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| This is what we in the industry refer to as SPLUT Photo Credit: WWE.com |
As a long time card-carrying fan of the pro graps, one of the stickiest widgets a patron has to grapple (ha HA!) with alongside following an open-ended narrative that also involves spandex is how to deal with the notion -- most would say necessary evil -- of delayed gratification.
And over in NXT's constellation, the future's bright enough for Timbuk4. The day before WrestleMania, they're having a dream match at Takeover: Dallas with new signee Shinsuke Nakamura against Sami Zayn. Two weeks from now, everybody's favorite Syrian-Canadian will take on Samoa Joe and finally get this number one contendership settled once and for all in a best of three falls match, which is quietly becoming the Full Sail signature stipulation match of the former Champion. Hell, next week in addition to Not Quite The Greatest Signing NXT's Ever Had But Still A Pretty Good Get, the man who's approaching making history as the longest-reigning holder of the Big X and the resident Daemon on top of the mountain will face off against the current man with that honorific, the Man That Gravity Forgot No Longer Adrian Neville in a dream rematch from their awesome number one contendership bout at Takeover: Rival last winter. (You probably forgot that happened since shortly thereafter Kevin Owens attempted to and nearly succeeded at murdering Zayn.)
But, again, all of that is the future. In the present with regards to the last show Black and Yellow put on for February? For the second time in the past three weeks, you might be better off reading BCB than watching the full hour. If Baron Corbin produced this show and wasn't the sort of ruffian who confuses EVOLVE for Ring of Honor, he might've noted you can't fight fait accompli.
Take the show's opener for example, which had the best wrestling on the program. That said, it also had American Alpha up against B.A.M.F. You may recognize Jason Jordan and Chad Gable as the foundation NXT's quietly beginning to rebuild their resurgent tag division around, and you may recognize No First Names as the dudes who get in the way of you leering over Alexa Bliss. perpetual disappointment to her fine Mama. AA has been dusting off former tag Champs left and right, and per the unspoken covenant of former NXT Tag Titleholders without the belts they revert back to slightly familiar and reworked versions of Player 1 and Player 2. Watching Gable put on wrestling clinics and finishing matches with the prettiest bridges this side of Alicia Fox's Northern Lights is always fun, yes. Watching Jason Jordan slowly move into being the Overlord of the Hot Tag hasn't lost its appeal yet. But there was never even a millisecond where you thought that Blake and Murphy were going to get anything besides eventually on the receiving end of a Grand Amplitude.
In the main event that featured Baymella going up against Eva Marie and Nia Jax, it only made sense that somehow the heels had to get the upper hand here if for no other reason than to keep the contretemps flowing in all directions betwixt the four of them. Even in their pre-match chat with Alex Reyes, Carmella evinced wanting another shot at the belt, and Bayley acknowledged she'd be a fine Champion... someday. All that got swept aside under this simple unnoted fact, however, was that the only thing that saved Baymella from catching a full-out ass-whupping a couple weeks ago from Team California was the involvement of the chaotic neutral Goddess of Violent Retribution, Asuka. Without her to put the fear of... well, her into the black hats, what occurred was two plucky underdog white hats continually running into and afoul of the human brick wall of Jax, with Eva Marie occasionally getting in a couple of cheap shots and doing more preening than Tyler Breeze after a spa visit. (The less said about her offense that didn't involve choking with the ropes, the better.)
Jax literally fended off both members of the opposition on separate occasions late, saving her worthless partner from attempts at both that should've put her away with their respective finishers, then sealed the deal with a pair of legdrops to match the one above. Eva gladly blind tagged in before the third connected and semi-stole the pin, thus giving her a bragging point of a victory as if she needed to worry about drawing heat down Florida way. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and trollocoasters go whoop whoop whoop, after all. Jax backed up her talking point of if she'd been cleared for that number one contendership battle royal she would've won it instead of Carmella and would've been able to close the deal she was so close to doing so in London. And as for the BFFs but not those BFFs? They'll dust off their wounds, get back on the horse, and possibly ask Ms. Most Dangerous for a bit of assistance whenever the next go-round goes down.
The rest of the show for the most part was Tommaso Ciampa armbarring Bull Dempsey essentially out of the company and a surprisingly effective debut by a renamed Biff Busick (Ed. note, Christopher Girard is the name his parents gave him, which makes me wonder if he's going to get a shiny new appellation from the Name Generator dot dot dot. - TH), who went down eventually to Apollo Crews but dominated most of the match in the process and got another Rich Swann namedrop on WWE programming with the announcers looking forward to seeing him again after his effort in the showcase here.
If we see Girard again, however, that sort of gratification shan't be coming any time soon. You could even call it delayed.
