4 Ups And 3 Downs From WWE NXT (Oct 21)

5. A Clean Pair Of Heels... And Kushida

Quite a bizarre cold opening for the show this week, as NXT dispensed with the traditional Slipknot-fuelled recap and just jumped straight into Velveteen Dream's entrance with Kushidea apparently given the old jobber's introduction. I'm not saying that someone in production messed up the timings for the start of the show, meaning they missed the latter and just sent Ciampa out to salvage it, but I am thinking it extremely loudly.

One of the major criticisms leveled at the show in recent weeks is that, while they've got no problem sticking their big names together and giving them the requisite time to construct something wonderful, they've repeatedly proved too scared to let them go to a clean finish. A booking plague on the main roster, that's now tricked down to considerable queasiness here.

So while all the minutes leading up the finish were captivating and punishing in the extreme, the sight of Kushida pinning Tomasso Ciampa (with a German suplex!!!!) is to be greeted with joy unreserved. Yes, he did get clocked with Dream's cast, but that's not an interference spot, that's not a screwjob, that's just something that happened. Clean wins push stories forward, screwy wins just keep things in a holding pattern.