WWE NXT Review - October 2, 2013

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Santino Marella and Emma def. Fandango and Summer Rae

Once Santino was announced to be Emma's partner, I knew at that very moment that this was bound to be a comedy match. However, I found their antics entertaining and was glad it went on as long as it did. Emma and Santino have a great chemistry together and I would like to see Fandango and Summer in mixed tag team action on the main roster more often. The Full Sail University crowd seemed to enjoy it as much as I did, and I'm not even a fan of Santino's comedy most of the time. Additionally, this was an effective way of furthering the feud between Emma and Summer.


Luke Harper def. Kassius Ohno

It is nice to see Kassius back in action after a long layoff, but his appearance doesn't look like it changed at all from the last time we saw him. Wasn't the whole point of his absence for him to get in better shape? The match itself was a glorified squash match that didn't need to happen at all. The Wyatt Family sendoff from a few months ago was fantastic, so why ruin it by bringing Harper simply to squash Ohno? Ohno hardly got any offense in before the match's abrupt ending. He has a lot of potential, so his quick loss was a massive shame for this viewer.

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The Ascension def. Corey Graves and Adrian Neville to Win the NXT Tag Team Championships

The match was solid for the most part, but it didn't feature anything out of the ordinary. The final few minutes were well done, but everything that preceded it was decent at best. Nonetheless, it is great that The Ascension are finally tag team champs, thus giving them some direction for the first time in... well, ever. As for Graves and Neville, having them lose the belts a month or two after winning them makes them look like placeholders, but hopefully they can be better utilized going forward.


Sami Zayn Won a Bo Dallas Invitational to Earn a Future Shot at the NXT Championship

The chants for the unknown wrestler at the start were humorous, but the match he had with Dallas was as basis as it gets. The brawling between Antonio Cesaro and Leo Kruger was rather strange, unless one of them is due for a babyface turn, which I don't think is the best idea for either one of them right now. It was obvious from the start that Zayn was under the mask of El Local, but it was a clever way of giving Zayn his title shot after all.


Overall Show

The show started off strong with the mixed tag team match, but it set the standard so high that everyone else that followed it fell flat with this viewer. It was definitely noteworthy with the tag team title change, Ohno's in-ring return and Zayn becoming the No. 1 contender to the NXT Championship, but none of those matches were all that exciting to this viewer. Regardless, it was a solid show as a whole and I look forward to where the direction of the program goes from here.