It’s debut time here in The Two Sheds Review…..sort of, as we take a first look at what WWE’s NXT has to offer with a review of Takeover, shown this past Sunday night on Sky Sports here in Britain.
The broadcast began with Adam Rose taking on Camacho.
This is the first time I’ve seen Mr. Rose and his entrance, and I’m of the opinion that he’s probably an acquired taste.
The match itself wasn’t too bad. Rose frustrated Camacho early on with his carefree attitude, until the Mexican managed to him down a peg or two. His offence didn’t last too long though as Rose quickly took the win after taking Camacho down with an ace crusher-like move.
Then it was on to the number one contender’s match between Sami Zayn and Tyler Breeze.
I’m guessing that Mr. Breeze is the latest pretty boy in the company, judging by his obsession with selfies. Either that or he’s the illegitimate son of The Narcissist. As for Zayn, I remember when he was a Mexican luchadore!
Now this was a pretty decent match. Although I’ve seen quite a bit of Zayn in his previous guise I haven’t seen that much of Breeze, and I was impressed with what both of these guys had to offer.
It was one of those back and forth affairs that ticked all of the right boxes. Both guys put in good performances, and although there was one slightly messy moment everything else was perfect.
The finish came after Breeze defended Zayn’s Yakuza kick with what appeared to be a low blow. He then connected with his spinning heel kick, the beauty shot, to get the pin and a shot at the NXT title.
After a brief confrontation between Bulgarian/Russian Rusev and Mojo Rawley it was on to the first title match of the show as Ric Flair’s baby girl Charlotte took on Natalya, accompanied by Uncle Bret Hart, for the vacant NXT Women’s title.
Now I have a question for you ALL. Why can’t Divas matches be like this on pay per view? This certainly wasn’t filler material, and it was a damn good match.
For just over fifteen minutes these two put on one of the best women’s matches I’ve seen in ages. It was one of those encounters you just couldn’t take your eyes off in case you missed something good.
Natalya was in her usual impressive form, and Charlotte was more than equal to the task here. She was certainly more than able to keep up with her more illustrious and experienced opponent.
The highlight for me was when they brought out their famous relative’s signature holds. It led to a very dramatic exchange where Charlotte added insult to injury when she used the sharpshooter. Sadly for Nattie she couldn’t return the favour with the figure four, because Charlotte blocked that attempt and took her down with her death to the queen finisher for the title winning pin.
The main event saw Tyson Kidd challenging Adrian Neville for the NXT title.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the artist formerly known as PAC in action, and judging by this performance he certainly seems to be heading into the right direction, because this is one of the best matches I’ve seen this year.
Our esteemed commentators kept telling us how Kidd and Neville were like mirror images of each other, and it was this similarity in styles is what made this match so good.
Like the previous match it was one of those encounters you couldn’t take your eyes off. We had plenty of mat wrestling, some hard hitting exchanges and some tremendous high flying. There were times when gravity seemed to forget both men.
In the end it was my fellow Brit who emerged triumphant. After taking Kidd down with a top rope hurricanrana he went over to the opposite top rope and connected with his corkscrew moonsault for the retaining pin. Afterwards both men earned a standing ovation from the fans in attendance, although Kidd wasn’t exactly in a good mood as he left the arena.
In conclusion – my first viewing of a complete NXT show was definitely a positive one.
The future of WWE is certainly in good hands if this show is anything to go by. Although it may take some time for me to get used to Adam Rose I can say I was really impressed with the rest of the performances on this card. The matches here delivered big time, and I can see why everyone seems to be raving about NXT right now.
As for my match of the night no-prize you’ve probably realised that there were three contenders, but I’m going to show a bit of British bias by giving it to the Neville/Kidd main event.
So with all of that out of the way there’s just one more thing left to do, and that’s to give NXT Takeover the big thumbs up.
By day I’m an unemployed retail worker, and at weekends I volunteer at a local museum, but by night I’m the author of The Two Sheds Review, Britain’s longest running professional wrestling and mixed martial arts blog. Visit my site at www.twoshedsreview.vze.com. It’s been online in one form or another since June 2000!
