10 Thoughts on NXT – Dusty Classic, sort of

10 Thoughts, Reviews, Top Story

JT on NXT logo

1. It’s NXT time and we’re all about the Dusty Classic tonight as 8 teams compete for the big prize. As we get a recap of the second round matches I get the vaguely depressing thought that this whole tournament might just be a ploy to get the Authors of Pain over.

2. First up the Aussie tag team TM61 are taking on Austin Aries and Roderick Strong, making his NXT in-ring debut. I’ve heard of Strong but not seen him wrestle – my first thought is that he looks a bit like Ryan Reynolds, only not as jacked as he was in Deadpool. Aries isn’t dressed to compete, and gets on the mic and reveals his ‘broken eye-hole’. Regal comes out to change the match to a singles bout, which is a tribute to Dusty Rhodes and his wacky booking.

3. So Shane Thorne is taking on Roderick Strong, with the winner carrying his team through to the seni-finals. Decent match from both men with Thorne flying high and Strong  methodically working the lower back, as the commentators call him ‘the messiah of the backbreaker’. Really? That’s what we’re going with? Aries distracts the ref but Thorne gets the win with the roll up anyway.

4. Next up DIY are taking on the ever-boring Revival, who are still NXT tag champions for some reason. Dawson comes out on crutches, talks some barely coherent crap for a while and the withdraws The Revival from the tournament. Why couldn’t Wilder wrestle a single match, like literally just happened? DIY advance to the next round, and I am starting to lose patience with this shit. Two matches into the second round of the Tag Classic and we have seen no tag matches.

5. Now it’s time for the aforementioned Authors of Pain to take on the oddball team of No Way Jose and Rich Swann, and can anyone spell SQUASH? Akem and Razar manage to look dominant and lost at the same time, while Swann and Jose get a little more than token offense while being thrown around like rag dolls.

6. Ugly match that gets neither team over; the Authors get the win with the Last Chapter. Meh.

7. Our main event is TJ Perkins and Kota Ibushi taking on former jobbers Alexander Wolfe and Sawyer Fulton, who are somehow supposed to be threatening now that they’re called Sanity.

8. Ibushi is forced to suffer the indignity of selling for Alexander Wolfe, and he does so like a consummate professional. Perkins goes for the knee bar at every opportunity, which suggests he doesn’t know a lot about psychology. You wear down the body part, then you go for the submission, son.

9. The match varies between pretty good (when Ibushi and Perkins are on offense) to downright awful when Sanity are on the attack. Honestly, aside from being tall neither Wolfe nor Fulton seems to have much to offer, and the latter is in such poor physical condition that he makes Baron Corbin look jacked.

10. Sanity eventually pick up the win after an Eric Young distraction, with Ibushi taking the pin for Sawyer ‘chubby’ Fulton. So can we expect these idiots vs the Authors of Pain in the final? Because FTS…

JT is a hot air balloonist, writer and tattoo aficionado. He writes about movies, science, music, video games, action figures and professional wrestling.