NXT - Post NXT Takeover discussion in progress

[Loki]

What a shitshow that main event was this week.

First of all, Ohno is so out of shape now it's offputting.  Even all black attire can't hide it, and those cottage cheese thighs are the worst thing in WWE since Big Daddy V's boobs.

Then big new signing Kushida comes out, and looks like a small child in comparison to Ohno.  He must be smaller even than Gargano, who's pretty tiny.   This is his debut to show off his talent to those who might not have seen him before, and what happens in the match?  He gets belted around by Ohno, who seems to have a counter already for all his trademark moves.  Then Ohno legit seems to break Kushida's nose with an ill-timed knee drop to the face.  The poor bastard is dripping blood and clearly gasping for air, and struggles from then on, fucking up a hurricanrana spot quite badly.  He wins with a very oddly set up submission but it's not a good debut by any means.

Combine that with a pretty meaningless 6 man tag that doesn't do anyone any favours, and it's a poor show overall.  Worst of all though, the Velveteen segment was just... awful.  The guy can't hold a tune, why did nobody check that before they sent him out there to sing?

 

[Accident Prone]

Yep, awful episode. That seemed like a very tired 'end of tapings' crowd too.

The 6-man was a heatless affair, mainly due to how heatless the Forgotten Sons are and Carrillo being a charisma vacuum. Heatless, and it was a shame to see Oney and Burch connected with it.

The Dream angle was diabolically cringe worthy. Good Lord, it was bad. A rare miss in a sea of hits for Dream.

The main event was average affair, but no way to debut your new star signing. Outside of his matches against Kyle O'Reilly, I've never really been into KUSHIDA, and this match against Ohno did him no favours.

Also, it gets said a lot, but Ohno is in a shocking state. Him seemingly not giving a fuck about his appearance whilst managing to nail down a role on any WWE in-ring show is mystifying.

Yeah, his knowledge is priceless and he can be an extremely valuable teacher, but if that's his main role then why the fuck is he on NXT/NXT-UK still? Him being an instructor is the only conclusion I can come to for him still being employed by WWE, so his inclusion as the unofficial gatekeeper is mind-boggling. 

Didn't they advertise this episode on RAW as well? Christ on a bike.

The only shining light from this episode was the Dijak squash. Mansoor looked great in defeat and Dijak looked fantastic.

[The Dart]

1 hour ago, Accident Prone said:

 That seemed like a very tired 'end of tapings' crowd too.

Still got next week's show from these tapings to go !

[HarmonicGenerator]

Kushida’s got a proper uphill struggle ahead of him now. That was the first time I’d ever seen him and I absolutely do not get why I would make any sort of fuss about him. He’ll make a decent replacement for Itami on 205 if he’s lucky.

That Dream segment felt like an exclusive preview of how they’ll kill him on the main roster. Extremely cringey. Dijakovic is counting the months until he gets his Keith Lee rematch.

Not a fan of the Undisputed breakup tease either. If ever the main rosters needed to raid NXT for teams it’s now, and nobody wants to see Bobby Fish or Roderick Strong go it alone. 

This was not NXT’s best episode. But it did effectively have Robbie Brookside doing a “calm down calm down” routine to Bianca Belair so there was the odd shining light.

[DavidB6937]

I didn't have any issues with the Kushida match really. I'm happy with Ohno being the knowledgeable veteran trying to protect his yard and being familiar with the opponents coming through. Tells an interesting story for me rather than the usual 'undefeated newbie' tale that they often book themselves into a corner with.

Admittedly I've followed the guy for years so not sure how I'd feel if I wasn't familiar with him but I'm still looking forward to what the future holds for him.

[King Pitcos]

What happened to Kassius quitting NXT? Did he just turn up the next week as though it never happened, or has he explained it?

[air_raid]

Its a no-win situation. Kushida's best work is when he's the babyface fighting from underneath, struggling, and eventually (you hope) finding a way of digging it out and winning. It's extremely hard to generate underdog support against Ohno who every fucker watching knows has only been put in the match to lose to him.

[Supremo]

I really want them to go all the way and make Kushida a time traveller. Might as well give it a go, it’s not like he’s going to make it anyway.

Think of the skits and daft vignettes you could do! He goes back to the original 2010 NXT and ends up stuck doing shitty obstacle courses. Or send him back to last Summer and reveal it was actually him who accidentally hit Aleister Black with a Delorean. Make it so that shitty Gargano heel turn never happened.

Didn’t an Independent promotion do time travel once? Chikara, or something?

[Accident Prone]

7 minutes ago, Supremo said:

Didn’t an Independent promotion do time travel once? Chikara, or something?

I remember something like Archibald Peck (the writer who recently left WWE, coincidentally) time travelling to a different dimension due to a really hard spinning backfist by Eddie Kingston, and it all culminated in ludicrous fashion. I'd ask @BomberPatthough as I'm probably wrong on some (most) fronts.

