{"id":13800,"date":"2020-01-10T02:55:41","date_gmt":"2020-01-10T02:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/?p=13800"},"modified":"2020-01-10T02:55:52","modified_gmt":"2020-01-10T02:55:52","slug":"nxt-report-card-1-8-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/2020\/01\/10\/nxt-report-card-1-8-20\/","title":{"rendered":"NXT Report Card 1\/8\/20"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t even go here.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bianca Belair\u2019s one-liner to Toni Storm stole the night! Jokes aside, this was a well-done opening segment with the two women\u2019s champions and some challengers. I wasn\u2019t at all shocked when the ensuing brawl was booked into a tag team match. It\u2019s predictable at this point but still enjoyable! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: A <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rhea Ripley, Candice LeRae, and Toni Storm vs Kay Lee Ray, Bianca Belair, and Io Shirai<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s be real; NXT has a fantastic women\u2019s roster\nand these six women showed just that in this opening tag team match. It felt as\nthough each woman had time to shine and we still got a little bit of tension in\nthe babyface team with two potential challengers in LeRae and Storm. I also\nliked that they incorporated the rivalries that have been going on in the past\nyear. Continuity!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner: Rhea Ripley. Candice LeRae, and Toni Storm<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: A<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imperium vs Forgotten Sons-Dusty Tag Classic<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imperium is so intimidating with their classical\nmusic theme, simple black and white gear, and the air of austerity they\nproject. And the Forgotten Sons just looked raggedy next to them. Anyways, this\nwas a great little sprint of a match. I was actually so into it that I failed\nto realize how short it was until I watched it back. It\u2019s a little sad that the\nteam who made it to the finals last year was eliminated in the first round but\nI think they want Imperium to have more exposure here in the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner: Imperium<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: B<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: B<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Broserweights<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matt Riddle explained how the team of himself and\nPete Dunne came about and my goodness, did he sound like that high dude in your\nclass asking to be project partners. It was adorable though, as are most things\nRiddle does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not Graded<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Austin Theory vs Joaquin Wilde<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a short, fun match with a nice television\nwin for Theory. I don\u2019t know much about Mr. Theory but there have been\nrumblings about him for some time. And he had a pretty good match against\nRoderick Strong as well!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner: Austin Thoery<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not Graded<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Undisputed Era vs Gallus-Dusty Tag Classic<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Undisputed Era has been spoiling us with their tag\nmatches as of late, but this one was nowhere near a top-tier bout. That\u2019s okay;\neverything doesn\u2019t have to ring all the bells all the time. It was a solid\nbrawl and in the end, the right team moved on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner: Undisputed Era<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: B-<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnny Promo<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will forever be a fan of people basically telling Johnny Gargano to shut up. And Finn Balor (with more and more of his Prince Devitt showing) did just that. I\u2019m all about this match happening at Takeover: Portaland so let\u2019s make it happen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: B+ <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alex Shelley is going to be Kushida\u2019s tag team partner for the Dusty Classic so the Time Splitters get an automatic A+!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mia Yim vs Kayden Carter<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have finally made peace with Carter\u2019s name change.\nAlso she has lots of potential and Yim was a perfect dance partner for her. The\nlittle show of sportsmanship at the end was so cute! I hope we get more\ninteractions between them and Carter gets loads more matches to help her get\nbetter. And I think this match was a good choice to introduce Robert Stone and\nChelsea Green into the mix as it was more of a rebound win for Yim more so than\na match to advance an established story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner: Mia Yim<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: C<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keith Lee vs Dominik Dijakovic vs Damian Priest vs Cameron Grimes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We love a good main event! This was arguably the\nbest match on the show and everyone got their moment in the sun. And Keith Lee\n(in all his glory) won! This win actually cemented his spot as the number one\ncontender for the North American Championship after months of start-stop\npushes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner: Keith Lee<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: A<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ciampa\u2019s Promos<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to point out just how easily Ciampa has\nbeen able to slide back into this creepy, manipulative puppet master character\nsince returning from injury. We didn\u2019t see as much of that when he first\nreturned; he genuinely just seemed happy to be back. But now we\u2019re starting to\nsee his obsession with Goldie return and I\u2019m excited to see what king of mind\ngames he plays with Adam Cole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: B+<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Final Thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have to say that I liked the crossover between NXT\nUK and NXT. It helped build up the hype for the UK\u2019s upcoming Takeover event as\nwell as give us some great matches. The only thing that\u2019s been bugging me\nlately about NXT is that there doesn\u2019t seem to be a cohesive timeline for the\nshow. It tends to be match, match, promo\/interview, match, and so on. This\nworked fine for the one-hour time slot on the Network but with two hours on\ntelevision, it seems clunky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall Grade: B+<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou don\u2019t even go here.\u201d Bianca Belair\u2019s one-liner to Toni Storm stole the night! Jokes aside, this was a well-done opening segment with the two women\u2019s champions and some challengers. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":12667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,186,22,185,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-featured","category-nxt","category-reviews","category-wwe","category-wwe-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9jnWd-3AA","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/nxt-logo-5.jpg?fit=960%2C540&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13801,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13800\/revisions\/13801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}