7 Ups And 2 Downs From Last Night's NXT (Aug 26)

1. Diminishing Returns

I hated this.

Tomasso Ciampa is an incredible wrestler. His humiliating loss at the hands of Karrion Kross was always going to necessitate a drastic reworking of his character and, when he eventually returned, someone was going to take the brunt of those frustrations. With Kross's injury putting him on the shelf, Ciampa was a perfect ace-in-the-hole reveal for the inevitable title match.

But this was about as misjudged a way to return him as you could possibly have conceived. Just randomly giving him a match - no teased return, no shock arrival, just the most 'oh, here he is, I guess' entrance and then a squash job against a man who categorically should not be in that position.

Jake Atlas was excellent in the Cruiserweight Championship Tournament and categorically delivers in every match the show puts him in. He can count himself incredibly unlucky not to have been in the picture of those North American Championship ladder match qualifiers.

Unless he's scheduled for some serious time off, he deserved a lot better than a sub-1 minute super squash.