The Rise & Fall Of WWE NXT
August's TakeOver: Brooklyn was the first version of the event to take place outside of Full Sail University, and stole SummerSlam weekend to the surprise of absolutely nobody. It was an inch-perfect exhibition of the - and isn't this tragic? - wrestling buffet Triple H spent years perfecting.
Sasha Banks and Bayley brought to the biggest stage yet the best version of contemporary, turbo-charged and ultra-competitive women's wrestling. Idiosyncratic one-note joke Blue Pants got one of the biggest pops of the night when she entered as a surprise counterbalance to Alexa Bliss for a Tag Team Title match built heavily on how over pairings Blake & Murphy and The Vaudevillians were. Jushin Liger worked his only WWE-branded match ever just to give homegrown opponent Tyler Breeze a special night and the paying punters something extra. Kevin Owens Vs Finn Bálor arrived in NXT as darlings, but confirmed their status as McMahon-ready Superstars™ in an epic ladder match main event.
The building erupted for everything, denoting the black-and-gold brand as literal noisy neighbours to the main roster. And the arenas got fuller and louder the more the product progressed. Having made statements too long and loud to last on NXT forever, the early generations made their bold leaps to the Raw and SmackDown, as yet more independent wrestling favourite and PC prospects filled the gap. Time and time again the machine functioned magnificently for the brand even if prodigious talents were left to die on WWE's biggest stage.
There appeared no end in sight until All Elite Wrestling's very existence rapidly threatened a lazily preserved monopoly. Enough column inches about that have been filled over the last two years to cover every torn-up Monday Night Raw script, but the formal end of the black-and-gold brand's innocence in 2019 foreshadowed both their ratings battle defeat and the total technicolour overhaul in 2021.
And to paraphrase every Nick Khan-esque corporate a*sehole, now, we are where we are.
CONT'D...