NXT - Post NXT Takeover discussion in progress

[King Mal the Glorious]

37 minutes ago, Supremo said:

In the land of five foot Indy darlings the lanky bloke who can just about keep up becomes king.

 

So, he's Corbin 2.0?

I must admit I've mostly lost interest in current wrestling, but up until mid 2019 I was an avid NXT watcher. I still occasionally check the results and watch clips but there's not really anyone there that scream "next big thing" to me. If anything, the ship seems to have sailed on most of the guys I did think had that potential.

[Arch Stanton]

51 minutes ago, Supremo said:

Honestly, and I never thought I'd ever say this, Damian Priest is your best bet of someone moving up and succeeding. Tall, good look, weird voice. You can imagine Vince loving him. Plus, absolutely nobody is talking about it because nobody really talks about anything in NXT, but Damian Priest is currently having a really underrated run. Banger after banger with guys like Gargano and Balor. I always thought he was a useless sack of shit in ROH but he's surprised me massively in NXT and proven that with the right guy he can have shockingly great matches. It’s the natural evolution of NXT. In the land of five foot Indy darlings the lanky bloke who can just about keep up becomes king.

I'm with you on this. He really stands out amongst that current roster as a guy that looks like a star and carries himself well. @King Mal the Glorious - the Corbin comparison is a decent one, and I am sure Priest would be delighted if he ever got half the opportunities Corbin has had on the main roster. I'd back him to do really well if he ever did.

[DavidB6937]

Priest is fucking brilliant. Admittedly I did enjoy him when he first came in, even with low expectations off what I'd seen before. I just enjoyed the entrance tbh and he wasn't terrible in the ring. But yeah the last few months they've really had it click with him. His persona feels a lot more natural, as well as his confidence and charisma - which certainly sounds by design based on interviews he's given etc - and his matches are really well structured to highlight his strong points for sure.

If he gets a Corbin opportunity on the main roster rather than a T-Bar one then I'd be really happy for him.

[CavemanLynn]

2 hours ago, Supremo said:

Jesus fucking wept. At what point does somebody at WWE draw the line? You've got actual sportsmen rolling in and making your "Superstars" look like cosplaying backyard scrubs. If you're a decent talker, like Cole is, just be a mouthpiece if you're not going to fill out and look like a combat athlete. You're at arguably the greatest facility in the world for wrestling training. We used to laugh at Crash Holly thinking he was big.

[BomberPat]

I don't think Cole's size is particularly the issue - Conor McGregor's arguably the most famous fighter in the world at 5'7" and 170lbs and it's never stopped your man on the street thinking he's legitimate, nor did it stop him having the highest drawing PPV fight ever with a smaller opponent - it's more that I don't really buy any of his offence, or find anything compelling in his character that 100 people haven't done better before or since. 

[Nick James]

I have never really understood the utter hatred for the look of the Undisputed Era guys. All four of them came from ROH and a few have had runs in NJPW etc, was their size an issue there? Thats a genuine question by the way, not a sarcastic retort. 

I think sometimes there is a lot of unfair criticism lobbed at NXT these days since the emergence of AEW, some fair, some not. The last few weeks of NXT has been rather good, sure they are not at the heights they were a few years ago, but were they at those heights as they were relatively new and something different? Similarly to AEW now? 

The only traction this thread seems to get is how 'shit' NXT is these days or how bad people look and a good portion of those posts usually contain 'I havent watched for a while' or 'I dont watch these days'.

I like to be entertained, both NXT and AEW entertain me, once it fails to do so, I will stop watching. 

[DavidB6937]

5 minutes ago, Nick James said:

I have never really understood the utter hatred for the look of the Undisputed Era guys. All four of them came from ROH and a few have had runs in NJPW etc, was their size an issue there? Thats a genuine question by the way, not a sarcastic retort. 

I think sometimes there is a lot of unfair criticism lobbed at NXT these days since the emergence of AEW, some fair, some not. The last few weeks of NXT has been rather good, sure they are not at the heights they were a few years ago, but were they at those heights as they were relatively new and something different? Similarly to AEW now? 

The only traction this thread seems to get is how 'shit' NXT is these days or how bad people look and a good portion of those posts usually contain 'I havent watched for a while' or 'I dont watch these days'.

