Gutteridge’s NXT Hit List: The “Dream Match” between Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Finn Bálor, and Samoa Joe lays down the law

By Darren Gutteridge

NXT Hits

Finn Bálor vs. Shinsuke Nakamura: As far as passing the torch from the current top babyface on NXT to the next in line, this was about perfect. “Finn vs. Shin” told a great story throughout with the work on Nakamura’s leg (which admittedly Nakamura could have sold more outside of the submissions), before finishing things off with a red hot home straight. I still feel Nakamura vs. Sami Zayn is the best match of the year thus far, but this is in with a big chance of earning the silver medal come the end of the year.

Samoa Joe and Rhyno: Joe is in an untouchable zone with his character work right now. Every promo he cuts is killer, even when he is essentially just laying down the law of the jungle on NXT as he did here. Rhyno represents a good workout for Joe, just as he was for Bálor during his title reign.

NXT Misses

None: The way it was laid out, there wasn’t a lot to go wrong on this week’s NXT truth be told. I even considered scraping the barrel with the solitary Miss being “Tye Dye Guy really distracted me with his attention whoring ways”, but I’d much rather give NXT two back to back weeks of Miss free TV.

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