6 Ups And 2 Downs From WWE NXT (Nov 18)

Downs...

2. Grime And Punishment

This might be NXT's worst segment of the year. Cameron Grimes can turn pretty much any hokey schtick into entertaining television, and Dexter Lumis does seem like a natural stylistic and philosophical foil, but this was the pits. From the minutes spent staggering around, to beating on the referee, to them just deciding to throw the whole gimmick out and just run around the outside, not a single person involved with this mess came out not looking like an idiot. Including the ref.

The big dumb zombie house was fun, the big dumb zombie ref was at least different, this was two talented pro-wrestlers with bags on their head for 5 minutes followed by a non-finish. In fairness, the opening spot of Grimes going for a dive and missing was funny, but that was the joke over and done with inside 3 seconds.

Absolutely nothing was accomplished here that couldn't have been done with Grimes just walking into a door backstage, or Lumis doing... his... staring thing?... with a blindfold? Yeah, alright, there was no way to make this work, meaning giving it ring-time was incredibly dumb.