5 Ups & 2 Downs From Last Night's WWE NXT (Mar 28)
Debuts, detours, and destruction.
Last night's NXT featured less than 15 minutes of cumulative in-ring action, making it one of the least wrestling-centric episodes in quite some time. A surprise, given that the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic is currently in full flow, but the producers at least reserved 10 solid minutes main event ring time, with Pete Dunne and Roderick Strong facing Sanity.
NXT no. 441 was all about the angles. It was a narrative-heavy show that established a couple of fresh TakeOver matches, one of which will see the introduction of a brand new championship. William Regal announced the North American Title at the top of the show, and set the first bout up throughout the night, with six of NXT's biggest and brightest set to contest a ladder match in New Orleans.
EC3 and Ricochet both debuted as part of this angle, though their first impressions were nothing alike. Elsewhere, the tormented Tommaso Ciampa learned his TakeOver fate, Lars Sullivan returned to action, and Andrade 'Cien' Almas turned up the heat in his feud with Aleister Black.
It's hard to think of the last time NXT delivered a big, fat dud, and this was another quality episode, with the developmental brand once again proving itself WWE's tightest weekly show...