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| Damn, this ruled Screen Grab Credit: ProWresBlog |
This literally happened.
At 8:36 a few days ago the boss asked if someone wanted to start covering NXT.
My response came in at roughly 8:36:37.
This literally happened.
Several people on the web pouted they couldn't get NXT, and that they had to do some things that fell into a morally grey area to get it.
You can now watch full episodes on certain websites that could form the answer to the old college basketball question "Do you know the name of the guy who's coaching St. John's?"
This literally happened.
And the reason that's probably occuring is because two of the best wrestlers in the world just got done putting on a best-of-three-falls classic in a little sweatbox down Florida way.
Believe me, when people are asked to remember what happened in the penultimate August 2013 episode of NXT what'll come first to their minds won't be awesome character development from AJ Lee, Bayley, or Tyler Breeze. It's not going to be Renee Young taking more steps up the ladder of announcing greatness, or Alexander Rusev looking like an awesome secret Street Fighter III evil boss in a well-contested but losing debut to Dolph Ziggler.
It'll be because a specific luchador and a Swiss landmonster executed the professional graps for about 20 minutes and you'd like to know, "Is it worth my time?"
Well, I'll put it to you like this: a couple of Sunday nights ago I was in Staples Center. I had decent seats. I was watching Brock Lesnar do things to CM Punk that turned my section of the arena from an overall jolly multi-rowed pro wrestling version of MST3K into "ah jeez I think that just killed Punk oh wait I think that just killed Punk should we chant for him OH NO. Oh NO. I wouldn't fight Lesnar if he was unarmed and I had a loaded gun." And after it was over, it was so awesome I dipped out for a couple of minutes just to get the engines back down to neutral. It felt like a Match of the Year, what certain Cages charismatically used to call instant classics.
A few days later I saw this match, and it was so tremendous, such a defining answer to the eternal question of "if there's so many things wrong in your eyes with the product why are you still even watching this, so-called adult?" with an emphatic "This this this all of this JUST HOOK IT TO MY VEINS". Even though it was only for a few beats in the immediate aftermath of the first viewing? I'd forgotten completely about Punk/Lesnar, which had happened less than 100 hours prior. I'd forgotten I was in attendance for a far above average brawl at Summerslam.
That literally happened, because this match was awesome but in a different way from the way Punk/Lesnar was. In that case, that was a no-DQ culmination of a blood feud and the violence was being dished out by the closest thing to a super soldier ever produced in the past three decades. It wasn't about the actual professional grappling; it was about pain, and the threshold of suffering a plucky underdog was willing to go through to topple the goomba of all goombas. Here, Zayn/Cesaro was differerent.
(For everybody reading this new to why they've got the Internet going nuts, continue reading this parenthetical. Longtime heads, skip to the next part. In his debut ep of NXT a few weeks ago, Sami Zayn debuted in a win, then Antonio Cesaro gooified Yoshi Tatsu and declared a heel standard, the No Comeuppance Open Challenge. Zayn answered, won with a schoolboy, then got the Neutralizer. A rematch occured after another backstage smacktalk back-and-forth followed by a brawl, which was won eventually with the Neutralizer by Cesaro. Zayn wanted this best of 3 to settle the issue, then Cesaro showed up the week prior at a .8 M.Bison declaring himself BOSS OF THE WORLD~ and yelling out ZAYYYYYYYYYYYYYNNNNNNNNNNN! to close the show after his acceptance lead to another backstage brawl. Yeah, that ruled.)
Zayn and Cesaro differed because even though it got violent and was hard-hitting the wrestling was still the centerpiece, rather than the parsley. It was about two guys opening up their arsenals in the face of the avalanche in front of them. Two guys who both knew they could beat the other but still had to dig deep and go down to the well to get it, and even then when their usual would've sufficed against almost anyone else this other sumbitch across from them Just Wouldn't Stay Down.
Jerry Izenberg said about Ali and Frazier going after it in Manila that they "were fighting for something more important...the Championship of each other." And while this may never be dubbed the Holy Grail at Full Sail, it could. It was Zayn's offense coming in from any and all angles from the rampway to damn near the first row. It was some of the usual Cesaro strongman feats and then some, culminating in my personal choice to date for Finish Of The Year so impressive on a multitude of levels both announcers were openly and justifiably invoking the name of the great Flying Spaghetti Monster in the sky off of a botch; a reminder of what's at stake in any match, let alone a blowoff, and a nice cousin to the explosives unit failing to blow up the hospital at the proper time during The Dark Knight but Ledger's in-character vamping while they scrambled to and then fix it being so note perfect that Nolan left it in the film.
And hey--we live in a cynical world. Maybe some of those pop culture comparisons are a bit much, that there's no way one match in the developmental league that didn't even take up 40% of the random show it aired on and wasn't even for the NXT Championship is worthy of that much praise. And my response to that is this:
Watch the match.
Not out of the corner of your eye, and not with me calling out the myriad of big & little moments that make it what it is. Just watch the match.
And in the aftermath of seeing it, you'll see why so many of us continue drinking WWE Kool-Aid even if we don't always like the taste.
When its aged well and the bouquet flourishes like this, all you can do is stare at the goblet in childlike awe with the taste Brodus Claying down your tastebuds, and when words come, they're probably along the lines of "...wow. That just happened."