I like to be entertained, both NXT and AEW entertain me, once it fails to do so, I will stop watching. 

I must admit I do find the regular criticism over NXT on here a bit surprising. It used to be quite loved before AEW came along, and I admittedly watch both every week and find something to enjoy on both most weeks, but maybe AEW's more towards peoples tastes on here nowadays. It is what it is really - I think it's safe to say that NXT's best days are behind it (currently) but I still think they manage to put out a decent product most of the time. But yeah, it has been a bit depressing seeing it go from something that a lot of people loved and enjoyed to something that mostly gets ignored or moaned about.

Don't get me wrong - some of the criticism is justified but I do find I enjoy it more if I don't come in this thread sometimes, but that can go for a lot of things online and not just wrestling. I do enjoy the discussions etc on the whole on here.

[Arch Stanton]

36 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I don't think Cole's size is particularly the issue - Conor McGregor's arguably the most famous fighter in the world at 5'7" and 170lbs and it's never stopped your man on the street thinking he's legitimate, nor did it stop him having the highest drawing PPV fight ever with a smaller opponent - it's more that I don't really buy any of his offence, or find anything compelling in his character that 100 people haven't done better before or since. 

Conor McGregor only fights other men that are under six foot tall and 170lbs though. Nobody would be buying him as a threat to the UFC's heavyweight division. That's why Cole's size has always been an issue with me.

[HarmonicGenerator]

I'm one of the people who's gone off NXT in the last year, and I apologise if I've been a moaner in this thread on the rare occasion I've watched a TakeOver or a clip since I stopped watching regularly. I'm sure I've gone over the reasons why in the past, but here's a quick summary:

 - The move to two hours and TV in the US. NXT used to be perfect wrestling viewing for me. Pop the Network on for an hour, after work on a Thursday. Perfect. I didn't have the time for a two hour show during the week, and it was going to have to wait until Saturday.

 - Dynamite is partly to blame here, not necessarily for quality purposes, but it took first position on a Saturday, and again, I didn't have time for both. 

 - The fact I could never figure out when exactly NXT was going onto the Network didn't help.

 - Nor did the fact that after WrestleMania this year, I binned off the Network, and NXT by itself wasn't enough to keep me paying.

 - Out of their control, but things taking place in the empty PC didn't lend themselves to being must-watch. I actually missed Full Sail!

 - One of the things I liked about the content of NXT was that the roster kept changing. People would move up, new people would move in. Nobody stuck around forever. Since the move to TV, there's a group of people who feel like they HAVE stuck around forever. 

 - I know they've changed up their roster a fair bit in the past year, and people have had changes of character and turned and things, but I was bored of seeing Undisputed Era, Ciampa and Gargano on NXT. Part of the appeal of watching NXT for me was knowing everyone's time there was limited and it's not anymore. (I can pinpoint the exact moment I realised NXT wasn't doing it for me anymore and it was halfway through a Ciampa vs. Austin Theory match near the beginning of the year.)

 - This is mostly down to the guys mentioned above again, but since they became the top guys in NXT, I can't get on with their main events. Too many false finishes, too many kickouts, too much melodrama. That has changed a little this year, but what matches I have watched (Lee-Cole, Lee-Kross, O'Reilly-Balor) haven't brought me back round.

 - Because it's two hours, most people now appear every week and it further adds to the feel of welcomes being outstayed. I'm not excited when someone shows up or has a match because they've been on every week. It doesn't feel different to main WWE, which I haven't watched regularly for many years. There are even too many titles now!

 - The final main reason is probably because there's just nobody on there I care enough about to want to see. When I watched NXT weekly from when Owens debuted until late last year, there were always half a dozen guys and girls I wanted to see. Zayn, Nakamura, Aries, Joe, Itami, Balor, Dream, Black, Bliss, Andrade, Ember, Asuka, Belair, American Alpha, Bazsler. AOP, Rhyno, Bayley, Ricochet, McIntyre, Roode, Revival, I could go on. By the beginning of this year, there was maybe only Rhea Ripley and Pete Dunne who'd make me take notice when they appeared. It doesn't help that the steady stream of 'hottest free agents' dried up a year or two ago (probably not coincidentally, around the time AEW got going). The likes of Kushida just don't do it for me like those people you'd see sat ringside at Takeovers past.

