4 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE NXT New Year's Evil (Review)

1. A Different Finish

You’re completely valid if you felt like the finish to the NXT Championship match was a cop-out. But it also worked as a way to continue the feud without an extremely cheap finish that diminished either man.

During the title bout, Grayson Waller whipped Bron Breakker in the corner and the middle turnbuckle broke away from the post, collapsing and nearly grinding the match to a halt momentarily. The two wrestlers continued to grapple while the ring crew and referees scrambled to reassemble the ropes during a picture-in-picture commercial break. So far, it felt like a well-covered mistake.

Then as the match – which was nicely worked – progressed, Waller set up for his middle rope elbow drop on a prone Breakker, only for the rope to once again break. Grayson fell to the outside and smacked his head, while Bron struggled to regain his footing. Waller wasn’t able to get back into the ring before the 10 count, giving the champ a count-out win that he wasn’t happy with.

This obviously sets up the obvious rematch at Vengeance Day, with the steel cage stipulation announced at the end of the show. The fact this hasn’t been done in NXT in a good while helped, as well as establishing that the rope was already problematic. And then you got a mention from Vic Joseph that the turnbuckles had been “double reinforced” to prevent it from happening again.