Tuesday, January 31, 2023

NXT 12-18-14 Review

Original Airdate: Thursday, December 18th, 2014
Full Sail University
Winter Park, Florida

Follow me on Twitter: @WorkTheNetwork2

After a R Evolution recap video, Adrian Neville is out to address the NXT crowd. He said that he is proud of his performance against Sami Zayn, but Zayn should be the one out here. However, thanks to Kevin Owens, Zayn is unable to be here, which brings out Owens. Owens says if Neville wants a fight, he knows where to find him. 

They show Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks giving Bayley some problems at R Evolution. We go to a Becky interview talking about her recent attitude change.

Tyler Breeze says he's going to be in Europe doing some modeling, so he won't be around for a little bit. 

Bayley vs. Becky Lynch

Bayley hits an elbow to the back of a seated Bayley and follows it up with a seated clothesline. Becky tries to go after Bayley's knee, but Bayley fights it off pretty quickly. Bayley is doing everything she can to keep Becky off the injured knee, but it eventually gets to Becky slapping on the Four Leg Clover for the submission victory. This was too quick, but played up Bayley's hurt knee. 

Match Rating: 3/4*

Charlotte says that she once again proved she was the superior athlete at TakeOver.

The Vaudevillains approach William Regal in black and white, of course. They argue that the legal man wasn't pinned in their match and Regal agrees. They will get a rematch as a result of the mistake. 

Bull Dempsey vs. Jesus de Leon

Here we go again. I feel like Lloyd Christmas when he's talking to the undercover agent at the bar. "No and I don't care!". This is a squash and out comes Baron Corbin. 

Match Rating: 1/4*

Baron Corbin vs. Rob Ryzin

Corbin hits End Of Days and wins in 14 seconds. Great. After the match, Dempsey shoves Corbin. 

Match Rating: 1/4*

They show clips of R Evolution main event and the aftermath with Kevin Owens.

Enzo & Big Cass vs. The Ascension

Cass hits some knees to the midsection of Viktor and follows it up with a splash in the corner. In comes Enzo and he gets distracted by Carmella not paying attention. Viktor hits a clothesline and that's all. The booking of Enzo and Cass has been so strange to me. After the match, Viktor says that their loss to Hideo Itami and Finn Balor was dumb luck. 

Match Rating: 1/4*

Adrian Neville vs. Kevin Owens

I'd say this is a pretty worthy main event here. Owens has his nose taped from his TakeOver match. I really can't say enough how impressive it is that Corey Graves is as good as he is at announcing this early on in his career. Owens dominates the middle portion of the match and talks a lot of trash. Neville catches him with a kick to the head and then starts his flurry of kicks, ending it with a dropkick to the head. He hits a springboard dropkick for a 2 count. Owens catches Neville off the top rope and he hits a gutbuster and a senton, but Neville is able to kick out. Neville gets knocked off the top rope and then Owens hits a draping DDT, but again it's only a 2 count. Both guys are being booked strong here. Neville catches a running Owens and hits him with a German suplex before following it up with a dive to the outside. Owens is able to drive Neville into the ring post and that's going to end up getting both guys counted out, which the crowd doesn't love. There was no way they were going to have Neville take two losses in a row and no way that Owens was losing, so not sure what anyone expected. After the match, Owens powerbombs Neville on the ring apron. The match was pretty good, but not a TakeOver quality match.

Match Rating: **3/4

Most of this episode felt like they were going just trying to re-establish a few stars, but nothing was particularly exciting. The main event was good and was given a fair amount of time. This wasn't a classic episode, but it was decent enough.

Overall Rating: 58%

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