 

There are still things I enjoy in NXT. I read the results every week and I watch the clips of matches and angles that sound interesting. Drake Maverick has been ace this year. I'm glad Dunne and Ripley are back. Karrion Kross' squashes were fun. But all of the above means there's going to have to be something really good to get me back in. I'll try War Games this year and see how I find it.

[Nick James]

That's a great post and in many ways, how I currently view NXT. I still watch NXT, Dynamite and the occasional episode of Raw because I get up with the little one early on a Tuesday and a Thursday so tend to watch them on my phone while Peppa Pig plays in the background. Your post perfectly highlights why viewing figures have dropped off an interest has waned, resulting in less posts. 

My post was more aimed at there is very little by way of positivity in this thread, if any traffic at all. Similarly to how in the Dynamite thread you will get similar people slating whatever happens on the show as they want it to fail. I just can't understand how NXT has become a beacon of hate within 12 months. It seems that its the cool thing at the moment to hate NXT and everything WWE does, in the same way that it was cool to hate Raw and Smackdown, when NXT was at its peak. 

[LaGoosh]

Wasn't the whole appeal of NXT seeing new guys coming in regularly, following them on their journey as their characters and skills grew then when they're at their peak they get drafted to Raw or Smackdown and the whole wonderful cycle starts again? Now it's just another WWE show. The fact that the current roster is so bereft of future big stars pretty much negates the entire fucking point of its existence. 

[CavemanLynn]

38 minutes ago, Arch Stanton said:

Conor McGregor only fights other men that are under six foot tall and 170lbs though. Nobody would be buying him as a threat to the UFC's heavyweight division. That's why Cole's size has always been an issue with me.

McGregor was also small but looked fucking rock. He was lean and muscular with the added weight in his shoulders and traps making him look bigger than he actually was.

I Googled McAfee, and Wiki lists him as 106kg (so a shade over 230lbs) and 1.85cm (just over 6ft). Looking at where Cole head reaches, that surely puts Cole sub 5'9". And yes, I wouldn't care if he wrestled that way or was booked that way i.e. massively outweighed against the majority of his opponents. As funny as the McAfee kick gif is, it's still a strike he's seen coming with no weight behind it. Fuck off.

It's too late now obviously, but I really wish they'd embraced it and had the UE expand to around a dozen diddly indy guys, selling them as a pack of rabid dogs rather than individually being able to go toe-to-toe with anyone (as the WWE formula goes). There should've been fucking swarms of them in every match. Sure, if you could get a hold of one for a little bit, you could kick his arse, but not without a dozen boots and fists raining down on you from all directions as soon as you get near one.

[King Mal the Glorious]

A large part of what put me off was investing in guys in NXT and being excited for their future, only to see them fail to make an impact on the main roster. It's like watching a TV series with a bad finale, it just feels like a waste of time in the end.

[The Cutting Edge]

I'd say NXT has maybe suffered the most with covid crowd issues, Raw/SD did for awhile but thunderdome has helped, AEW always had guys at ringside then limited fans for past few months.

NXT needs the crowd to help it and make guys a bigger deal, also think if things were normal guys like UE, Gargano etc would've gone to main roster this year, surely for the Era guys War Games should be there last before moving over.

I thought from sept til Feb it was a great show, Balor heel turn and run was great, Ciampa was back, Lee and Riddle were on the rise, the cross brand survivor series build was exciting to watch too.

But without crowd it became somewhat lifeless and lacked energy,  I'm a big NXT fan but it needs a few call ups to freshen things up.

Adam Coles size doesn't bother me too much since he mostly wrestles to his size, but I've said it here before it's pretty unforgivable that anyone especially in NXT has a crap or average build since they have a great gym, coaches, nutritionists and everything else going for them, it's not too hard to pack on some meat under those conditions

[Arch Stanton]

@HarmonicGenerator You've hit the nail on the head with that post, nearly all of the reasons you've given for going off NXT are the same for me. Some of them hadn't even really occurred to me until now.