DAKOTA KAI VS. LACEY EVANS
If I’m not mistaken, Lacey Evans has a new entrance theme song. Both of these women have gotten big pushes lately, and while a loss won’t knock one of them far down the roster, it will halt momentum and give a good indication of which may get a title shot sooner.
Lacey Evans ties Dakota Kai’s legs to the top turnbuckle with the tag rope. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. Evans is spending way too much time taunting Kai and letting her recover after having her on the ropes. Dominating and punishing offense by Evans as you can see on Kai’s face how much she’s hurting. I love kicks so I’m looking forward to Kai’s comeback. It’s a good time for it to happen as the crowd is chanting DA-KO-TA, but Evans takes her back down and puts her in another submission, looks like a modified surfboard stretch.
Lots of heat on Evans as she continues to dominate the match. She goes up top and misses a moonsault. There was no reason to try a high-risk move as she was already in full control of the match, and Kai needs to take advantage of the mistake. Kai hits about 10-15 kicks to the head in rapid succession, then hits a few more boots Evans’ face in the corner. She gets those legs up HIGH. Evans buys some time to recover with a pumphandle slam and both women are slow to get up. A missed kick by Kai leads to a Women’s Right and a pin by Evans.
I thought Evans would get the win as she’s positioned to be the bigger star. It was a good job to push Kai and give her a lot of credibility to make this a big win for Evans. It was a pretty dominating win for the “Lady of NXT” and she continues to be a heat magnet with her tremendous heel work.
Match Rating: Seven Gold Medals
Ricochet’s backstage promo sounded so rehearsed, scripted, and unnatural. Really bad.
I hate Kona Reeves’ gimmick. EC3’s isn’t much better. That segment was painful.
Those two segments get a combined Eight Katie Vicks
Promo for next week’s NXT Championship match between Aleister Black and Tommaso Ciampa. I could see Ciampa winning to set up a Gargano title win in Brooklyn, where I will be for the third straight year.
KASSIUS OHNO VS. RICK RAMIREZ
The jobber eats a Discus Elbow about 20 seconds into the match and I’m not sure why this happened. Unless Ohno is starting a heel turn, he really didn’t need this at all.
No rating.
The Undisputed Era backstage segment is reminiscent of the old NWO black and white backstage segments. It’s almost but not quite a blatant ripoff, but it works for them.
That was an awesome in-depth look at the history of Rowe and Hanson. I love when they do this and let the audience get to know these guys. They did it with Roderick Strong during his feud with Bobby Roode and it made the audience get more emotionally invested in him.
An usual amount of backstage video packages tonight as we get another one from Velveteen Dream. It was really good, I just don’t ever remember seeing NXT do this many in one show.
NXT WOMEN’S CHAMPIONSHIP TRIPLE THREAT NUMBER ONE CONTENDER MATCH: NIKKI CROSS VS. KAIRI SANE VS. CANDICE LeRAE
I would love to see any of these three women win the match, but I’d especially like to see either Sane or LeRae. I think Nikki Cross is just here to cause chaos. She lost her recent title match. I think Kairi Sane will get the win here while Candice LeRae still builds her resumé in NXT. Shayna Baszler hits the commentator table, and I’m wondering if she will get involved and cause Regal to say there will be a fatal four way championship match in Brooklyn. To that I’d say OH FUCK YEAH.
Kairi is taking WAY too long to get up from a move that should not have done much damage while Nikki Cross kicks the shit out of Candice. Sane hits a spear on Cross, and now Nikki rolls out of ring, but gets back in time to break up Sane’s Anchor submission on LeRae. That’s such an awesome-looking hold.
The crowd is super hot and on its feet for this match. The three women all beat the hell out of each other outside of the ring as the crowd gives them the THIS IS AWESOME chant. They pull the mandatory powerbomb/superplex combo move then kneel in the middle of the ring and punch each other in the face. A double DDT and a Lionsault from LeRae nearly gets her the win, but Cross breaks up the pin then hits a swinging neckbreaker from the apron to the floor that probably takes LeRae out of the match for quite a bit. Now after that move, I have NO problem if Lerae lays there for a while, because that shit was heinous. Three nasty suplexes on Sane has Cross firmly in control as she goes for the same move that took out LeRae by setting Sane up on the top rope. LeRae recovers and hits a Vertebreaker and a Lionsault on Cross, and immediately Sane lands an InSane Elbow, pinning LeRae for the win and the title shot.
Terrific match with a frantic finish with the crowd going nuts. Great job by all three wrestlers.
Match Rating: Nine Gold Medals
Overall Show Rating: Seven Gold Medals
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