5 Ups & 5 Downs From Last Night's WWE NXT (Dec 11)
2. Tonal Mishmash Reveals Stark Reality
This was very strange, and very damning.
Breezango's hot doctors entrance was amusing, but the audience hasn't yet learned to expect it, so it didn't receive much of a pop. It's nice to hear Beth Phoenix become a real human being with her charming innuendos, and charm should have marked the tone here; Breezango are a comedy act, as are the Singhs, but this was a bizarrely brutal match that came off like main event cosplay of (albeit quite impressive) high spots and crunching apron bumps. It was an on-brand NXT match wrestled by two acts that should be used to vary the tone of the show. It wasn't bad, but rather misjudged. NXT is serious, intense business. At it's best, it an awesome rush of a show, but it's rarely fun. This should have been fun.
Perhaps it wasn't fun because the wafer-thin ranks of the tag team division necessitate an artificial push for depth, which is precisely what this was. Undisputed ERA Vs. Breezango has immense, lowkey potential as a story match, but the dynamic requires that on-paper contrast to soar.
How much more amazing would it have been, had Breeze and Fandango started ripping them apart in the 15th minute of a TakeOver match without first wasting it on TV?