WWE NXT Review - August 1, 2023

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Lyra Valkyria def. Jacy Jane

After Valkyria proved she could hang with Rhea Ripley last week, it would have been dumb for her to lose to Jane here. They had a well-wrestled opener. Although Jane is serviceable, she's not on Valkyria's level. I suppose they can get more matches out of this, but I don't see why that's necessary. I'd rather see Valkyria continue to rack up wins, build momentum and climb the card. She lost to Tiffany Stratton in the finals of the NXT Women's Championship Tournament at Battleground, but they could tell a story with her trying to get back to that point.

Dragon Lee Challenged NXT North American Champion "Dirty" Dominik Mysterio

Dominik being such a heat magnet makes every appearance of his entertaining, no matter where he is. Rhea Ripley continues to accompany him in NXT and I'm not complaining because she's a treasure, too. That led to Lee coming out and challenging him to a title match on next week's show where he'll have Rey Mysterio in his corner. Lee should be the one ultimately taking the title from Mysterio, but it looks like he'll be a filler opponent for Dominik instead. Either way, that should be fun.

Dijak def. Eddy Thorpe

I'm glad that Thorpe is already settling into his next program after beating Damon Kemp three straight times and Dijak is probably the perfect person for him to be programmed with. I'd love to see Dijak used as more than a stepping stone, but I realize that's the whole reason why he's in NXT. This was a nice match while it lasted, but it didn't go more than a few minutes and Thorpe being protected in defeat means a rematch is coming.

Lola Vice and Elektra Lopez def. Valentina Feroz and Yulisa Leon

Maybe they had a tag team match on Level Up at some point and I just don't remember, but this felt like the overdue payoff to the Lopez vs. Feroz feud from many months ago. I wasn't expecting the heels to win since the babyfaces are more experienced than they are, but The Meta-Four are the midst of a mini-push right now, so I shouldn't be surprised. This was passable. Needless to say, there's still plenty of room for improvement with Vice and Lopez.

The Meta-Four (Noam Dar and Oro Mensah) def. Wes Lee and NXT Champion Carmelo Hayes

Lee acknowledged earlier in the episode that he's been doing a lot of losing lately and hoped to break that streak here. Well, he did not as he ended up eating the loss for his team. Lee and Hayes have history from their feud over the NXT North American Championship last year, so I'm all for them running it back, but we just saw this same angle with Hayes and Ilja Dragunov a literal week ago on the show. The match itself was good, but personally, I don't care for The Meta-Four and would've rather see a different team in that spot. By the way, why is Dar still carrying around the NXT Heritage Cup Championship?

Baron Corbin def. Andre Chase

Corbin and Gable Steveson brawled to a double count-out at The Great American Bash, and yet there was no follow-up on that here. Uhm, okay. Don't get me wrong, they didn't leave me clamoring for a rematch, but it's weird they'd move on from it as quickly as the match came together to begin with. This was a decent match, but the focus was on Thea Hail throwing in the towel for Chase at the end (before Corbin threw it back), playing off Chase throwing in the towel for her on Sunday night. We'll see where that leads, but Corbin winning was the right result.

The Creed Brothers Interrupted Schism

I was hoping that report about Creed Brothers not actually being done in NXT was wrong, but we found out for a fact in this segment that it was true. I just don't know what's gained from keeping them around. They've already held the NXT Tag Team Championship and aren't beating The Family for the belts, though I'm not sure if there's a place for them right now on the main roster. This segment sucked a lot like this storyline sucks. Just have Creed Brothers beat The Dyad to get their spots on the roster back so we can move on.

NXT Tag Team Champions The Family and Santos Escobar def. Gallus (Joe Coffey, Mark Coffey and Wolfgang)

Part of me was hoping The Family's mystery partner was the returning Troy "Dimes" Donovan, but then I realized I saw him wrestle at a ROH TV taping last weekend at AEW Collision and thus there was no chance of that happening. It wouldn't even make sense from a storyline standpoint since Tony D'Angelo attempted to murder him the last time we saw him in NXT, but everyone would benefit from him being back in The Family and not treading water in Ring of Honor. Escobar was a cool surprise given his history with D'Angelo and it was an enjoyable main event that (hopefully) marked the end of their feud with Gallus.

Overall Show

The Great American Bash was a thumbs-up event on the whole, but this wasn't the strongest follow-up show. Feud were furthered and some new storylines started, but there wasn't anything that stood out beyond Escobar's return. Then again, No Mercy isn't for another two months, so they have plenty of time to get things going. This was an adequate episode yet not the most thrilling two-hour effort.

SEE MORE: NXT Reviews