5 Ups And 3 Downs From Last Night's WWE NXT (Nov 25)

Downs...

3. A Trio Of Vanilla Babyface Promos

Being a villain's way more fun. One of the biggest criticisms hurled at the PG era of wrestling is that the babyface heroes have lost their edge, that the inability to curse or do non-PG damage has regressed heroes back to the 'take your vitamins' days of yore. While it's wrong to assume that it's the fault of the PG rating - imagination is only hindered by a broader audience if you let it - it's certainly true that the whitemeat babyfaces of today's WWE do tend to lack a bit of bite. Last night saw 3 of the biggest babyfaces in the company take to the microphone and all 3 of them delivered more or less the same speech, cookie-cutter platitudes indicative of a troubling lack of effort on behalf of the creative team. Finn Balor said that he wasn't going to let Samoa Joe beat him, Apollo Crews said he wasn't going to let Baron Corbin beat him and Bayley said she wasn't going to let Eva Marie beat her. Now I get it, the stylised dynamic of good guy vs bad guy has cliche built right into it, but that doesn't change the fact that none of these promos felt powerful. Balor is slightly vanilla on the mic, ditto Crews and Bayley. They're all fantastic workers, no doubt, but unless Creative can give them something interesting to say, having them deliver bland promos in a bland fashion can only hurt their characters.