WWE NXT Review - March 12, 2024

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

The LWO (Cruz Del Toro and Joaquin Wilde) def. OTM (Lucien Price and Bronco Nima) to Qualify for the NXT Tag Team Championship No. 1 Contender's Triple Threat Match

Del Toro and Wilde have had a fun return run in NXT and it's cool they've gotten a chance to show what they can do. They've largely been losers on SmackDown so far but have been a quality addition to NXT's tag team scene for the last few months. This was a nice, spirited opener with the right team advancing. OTM is still quite green, but they'll benefit from wrestling experienced teams like The LWO.

Roxanne Perez Explained Her Actions

When it was reported about a year ago that a main roster call-up for Perez was imminent, my main criticism was that I didn't think Perez was ready from a promo standpoint. Clearly, she's improved immensely in that department and this promo was proof of that. She did an effective job of recapping everything from the past year that led up to her heel turn last week. It started to drag on by the end, and Ava didn't play her role in this segment, but Tatum Paxley going after Perez did set up their match for next week's show.

Lexis King def. Mr. Stone

King is featured almost weekly, but whenever he wrestles, it's usually in throwaway matches. He's reached a point where he's facing guys from the bottom of the barrel. No disrespect to Stone, who I'm a fan from his days on the independent scene, but this was a waste of time. Von Wagner saved Stone from King afterward, so it looks like we're headed for King vs. Wagner. I have sub-zero interest in that one.

NXT North American Champion Oba Femi def. Brooks Jensen

This attempted to tell the story of Jensen being too in over his head, but the crowd doesn't care about Jensen enough for them to really rally behind him here. Thus, it ended up being a pretty flat match. Femi dominated Jensen as he should have and it's not as like Jensen looked all that impressive in defeat. Josh Briggs and Femi stared each other down afterward, so Briggs could be getting the next shot at the NXT North American Championship. Can Femi please be put in actual feud soon?

Arianna Grace def. Gigi Dolin by Disqualification

Poor Dolin. She's severely regressed from where she was a year ago and is stuck putting over the newer women coming in. I've praised Grace before for excelling at the character stuff, but this bout belonged on Level Up, and the low blow finish was awful. I'm all for NXT trying new things (and we know they do quite a bit of that), but this shouldn't have made it to television. Was this supposed to leave viewers wanting to see a rematch?

Kiana James and Izzi Dame def. Thea Hail and Fallon Henley

The aggressive push of James and Dame continues and I still have no idea why. They're a perfectly fine pairing that I don't find interesting or compelling in the slightest, and their wins are never really about them. Henley stepped up to team with Hail after Jacy Jane ditched Hail, but the heels won, regardless. This was passable, but it only existed to set up the post-match angle with Hail officially dumping Jane and going back to being her old self. Hail's character development/transformation has been well done, her promo was just terrible.

Shawn Spears def. Ridge Holland

Spears just returned two weeks ago and had his first televised match back last week. They're really rushing this rivalry, but I'm not complaining because I have no desire to see this again at Stand & Deliver. Perhaps that's the idea, but it makes more sense as a TV feud. This was well worked albeit boring. Holland is not clicking as a babyface so far, so Spears winning was the right call.

Trick Williams Attacked The Meta-Four

Williams cut a good, passionate promo discussing Carmelo Hayes betraying him and challenging him to a match at Stand & Deliver. It didn't blow me away or anything, but he's getting better on the mic and he's so over with the audience right now that it almost doesn't matter, anyway. Noam Dar interrupting him was so unnecessary, as was Williams kissing Lash Legend. I assume they're saving the Hayes and Williams face-to-face for next week, but this was an underwhelming way to go off the air.

Overall Show

The various vignettes with Ilja Dragunov meeting with Tony D'Angelo and the rest of The Family were lame. NXT has a tendency to go overboard with that sort of stuff on occasion and that was a prime example. I actually thought this was one of the worst editions of NXT in a while, which is wild coming off last week's strong Roadblock special. A lot of what we got on this episode was bad television and it reminded me of NXT 2.0 in some ways. The timing is terrible with Stand & Deliver coming up quickly and they've done a poor job building up the card. They're going to need to turn things around fast if they want to sell people on that show.

SEE MORE: NXT Reviews