At 8:36 a few days ago the boss asked if someone wanted to start covering NXT.
My response came in at roughly 8:36:37.
This literally happened.
Several people on the web pouted they couldn't get NXT, and that they had to do some things that fell into a morally grey area to get it.
You can now watch full episodes on certain websites that could form the answer to the old college basketball question "Do you know the name of the guy who's coaching St. John's?"
This literally happened.
And the reason that's probably occuring is because two of the best wrestlers in the world just got done putting on a best-of-three-falls classic in a little sweatbox down Florida way.
Believe me, when people are asked to remember what happened in the penultimate August 2013 episode of NXT what'll come first to their minds won't be awesome character development from AJ Lee, Bayley, or Tyler Breeze. It's not going to be Renee Young taking more steps up the ladder of announcing greatness, or Alexander Rusev looking like an awesome secret Street Fighter III evil boss in a well-contested but losing debut to Dolph Ziggler.
It'll be because a specific luchador and a Swiss landmonster executed the professional graps for about 20 minutes and you'd like to know, "Is it worth my time?"
Well, I'll put it to you like this: a couple of Sunday nights ago I was in Staples Center. I had decent seats. I was watching Brock Lesnar do things to CM Punk that turned my section of the arena from an overall jolly multi-rowed pro wrestling version of MST3K into "ah jeez I think that just killed Punk oh wait I think that just killed Punk should we chant for him OH NO. Oh NO. I wouldn't fight Lesnar if he was unarmed and I had a loaded gun." And after it was over, it was so awesome I dipped out for a couple of minutes just to get the engines back down to neutral. It felt like a Match of the Year, what certain Cages charismatically used to call instant classics.
A few days later I saw this match, and it was so tremendous, such a defining answer to the eternal question of "if there's so many things wrong in your eyes with the product why are you still even watching this, so-called adult?" with an emphatic "This this this all of this JUST HOOK IT TO MY VEINS". Even though it was only for a few beats in the immediate aftermath of the first viewing? I'd forgotten completely about Punk/Lesnar, which had happened less than 100 hours prior. I'd forgotten I was in attendance for a far above average brawl at Summerslam.
That literally happened, because this match was awesome but in a different way from the way Punk/Lesnar was. In that case, that was a no-DQ culmination of a blood feud and the violence was being dished out by the closest thing to a super soldier ever produced in the past three decades. It wasn't about the actual professional grappling; it was about pain, and the threshold of suffering a plucky underdog was willing to go through to topple the goomba of all goombas. Here, Zayn/Cesaro was differerent.
(For everybody reading this new to why they've got the Internet going nuts, continue reading this parenthetical. Longtime heads, skip to the next part. In his debut ep of NXT a few weeks ago, Sami Zayn debuted in a win, then Antonio Cesaro gooified Yoshi Tatsu and declared a heel standard, the No Comeuppance Open Challenge. Zayn answered, won with a schoolboy, then got the Neutralizer. A rematch occured after another backstage smacktalk back-and-forth followed by a brawl, which was won eventually with the Neutralizer by Cesaro. Zayn wanted this best of 3 to settle the issue, then Cesaro showed up the week prior at a .8 M.Bison declaring himself BOSS OF THE WORLD~ and yelling out ZAYYYYYYYYYYYYYNNNNNNNNNNN! to close the show after his acceptance lead to another backstage brawl. Yeah, that ruled.)
Zayn and Cesaro differed because even though it got violent and was hard-hitting the wrestling was still the centerpiece, rather than the parsley. It was about two guys opening up their arsenals in the face of the avalanche in front of them. Two guys who both knew they could beat the other but still had to dig deep and go down to the well to get it, and even then when their usual would've sufficed against almost anyone else this other sumbitch across from them Just Wouldn't Stay Down.
Jerry Izenberg said about Ali and Frazier going after it in Manila that they "were fighting for something more important...the Championship of each other." And while this may never be dubbed the Holy Grail at Full Sail, it could. It was Zayn's offense coming in from any and all angles from the rampway to damn near the first row. It was some of the usual Cesaro strongman feats and then some, culminating in my personal choice to date for Finish Of The Year so impressive on a multitude of levels both announcers were openly and justifiably invoking the name of the great Flying Spaghetti Monster in the sky off of a botch; a reminder of what's at stake in any match, let alone a blowoff, and a nice cousin to the explosives unit failing to blow up the hospital at the proper time during The Dark Knight but Ledger's in-character vamping while they scrambled to and then fix it being so note perfect that Nolan left it in the film.
And hey--we live in a cynical world. Maybe some of those pop culture comparisons are a bit much, that there's no way one match in the developmental league that didn't even take up 40% of the random show it aired on and wasn't even for the NXT Championship is worthy of that much praise. And my response to that is this:
Watch the match.
Not out of the corner of your eye, and not with me calling out the myriad of big & little moments that make it what it is. Just watch the match.
And in the aftermath of seeing it, you'll see why so many of us continue drinking WWE Kool-Aid even if we don't always like the taste.
When its aged well and the bouquet flourishes like this, all you can do is stare at the goblet in childlike awe with the taste Brodus Claying down your tastebuds, and when words come, they're probably along the lines of "...wow. That just happened."