Ranking The WORST Era Of Every Major Wrestling Show
6. WWE NXT
An...uneven history.
NXT, across its various incarnations, has ranged from the worst thing you'll ever see in your godforsaken life to a beautiful, stirring one-hour breeze that, between the pushes of Bayley and American Alpha, restored how joyful wrestling was meant to feel.
You could argue, very sensibly, that the original game show format was the worst of times. It was horrifically wrong in its stated aim. Here are your new stars, guys: a parade of complete geeks! was so inexplicable a premise that it evolved into something that was, at least, perversely entertaining. NXT 2.0 was also great for haters with a schadenfreude-shaped heart.
Every kick pad-clad wrestler was booted as Triple H's poor aesthetic choices were washed away with a technicolour hose pipe. The corporate demotion show was so baffling and searingly fake that it in effect rebooted the endearingly crappy LOLWCW/LOLTNA wrestling thought lost forever. #ThankYouShawn.
There was no entertainment to be had, ironically or otherwise, with the 'Capitol Wrestling Center' 'era'.
This was Triple H at his most dour and idealess. In a dank, off-putting pit, fans watched a relentless series of Good Matches. There was no joy, no theatre, no exhilaration. There was only a constant stream of hard-nosed mechanically proficient action worked, mostly, by tweener lads with abs in black trunks (oh, and in a bid to do something different, a 1,000 year-old dragon).
The CWC was Triple H's parodic and utterly loveless interpretation of star rating bait. Nobody will ever remember those long and painful matches. The CWC could not hope to leave a cultural imprint. The CWC was PWG = any semblance of fun whatsoever. Hell, it made late-period EVOLVE feel like a Sting party match.
The gritty reboot of a style that had just started to fall out of fashion: the timing was as bad as the vibe.