WWE NXT Report 3/9/10

The FanHouse WWE NXT Report is a recap of the modern take on the fairy tale of classic pro wrestling and is for entertainment purposes only. Warning: the rookies on this show are both "wild" and "young." Reader discretion is advised.

Quick Results
(for all of you Twitter Geeks)

1. R-Truth and David Otunga d. The Miz and Daniel Bryan
2. Heath Slater d. Carlito
3. Justin Gabriel d. Wade Barrett

Lengthy, Verbose Results
(for members of the WWE Universe online, which is completely different than being on the Internet)

- Welcome to the third edition of the FanHouse NXT Report, the one sarcastic show report that gives me a fresh, often unpredictable new look at the WWE's all-too-predictable television product and allows me to be positive for a change. I'm probably going to miss those glory days of the ECW that time forgot, forever equating the goodness of a 15-minute Christian and Jack Swagger match to that third season of Futurama that was better than anything else on television despite nobody watching it, but this is a nice substitution. The wrestling is not always the best, and the rookies are still learning to perform as leads in the WWE's big production, but it is interesting, and compelling enough, and always something.

- Matt Striker starts us off by hyping up how wild and young everyone is. I'm sorry, is anybody else liking the NXT theme song a little less every time they hear it? "We have just be-gun!" I keep expecting a "come on get higher, loosen my lips" to slip in there somewhere.

Match 1: Tag Team Match
R-Truth and A-List Otunga vs. The Miz and "American Dragon Bryan Danielson" Daniel Bryan

Daniel Bryan is starting to get the fans behind him, despite still having to come out to AWESAAAAAAAAMMM. I started to complain about the face rookies having to come out to music the fans have been conditioned to boo for, and decided it would be awesome if in a couple of weeks the pros had to pick out an entrance theme for their rookie. Regal could make Skip Sheffield come out to something ominous, Miz could bring out Daniel Bryan to Baby Elephant Walk. Christian could give Heath Slater some dated nu-metal and be all "sorry, this is all they had."

Otunga and Truth have patched things up and hugged it out (which is what I said they were doing last week, but nobody listened to me), but Otunga is still awkward and living his in-ring professional life by D.J. Ol' Youngin's three rules for Randy:

1) They not ready.
2) Motherf**kers need to know.
3) Get your sh**

Clearly he isn't ready, but he wants everybody to know about the parties he goes to and how Jamie Foxx is aware of his existence. And he's getting sh** by beating all the rookies and pros unless like five people conspire against him.

Dragon continues to bring the awesome in this match, almost making Otunga tap out to his heel hook before the Miz tags himself into the ring and tries to steal the glory. He slaps Bryan again, but this time the rookie shoves him back. Otunga hits his spinebuster for the victory. After the match, Miz gets up in Bryan's face again, and we get a glorious moment where Dragon fakes a punch and Miz flinches. It's the first time since he showed up on WWE television that I really smiled and said to myself, "he's going to be fine."

Winners: R-Truth and The Man They Call Otunga

- When we return from commercial break (imagine greater), Matt Striker runs into the Miz and asks him if he let Daniel Bryan down. Miz starts yelling and Bryan shows up to shut him up, claiming that Miz has been carried by every tag team partner he's ever had (technically true) and asks him why he lost if he is so talented. After this, not to mention two weeks of saying Daniel Bryan needs to respect the Miz, Michael Cole says he is impressed with Bryan for standing up to his mentor. But he HAS to get along with Miz if he wants to make his dreams come true! Except for the fact that they already made it clear that Miz can't vote for or against his rookie, so he really has no say in anything. Michael Cole is both ill-informed and inconsistent.

- It's Justin Gabriel's turn to get a high-quality FCW-filled hype video. He also gets a backstage segment where he never seems to know what he's supposed to be looking at. I know you aren't supposed to look at the camera and you've got to be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with whoever you're talking to instead of in any natural conversational stance, but Gabriel looks like he's trying to size up the room for wallpaper or something. He looks like he's blind. And the worst part is that he's wearing a Matt Hardy shirt, which suggests that that is actually Matt Hardy's shirt, and Gabriel is being made to stretch it out for him. Matt Hardy's haircut keeps getting worse. It's like he's trying to stick his head up a dead horse's butt.