[Tiki]

29 minutes ago, Supremo said:

Didn’t an Independent promotion do time travel once? Chikara, or something?

Yep, Chikara. IIRC the whole promotion time travelled.

[BomberPat]

18 minutes ago, Accident Prone said:

I remember something like Archibald Peck (the writer who recently left WWE, coincidentally) time travelling to a different dimension due to a really hard spinning backfist by Eddie Kingston, and it all culminated in ludicrous fashion. I'd ask @BomberPatthough as I'm probably wrong on some (most) fronts.

Yeah - Archibald Peck managed to beat Eddie, who at the time was largely unbeatable, and when asked how he managed it, explained that Eddie's "Backfist To The Future" (the name of his spinning backfist finisher in CHIKARA) in a previous match had actually knocked him into the future, where he acquired a 2016 CHIKARA almanac, and learned how to defeat Kingston. 

It was pretty clear at the time that this was intended as one in a series of ludicrous (usually pop culture referencing) excuses that Peck used to deflect from the fact that he was obviously just cheating. For whatever reason, fans picked up on this one more than any of the other promos Peck cut, and took it literally. Perhaps because CHIKARA has alluded to time travel before (usually time travel in CHIKARA is a red herring, but they did once have two versions of the same time-travelling knight fight in a "Loser Leaves The Present" match).

When heel versions of established CHIKARA babyfaces started showing up, fans on CHIKARA's message board immediately jumped on the idea of them being from an alternate universe, which later led to the idea of this being "the darkest timeline". Ignoring the fact that CHIKARA flat-out told us that these guys were just disgruntled ex-trainees, people became convinced of an all-encompassing time travel storyline going on.

Peck, in a later match, was haunted by his doppelganger appearing on the balcony - allegedly a version of himself from another timeline - and, after the CHIKARA shutdown angle happened, showed up with 3.0 in a DeLorean to make the save. I'm pretty sure this was only ever a nod to the fans who figured it was all about time travel all along rather than that actually being the case. 

 

My favourite part of all of this, though, is that long after Archibald Peck left the promotion, they had Mike Quackenbush doing an in-ring promo to reveal the new CHIKARA yearbook, only for him to be jumped by Peck, who stole the book and ran off. So, some 5-6 years after the initial promo, they actually bothered to come full circle on the whole "almanac from the future" bit.

[Accident Prone]

Yes! A lot of that sounds very familiar. I didn't know that CHIKARA never intended for this to happen though and never fully went with it. Bit of a shame really, as an angle like that could've been incredible if they committed 100% to it.

[BomberPat]

1 minute ago, Accident Prone said:

Yes! A lot of that sounds very familiar. I didn't know that CHIKARA never intended for this to happen though and never fully went with it. Bit of a shame really, as an angle like that could've been incredible if they committed 100% to it.

I'm sort of reading between the lines, and probably forgetting bits. Fans definitely started relating everything to time travel when the company were actively telling them otherwise, and I'm pretty sure it was never the intended explanation.

That said, the evil organisation behind a lot of CHIKARA's kayfabe ills back then (and arguably still now) was called Titor Conglomerate, which people immediately related to internet time traveler John Titor (one for the Fortean thread, that). Whether that was intentional or not, I don't think we ever really found out. 

There were definitely people involved with CHIKARA annoyed that the fans were coming up with ludicrously complicated alternate universe explanations for stories to the extent that they were actively ignoring the actual, relatively mundane explanations they were being given, so I always assumed the Delorean was a nod to those who thought that the time travel angle was legit. 

It being CHIKARA, though, they did make sure to have Archibald Peck show up in all the right places at the right times, so that his time travel explanation does check out if you want to believe it - and the presence of his doppelganger would suggest that there are at least two different Archibald Pecks out there, which again supports the theory. And then the whole Titor thing - though, again, fans drew the connection to John Titor, I don't think CHIKARA have ever acknowledged/commented on that.

[Accident Prone]

Pat, your encyclopedic knowledge of CHIKARA never fails to impress and I hope you pen a book about the promotion some day,

[BomberPat]

15 minutes ago, Accident Prone said:

Pat, your encyclopedic knowledge of CHIKARA never fails to impress and I hope you pen a book about the promotion some day,

It's mostly just that 2010-12 period that I was following very closely; anything pre around 2008, and the last couple of years, I'm pretty patchy on. Mostly because, as much as the "it's all time travel/alternate dimensions!" theories annoyed me, that period really lent itself to inviting fans to read between the lines, look for clues, and debate what was going on, and offered a lot of supplementary material ("in-universe" websites etc.) to support that.

They seem to be going in that direction again now with one of their storylines involving a couple of YouTube channels with no obvious connection to the promotion, but I don't have the time or the commitment to do all the reading into it these days. 

It helps that the time when I know a lot about CHIKARA coincides with when I was working quite closely with CHIKARA talent as well, so I've got a better idea of the logic behind what they were doing, and what the perception of the story was within the company compared to the fans' takes.