley drew two gasps from the crowd for redirecting the Champion's attention her way and confessing she didn't even want a hug from Charlotte but rather. Bay being Bay she still wanted a handshake that wasn't coming, but again the character development by leaps and bounds for her to even get to that point is just another in a series of hints that state that for the third straight Special it may very well be the Women's Championship match that steals the show.
The rest of the show wasn't much; another couple of dudes getting destroyed by the Ascension, Marcus Louis accepting the hair v. hair match on Sylvester Lefort's behalf despite the latter's complaints and Bull Dempsey laying out Angelo Dawkins for the umpteenth time. There was nothing there to suggest alignment changes or overarcing character development. But putting those things on the table in two of the three title matches suddenly makes the Special just that little bit moreso when the day comes.
The former two specials had sent out clear messages by their titles: ArRIVAL had done just that to a large segment of the audience previously clueless of the greatness that came out of Full Sail, delivered a MOTY candidate, and birthed the title reign of everyone's favorite high-flying Brit. Takeover, in addition to highlighting the NXT alumnae that were slowly creeping up towards the main event strata, put on a concluding trifecta of matches that could hold their own against any triumvirate that any big-time WWE PPV had put on in the preceding year or two.
But if Takeover II needs a theme heading in, no matter how unofficial? This episode may've provided it in spades: Adrian Neville v. the World.
Fresh off the standing O the new GM William Regal received upon taking over the stewardship, Neville agreed to face every man who'd interrupted him (Tyson Kidd, Tyler Breeze and Sami Zayn) in a fourway for the Special, with the white hats and the black hats main eventing in a tag set up by Regal backstage after acquiescing to the Champion's "bring 'em on" edict. There's an old edict that runs through certain industries that states one shouldn't get high off their own supply, and putting one's own back to the wall in the type of multi-man match that forfeits the Championship advantage and makes it so that you literally have to beat anybody lest anyone else beats anyone else and snatches up your pride and joy in the process seems to indicate the injection of some Albuquerque blue into the veins of the Man That Gravity Forgot. It'd be even further highlighted by how he and Zayn lost, but we'll get there when we get there.
Things were going so well between both teams that you knew it wasn't a matter of if but when the rifts happened, and when they did it made up the conclusion. Before that, however, was an unsurprisingly good-but-not-quite tag with the white hats getting off to a hot start with quick tags and the always visually arresting Neville corkscrew moonsault off of Zayn on all fours sending Team TyTy reeling. However, a quick counter gamengiri from Kidd and an apron superkick cheapshot from Breeze would put things back on their side of the ledger and leave the NXT Champion playing Morton for most of the rest of the proceedings until he could bring in arguably NXT's most popular star. Zayn cleared house with Michinoku Drivers (shoutout to Brennan for the proper call, BTW) and Exploders into the corner so it seemed good was going to beat evil. However, when Zayn uncorked the Helluva Kick Breeze dodged it and Adrian didn't.
Tyson being Tyson saw this as a grand opportunity to blind tag in, shove Breeze into Zayn's Blue Thunder, and then pin Neville after clearing the ring of Sami post-powerbomb. The great unspoken undercurrent as Kidd celebrated on the ropes was that by stumping for the quadrangle of doom, this was exactly the sort of thing Neville was putting himself right in the path of happening--not just losing, but somebody else profiting off of the work of another one of the three challengers.
And suddenly Tyson Kidd got a Helluva Kick of his own, and then the frame shifted around the picture. The only man standing was Sami Zayn, and everybody immediately noted at the announce table that this wasn't part of the usual emotional C.V. of the president of the El Generico Fan Club. Not only that, but something had him transfixed--the Big X. Slowly, he would grab it and hold it for the first time all year. For the first time since he'd seemingly beaten Bo Dallas only to have the old GM nullify it last year. The thing Tyler Breeze had gotten a shot at before him due to a (n inadvertant?) double forearm to the theme park. The thing Tyson got and failed to capture twice. His entire raison d'etre right in the palm of his hands, driving him to his knees, and with the bodies of everyone else that would stop him splayed out around the canvas they fired up the second-best cover of We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together and faded to black. Power corrupts and titles seem to change the men that tend to hold them, but...this is Sami Zayn. It couldn't happen to him...could it?
What that is is known to industry types as a cliffhanger. What happened between Bayley and Sasha Banks seemed to hint more at resolution. While not as good as their match previously in August this was another stellar effort between old rivals, and the matches served different purposes. The previous showed a 50/50 split won by counter-wrestling, whereas this was more along the lines of the familiar Stamford trope of "dominating heel walks into finisher" in maybe 40% of the time the more feted outing got. But when Bayley told Renee she was following the model of the "hang in there!" poster kitty to realize a childhood dream, it brought out the Flair of NXT.
Charlotte went out of her way to try to shut up the crowd, and to note Bayley was too nice and was going to embarrass herself going for the belt come ANvTW on the 11th. In response Bayley drew two gasps from the crowd for redirecting the Champion's attention her way and confessing she didn't even want a hug from Charlotte but rather. Bay being Bay she still wanted a handshake that wasn't coming, but again the character development by leaps and bounds for her to even get to that point is just another in a series of hints that state that for the third straight Special it may very well be the Women's Championship match that steals the show.
The rest of the show wasn't much; another couple of dudes getting destroyed by the Ascension, Marcus Louis accepting the hair v. hair match on Sylvester Lefort's behalf despite the latter's complaints and Bull Dempsey laying out Angelo Dawkins for the umpteenth time. There was nothing there to suggest alignment changes or overarcing character development. But putting those things on the table in two of the three title matches suddenly makes the Special just that little bit moreso when the day comes.