Chris Jericho and Wade Barrett enter to try and emasculate the rookie, but Gabriel's haircut and proximity to Matt Hardy have done their job for them.

Match 2: Rookie vs. Pro
Heath Slater with Christian vs. Carlito with Michael Tarver

Carlito grabs a microphone and talks about how Heath Slater should be honored to be spit on and should be begging Ca-lito to spit on him again. Earlier in the night, Slater cut a promo promising to "blow Carlito's mind." I am not looking forward to where this is going, and have no interest in watching these guys snowball.

The match is actually better than you'd expect. I wouldn't call Carlito "motivated" in any strong terms, but his association with Christian has been nudging him in the right direction. He spends most of the match looking for his apple, which Christian has stolen. Preoccupation with projectile fruits proves to be his downfall, and the Charismatic Ginger (he says "yeah woo," that is charisma) reverses a (fruit) roll-up into a surprise victory. The theme for this week: these new kids are better than any of our actual wrestlers!

Winner: Heath Slater

- Up next is a promo video for Darren Young that probably wouldn't have helped him even if they'd aired it two weeks ago. He says he is all about having fun and names Shawn Michaels and "Rickety Dragon Steamboat" as his favorites. I like him a lot too, as well as Jimdy Anvil Neidhart.

CM Punk follows the video with a sermon about the simplicity of directing a horse to a specific location and the proportional difficulty of making it sustain its physiological processes. The head shaving is coming. I know it, you know it, Serena and her smoking hot, totally clothed body knows it.

- The Raw Rebound has me instinctively changing it to SpikeTV and accidentally running into some mature episodic comedy for lonely, aging young men who don't find funny things funny anymore.

Match 3: Rookie vs. Rookie
Justin Gabriel vs. Wade Barrett

Or as I like to call this match, "Grin and Barrett." Justin Gabriel looks like he wandered here from the American Idol auditions and accidentally fell into AJ Styles' body. The two rookies work a classic, simple contest between a guy who loves to flip and kick and a guy who loves to slam and punch. Barrett is impressive with a slingshot atomic drop into a backbreaker but still doesn't have a clear, effective finish, and without that no amount of Chris Jericho is going to keep him from being Renee Dupree.

Gabriel takes the advantage and hits his 450 splash on Barrett for the win, leading me to believe that top rope finishers are the most unstoppable, violently painful moves in the modern WWE. Seriously, when was the last time somebody kicked out of a move from the top rope? William Regal can be perfectly fine, and then you jump on him from slightly higher than normal and he is instantly dead. Wade Barrett probably shouldn't have had all of his hit points lost from some punches and a splash from a 200 pound guy when he was in total control, but there you go.

Winner: Justin Gabriel

After the match, Chris Jericho dispatches Matt Hardy like you'd throw away a really fat napkin and attacks Gabriel, locking him into the Walls of Jericho Classic with the intention of "standing tall" over him to end the show. I love the production guys who will go as far as they want into an overrun feeling pressured to end every show with a guy solemnly standing over his opponent. "Standing tall" is the new "John Cena lies on his stomach reaching out for the bad guy who has beaten him up and is walking backwards up the ramp."

What the show accomplished: NXT is turning out to be a good show, in spite of the fact that WWE has never once tried to push the "revolutionary" or "reality" aspects of it. Not even for a second. At the least I figured we'd get some talking heads. But nope, still backstage promos, still matches, still Michael Cole.

What the show didn't accomplish: I feel like every rookie should have a role in every episode of NXT. A booked reality show is going to have ringers, but I wish they hadn't made it this obvious.

The gist: I'm excited for Daniel Bryan's first win, should it ever occur, and I'm even more excited to watch him heel hook the Miz and take one of his championships. He doesn't hold up the one finger during his entrance because he's charading Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, folks, it's because that's what number he is in the world.