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| KING BACK Photo Credit: WWE.com |
In the main event, Buddy Murphy fought Wesley Blake to a no-contest.
Technically.
What a slippery term that can be used to completely undersell and undervalue a situation. Peyton Manning was technically the quarterback for the reigning Super Bowl champions even though by the end of the season his fumes' fumes were running on fumes. The Beatles were technically four Englishmen who sang, though their fusion of influences formed a discography the likes of which haven't been seen before or since and the reverberations from their guitars' reverberations are being felt and copied even as you read this sentence. The Cubano is technically a sandwich but that doesn't evoke how it feels to consume one and to feel like God Herself is French kissing you through the clouds, especially when the spicy mustard is good.
Technically, technically, technically.
What actually happened was what most of the cognoscenti expected: Samoa Joe making the former tag team champions go splut and gorsh individually before yelling to the camera for Master Regal to present himself. You knew what his demands were, Shinsuke Nakamura or the NXT World Championship handed back to him.
In every time he'd previously yelled this set of options it seemed that he would've been fine with either option playing itself out. This time was different. This time he got the former, not the latter.
And in about five minutes time, even the brash self-proclaimed Emperor might've regretted the fact that his mouth had written a million dollar check with his body only having a three quarters of a million bank balance.
Because what happened this time, in technicality and actuality?
Shinsuke Nakamura showed up, ripped off a neck brace, and, let's just be real real here, (wait, don't want to be obscene in case some fourth grader is scanning this) had some vigorous intercourse with Joseph's fecal matter all the way to the penthouse. In defense of the eighth NXT World Champion, he was too talented and too much of a BAMF to go down without a fight. But there was also never a portion of it where he was in control for more than five consecutive seconds. The ninth NXT World Champion brought enough babyface fire to level a block's worth of tenements, and it didn't matter if you were a referee, a helpless black shirted security official, or possibly God Herself. Swagsuke was over 9000.
In the ring, they brawled and were separated. Nak responded by dropping some black shirts then running up the ramp and kicking Joe right in the theme park. It looked possibly unintentional but the way both Tom Phillips and Corey Graves sold it they felt it was intentional, and alls the better for the story if it was. The security separated them yet again, and Nakamura was led backstage. That lasted a hot second before he laid them out, and came back out onto the apex of the ramp to resume hostilities. Joe eventually bailed, having lost this latest attempt, and some poor no name got a one-way ticket to Kinshasa. Joe, even echoing his contretemps with certain one-day Universal Champions, tried to sneak up on him after the bailout.
Nah, son.
Nak beat him back down the ramp and into the ring, where Joe caught the last stand by seat on the flight to Africa the rando had just got on to the absolute roars of the crowd. Keep in mind this is technically, actually an undefeated World Champion. But Joe was the first to lay him out and plant the seed of doubt. That was well and good so far as it lasted, but now it hasn't anymore, and what he did as a result was inherit the whirlwind that hopefully will give us all a hard-hitting title rematch probably with a stipulation in tow.
That was the biggest development on a program that furthered the female Australian Alliance with Billie Kay getting by with a little help from her friend Peyton Royce to go over Liv Morgan and TM61 going over the now-in-the-doghouse-in-real-time-for-accidentally-injuring-Hideo-Itami Riddick Moss and Tino Sabatelli. It's a bit of a shame, especially since they got two segs with two guys higher on the food chain than they are to show off the embryonic stages of what could be Full Sail's answer to the BroMans.
It could've been the debut of the Glorious Ten, but instead that debut was quickly subsumed by SAnitY making their own debut impactful in every single way to open up the show. To paraphrase the late and occasionally great Dennis Green, Bobby Roode is who we thought he was, and faced with the option of taking off his glorious robe and saving his "inferior" ad hoc partner vs. throwing hands with the Purge: Full Sail, you know which path of least resistance he was going to go down even if a similar fate had already befallen a team in last week's main event.
But whither this fourpack that constitutes NXT's newest (only?) stable? Well, the ones in the tournament are Sawyer Fulton and Alexander Wolfe, long-time NXT staples who suddenly have a purpose besides being cannon fodder. They may look like they went through the Hot Topic equivalent of a car wash now, but they ran through the small bit of offense they needed to truck poor Tye Dillinger with aplomb.
That looked like so much fun that after the match the smallest one of them jumped in and threw some hands on the Perfect Ten and had to be pulled off. Divested of tattered clothes, it was revealed the that was a she and that that she was Nikki Cross, fully embracing her inner Daffney.
Things got worse for the Canadian as the final member of the unit wheelbarrowed him into a neckbreaker in a swoop so nice and total it even popped the crowd into a brief chant of blessed fecal matter. The pop would get even bigger when the fourth revealed that that that was a he, that that he was a fellow Canadian, and that that he was, for the first time on NXT in eons, Eric Young.
You know, the man who knows about keeping copacetic brain waves in much the manner fascist anthropomorphic pumpkin spices should get free reign over naming Supreme Court justices, the nuclear codes, and the most powerful job in the world.
Even with the King back, chaos reigns and the Dusty Classic's first round has barely gotten underway. It just goes to further underscore the point: in a world where BAMF implodes in the main event, technically any actuality can (and just might) happen.
