6 Ups And 3 Downs From NXT TakeOver: Chicago

1. Women’s Match Falls Flat

NXT TakeOver Chicago 2 Shayna Baszler Nikki Cross
WWE

When your titleholder is a dominant, badass heel, you need the challenger to be just as tough and a bit of a daredevil to have a shot.

Unfortunately, Shayna Baszler versus Nikki Cross didn’t meet that goal. The NXT Women’s Championship match has to be termed a disappointment, despite the storyline they attempted to tell, with Nikki unfazed by Shayna and constantly daring her to hit her again. Baszler was tentative at times, but never fully viewed Cross as a threat – and neither did the fans, even though they cheered her on.

Perhaps it’s Baszler’s limitations – she’s an MMA fighter-turned-wrestler with less than three years of wrestling under her belt. She’s capable, but not the prodigy that a young Brock Lesnar was. And Cross was never going to be able to match her with high-impact moves. Once you got past the “Nikki Cross is crazy and playing mindgames” phase of things, there wasn’t much there.

But hey, they can’t all be winners.

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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.