4 Ups And 4 Downs From WWE NXT DEADL1NE
1. The Return Of Black Goo!
The ThunderDome Era is not looked back on fondly for several reasons, not all of which were under WWE’s control.
However, one of the stranger aspects of taping Raw and SmackDown without a live audience was the use of “black goo” with some of their wrestlers. Alexa Bliss managed to make Randy Orton vomit goo during a backstage promo, and the viscous liquid would resurface a few times during this era.
The return to live crowds should have signaled the death of the goo, but it returned Saturday night at DEADL1NE. Isla Dawn and Alba Fyre were having a pretty competitive grudge match when Dawn grabbed the referee seconds before eating a Swanton Bomb. Instead of counting the fall, the ref stood in the corner spitting up black goo.
He was incapacitated, and despite then having two more refs at ringside, they both missed Isla shoving Fyre into an exposed turnbuckle to pick up the win. If you’re keeping score, this was a mystic wrestler using dark arts to make a referee spit up goo, but she needed to use a metal turnbuckle ring to win a wrestling match.
This is why this stuff almost never works these days, because it just sounds so insane to say out loud.