7 Ups & 3 Downs From Last Night's WWE NXT (Oct 23)
3. Another Contrived Match: Made
Following Matt Riddle’s win, Cameron Grimes refused the fist bump.
Tyler Bate, standing at ringside like a magnet for contrivance that trope is, appealed to his sense of sportsmanship. Grimes, uninterested, shoved him away. Bate responded with a punch, setting up a match between the two of the sort that Mauro Ranallo will inevitably frame as Bate’s quest to “make a name for himself” at Grimes’ expense.
Very good match, dry build: that is very much the latter-day NXT story, one the lack of a competitive sporting framework apparently makes inevitable. NXT is trapped between two worlds: the scripted nature of itself and the competition-matters ethos it spouts without really qualifying.
So it’s all very much “Looking to make a name for himself” and it’s very much dry.