7 Ups & 3 Downs From Last Night's NXT (23 Jan)

Downs...

3. Undistracted Era

Your writer here has been effusive in his praise for NXT finally managing to perfect the distraction finish... albeit it after a number of failed attempts. Coming into the home stretch of Adam Cole vs Finn Balor, Johnny Gargano made his return from injury not with a run-in, not by hitting his music, but by merely standing on the ramp. The entire arena had no idea what was going on, so it made sense that Finn Balor and the officials wouldn't either.

Cole, previously presented to us as the ultimate opportunist didn't try for a lame roll up, he smashed him full force in the dick and hit his finisher. This was minimum but logical interference leading to the maximum possible punishment and, honest to god, I stood up in an empty flat and applauded it. Distraction finishes are universally bad, until they're finally good.

All that good work felt undone within 20 minutes of last night's broadcast though. With Grizzled Young Veterans looking beat, all 4 members of Undisputed Era seemed happy to forget about the match purely because some European lads in matching trackies were stood harmlessly on a balcony. They left O'Reilly alone in the ring, Drake and Gibson hit their finisher, and that was that. A disappointing lack of creativity and consistency.