7 Ups And 2 Downs From Last Night’s WWE NXT (Mar 30)

1. Sticking to the Script

The show's opening salvo for the Finn Balor/Samoa Joe feud came early on, when Balor cut a pretaped, sit-down promo on his TakeOver opponent. Balor, of course, is one of the top wrestlers in the entire world. He's become a superstar as the anchor of the NXT brand, and once he gets to the main roster, he should be able to take it by storm en route to a career as a main eventer. This promo, though, stood out as pretty lousy. It wasn't Balor's fault - the NXT Champion may not be the most colorful promo in the world, but he just gave the interview that was written for him. The problem was the script - it smacked of the worst of WWE's writing tropes, with repeated phrases (in this case, Balor kept starting sentences with "My obsession...") hammering home the same point over and over again. In today's reality-heavy era of programming, fans connect with stars who appear to mean what they say. In this case, that wouldn't have been possible for Balor.