5 Ups & 5 Downs From NXT Vengeance Day 2024

3. Forced Line-Reading

Axiom WWE
WWE

The less said about the vignette involving Axiom, Nathan Frazer, Malik Blade, Edris Enofe and Brinley Reece, the better. But that kind of defeats the purpose of a review column.

The segment aired was apparently taped Tuesday, with Blade and Enofe discussing the pros and cons from their loss in the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, which led to Frazer swooping in and being a smarmy goof while Axiom was everyone’s proxy and just groaned. Meanwhile Reece grated on before cartwheeling off. All of this was just to set up a tag match for Tuesday.

While this wasn’t terrible, it’s the kind of unnecessary and fake exposition that WWE and NXT love to throw on TV. Had it aired on Tuesday, most probably wouldn’t have flinched, as this sort of goofy segment is NXT’s bread and butter. But on a PLE? Pass.

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.