4 Ups And 4 Downs From Last Night's WWE NXT (June 17)

2. Joe vs Owens Suffers From Taping Fatigue

The last four NXT episodes were all taping in advance, on the 21st of May. For the audience at home, this creates anticipation for pre-advertised bouts. For the crowd in attendance, they saw Owens and Joe fight separate matches, agree to fight each other, then have their fight, all in the space of one evening. This damaged the match a little. Not a lot, Joe and Owens are still too good at in-ring storytelling for that, but both they and the crowd seemed noticeably tired. Considering that both men had already wrestled, their strikes seemed to lack that extra bit of spice. Likewise, even though Owens/Joe was advertised in advance for the audience at home, the crowd in attendance were never given the chance to really let the anticipation grow. The match still had a slight Big Fight Feel, but if NXT had held off a little bit longer, let the fan's anticipation build until the next set of TV tapings, the atmosphere would have likely been exponentially better. It's a shame, because the first meeting of Joe and Owens really had the potential to be a blockbuster, instead of just good.