Technically.
What a slippery term that can be used to completely undersell and undervalue a situation. Peyton Manning was technically the quarterback for the reigning Super Bowl champions even though by the end of the season his fumes' fumes were running on fumes. The Beatles were technically four Englishmen who sang, though their fusion of influences formed a discography the likes of which haven't been seen before or since and the reverberations from their guitars' reverberations are being felt and copied even as you read this sentence. The Cubano is technically a sandwich but that doesn't evoke how it feels to consume one and to feel like God Herself is French kissing you through the clouds, especially when the spicy mustard is good.
Technically, technically, technically.
What actually happened was what most of the cognoscenti expected: Samoa Joe making the former tag team champions go splut and gorsh individually before yelling to the camera for Master Regal to present himself. You knew what his demands were, Shinsuke Nakamura or the NXT World Championship handed back to him.
In every time he'd previously yelled this set of options it seemed that he would've been fine with either option playing itself out. This time was different. This time he got the former, not the latter.
And in about five minutes time, even the brash self-proclaimed Emperor might've regretted the fact that his mouth had written a million dollar check with his body only having a three quarters of a million bank balance.
Because what happened this time, in technicality and actuality?
Shinsuke Nakamura showed up, ripped off a neck brace, and, let's just be real real here, (wait, don't want to be obscene in case some fourth grader is scanning this) had some vigorous intercourse with Joseph's fecal matter all the way to the penthouse. In defense of the eighth NXT World Champion, he was too talented and too much of a BAMF to go down without a fight. But there was also never a portion of it where he was in control for more than five consecutive seconds. The ninth NXT World Champion brought enough babyface fire to level a block's worth of tenements, and it didn't matter if you were a referee, a helpless black shirted security official, or possibly God Herself. Swagsuke was over 9000.
In the ring, they brawled and were separated. Nak responded by dropping some black shirts then running up the ramp and kicking Joe right in the theme park. It looked possibly unintentional but the way both Tom Phillips and Corey Graves sold it they felt it was intentional, and alls the better for the story if it was. The security separated them yet again, and Nakamura was led backstage. That lasted a hot second before he laid them out, and came back out onto the apex of the ramp to resume hostilities. Joe eventually bailed, having lost this latest attempt, and some poor no name got a one-way ticket to Kinshasa. Joe, even echoing his contretemps with certain one-day Universal Champions, tried to sneak up on him after the bailout.
Nah, son.
Nak beat him back down the ramp and into the ring, where Joe caught the last stand by seat on the flight to Africa the rando had just got on to the absolute roars of the crowd. Keep in mind this is technically, actually an undefeated World Champion. But Joe was the first to lay him out and plant the seed of doubt. That was well and good so far as it lasted, but now it hasn't anymore, and what he did as a result was inherit the whirlwind that hopefully will give us all a hard-hitting title rematch probably with a stipulation in tow.
That was the biggest development on a program that furthered the female Australian Alliance with Billie Kay getting by with a little help from her friend Peyton Royce to go over Liv Morgan and TM61 going over the now-in-the-doghouse-in-real-time-for-accidentally-injuring-Hideo-Itami Riddick Moss and Tino Sabatelli. It's a bit of a shame, especially since they got two segs with two guys higher on the food chain than they are to show off the embryonic stages of what could be Full Sail's answer to the BroMans.
It could've been the debut of the Glorious Ten, but instead that debut was quickly subsumed by SAnitY making their own debut impactful in every single way to open up the show. To paraphrase the late and occasionally great Dennis Green, Bobby Roode is who we thought he was, and faced with the option of taking off his glorious robe and saving his "inferior" ad hoc partner vs. throwing hands with the Purge: Full Sail, you know which path of least resistance he was going to go down even if a similar fate had already befallen a team in last week's main event.
But whither this fourpack that constitutes NXT's newest (only?) stable? Well, the ones in the tournament are Sawyer Fulton and Alexander Wolfe, long-time NXT staples who suddenly have a purpose besides being cannon fodder. They may look like they went through the Hot Topic equivalent of a car wash now, but they ran through the small bit of offense they needed to truck poor Tye Dillinger with aplomb.
That looked like so much fun that after the match the smallest one of them jumped in and threw some hands on the Perfect Ten and had to be pulled off. Divested of tattered clothes, it was revealed the that was a she and that that she was Nikki Cross, fully embracing her inner Daffney.
Things got worse for the Canadian as the final member of the unit wheelbarrowed him into a neckbreaker in a swoop so nice and total it even popped the crowd into a brief chant of blessed fecal matter. The pop would get even bigger when the fourth revealed that that that was a he, that that he was a fellow Canadian, and that that he was, for the first time on NXT in eons, Eric Young.
You know, the man who knows about keeping copacetic brain waves in much the manner fascist anthropomorphic pumpkin spices should get free reign over naming Supreme Court justices, the nuclear codes, and the most powerful job in the world.
Even with the King back, chaos reigns and the Dusty Classic's first round has barely gotten underway. It just goes to further underscore the point: in a world where BAMF implodes in the main event, technically any actuality can (and just might) happen.