Does the necessary outweigh the evil? There's plenty of time to debate that--well, at least until we get Neville/Bálor again and this thorny philosophical discussion gets put on a back tab.
And over in NXT's constellation, the future's bright enough for Timbuk4. The day before WrestleMania, they're having a dream match at Takeover: Dallas with new signee Shinsuke Nakamura against Sami Zayn. Two weeks from now, everybody's favorite Syrian-Canadian will take on Samoa Joe and finally get this number one contendership settled once and for all in a best of three falls match, which is quietly becoming the Full Sail signature stipulation match of the former Champion. Hell, next week in addition to Not Quite The Greatest Signing NXT's Ever Had But Still A Pretty Good Get, the man who's approaching making history as the longest-reigning holder of the Big X and the resident Daemon on top of the mountain will face off against the current man with that honorific, the Man That Gravity Forgot No Longer Adrian Neville in a dream rematch from their awesome number one contendership bout at Takeover: Rival last winter. (You probably forgot that happened since shortly thereafter Kevin Owens attempted to and nearly succeeded at murdering Zayn.)
But, again, all of that is the future. In the present with regards to the last show Black and Yellow put on for February? For the second time in the past three weeks, you might be better off reading BCB than watching the full hour. If Baron Corbin produced this show and wasn't the sort of ruffian who confuses EVOLVE for Ring of Honor, he might've noted you can't fight fait accompli.
Take the show's opener for example, which had the best wrestling on the program. That said, it also had American Alpha up against B.A.M.F. You may recognize Jason Jordan and Chad Gable as the foundation NXT's quietly beginning to rebuild their resurgent tag division around, and you may recognize No First Names as the dudes who get in the way of you leering over Alexa Bliss. perpetual disappointment to her fine Mama. AA has been dusting off former tag Champs left and right, and per the unspoken covenant of former NXT Tag Titleholders without the belts they revert back to slightly familiar and reworked versions of Player 1 and Player 2. Watching Gable put on wrestling clinics and finishing matches with the prettiest bridges this side of Alicia Fox's Northern Lights is always fun, yes. Watching Jason Jordan slowly move into being the Overlord of the Hot Tag hasn't lost its appeal yet. But there was never even a millisecond where you thought that Blake and Murphy were going to get anything besides eventually on the receiving end of a Grand Amplitude.
In the main event that featured Baymella going up against Eva Marie and Nia Jax, it only made sense that somehow the heels had to get the upper hand here if for no other reason than to keep the contretemps flowing in all directions betwixt the four of them. Even in their pre-match chat with Alex Reyes, Carmella evinced wanting another shot at the belt, and Bayley acknowledged she'd be a fine Champion... someday. All that got swept aside under this simple unnoted fact, however, was that the only thing that saved Baymella from catching a full-out ass-whupping a couple weeks ago from Team California was the involvement of the chaotic neutral Goddess of Violent Retribution, Asuka. Without her to put the fear of... well, her into the black hats, what occurred was two plucky underdog white hats continually running into and afoul of the human brick wall of Jax, with Eva Marie occasionally getting in a couple of cheap shots and doing more preening than Tyler Breeze after a spa visit. (The less said about her offense that didn't involve choking with the ropes, the better.)
Jax literally fended off both members of the opposition on separate occasions late, saving her worthless partner from attempts at both that should've put her away with their respective finishers, then sealed the deal with a pair of legdrops to match the one above. Eva gladly blind tagged in before the third connected and semi-stole the pin, thus giving her a bragging point of a victory as if she needed to worry about drawing heat down Florida way. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and trollocoasters go whoop whoop whoop, after all. Jax backed up her talking point of if she'd been cleared for that number one contendership battle royal she would've won it instead of Carmella and would've been able to close the deal she was so close to doing so in London. And as for the BFFs but not those BFFs? They'll dust off their wounds, get back on the horse, and possibly ask Ms. Most Dangerous for a bit of assistance whenever the next go-round goes down.
The rest of the show for the most part was Tommaso Ciampa armbarring Bull Dempsey essentially out of the company and a surprisingly effective debut by a renamed Biff Busick (Ed. note, Christopher Girard is the name his parents gave him, which makes me wonder if he's going to get a shiny new appellation from the Name Generator dot dot dot. - TH), who went down eventually to Apollo Crews but dominated most of the match in the process and got another Rich Swann namedrop on WWE programming with the announcers looking forward to seeing him again after his effort in the showcase here.
If we see Girard again, however, that sort of gratification shan't be coming any time soon. You could even call it delayed.
Does the necessary outweigh the evil? There's plenty of time to debate that--well, at least until we get Neville/Bálor again and this thorny philosophical discussion gets put on a back tab.