3 Ups & 3 Downs From Last Night's NXT

2. A Real (Convoluted) Man's Man

Last night's main event was the biggest match in the televised history of NXT. Both in terms of the scale with 60 entire minutes taking up the bulk of the broadcast, and in the scope with four former champions all in the ring at the same time. Of all the men to ever hold the NXT Championship, almost a quarter of them were in this ring, and between them they've held the gold for over a third of its entire lineage.

So I'm going to have to break this matchup into three entries. One dealing with the set up to it all (hello, you are here), one dealing with the actual execution of the thing, and one that examines the result. Let's begin.

Despite the incredible statistics listed above, and the constant assertions from commentary that these four men were the lynchpins/cornerstones/standard bearers/icons/tentpoles/whatever of NXT, the prestige this match should have carried was woefully lacking. In short, every single one of these men lost their last meaningful match. Totally undermining this idea that they're above the rest of the pack.

Gargano came up short in a ladder match for a supposedly lesser belt, Balor didn't even qualify for it after being beaten by Dream, Cole beat an NFL player, yes, but he also dropped the belt to Keith Lee in an era of no automatic rematches, and Tomasso Ciampa was literally squashed by Karrion Kross.

Yes, the excitement of it all meant that the announcement still went off with a pop, but are you telling me that if Pat McAfee had beaten Cole he'd be in here? What if Thatcher had beaten Balor at TakeOver? What has Gargano done to earn this that Reed, Grimes and Dream haven't?

The answer is they're "bigger stars", but that sort of booking logic is why WWE wanted Orton vs Batista at WrestleMania 30, and not Daniel Bryan. There's no Yes Movement for someone in the midcard here, granted, but the principle is the same.