7 Ups & 3 Downs From Last Night's WWE NXT (Oct 23)
2. Matt Riddle Is Da Man
An MMA fighter, NXT honoured the strategist by having him immediately scout Cameron Grimes’ over finish.
The match soon erupted into a beautiful exhibition of Riddle’s technique and personality alike; that Jackhammer spot—deployed so arbitrarily as to be a complete bantering off—was impeccable character work that popped the Full Sail crowd huge.
Cameron Grimes caught Riddle with a superbly-timed flip-into-a-German-suplex, Fénix-like in its smooth execution but adapted in a way that was congruous to this modern North American-styled fight. The exchanges at the finish were electric—the usual sort of modern counter-driven fare deployed believably and with real intensity—but was Grimes the best opponent for this latest (excellent) Riddle sprint squash? NXT has spent a decent amount of time building him as a player with the ability to chew through the completion with one bite.
It was a bit wasteful, but his finish wasn’t buried at least. The word “burial” belongs nowhere near this result.