Powell’s NXT Hit List: Tony D’Angelo vs. Shawn Spears for the NXT North American Title, Chelsea Green and Piper Niven vs. Sol Ruca and Zaria, Kelani Jordan vs. Jaida Parker, Jordynne Grace vs. Cora Jade

By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)

NXT Hits

Tony D’Angelo vs. Shawn Spears for the NXT North American Championship: The match concluded with an impressive sequence that started with D’Angelo taking a big bump onto a chair at ringside to create a storyline back injury. D’Angelo fighting back and setting up for a spinebuster made it seem like he was on the verge of retaining his title, so it was a logical surprise when his back gave out and that ultimately cost him the match. Spears put together his own faction to feud with D’Angelo’s family, so it makes sense to have D’Angelo drop the title to him so that D’Angelo’s family has something to battle back from. Spears’s brief backstage encounter with Ricky Saints left me wondering if the plan is for Spears to drop North American Title to NXT’s big free agent signee sooner rather than later.

Jaida Parker vs. Kelani Jordan: An impressive outing for the developmental duo. Parker is well on her way to becoming a star. It seems like Jordan is still trying to establish an edge to her character, but she’s not far behind. This could be one of those feuds that starts in NXT and continues for many years on the main roster.

Je’Von Evans and Ethan Page: Both wrestlers showed the right level of intensity during their brief split-screen interview. The feud with Page has successfully brought out a serious side of Evans’ persona. It’s good to see that he can be the fun loving character we saw before now and then flip the switch to show off a more serious and focussed side of his personality.

Chelsea Green and Piper Niven vs. Sol Ruca and Zaria: The match dragged a bit and poor Green suffered a bloody nose. Nevertheless, the match established that Zaria can hang with fellow powerhouse Niven, and the end of result of Ruca pinning the Women’s U.S. Champion should lead to a fun title match.

Trick Williams vs. Kale Dixon: The MMA style ref stoppage finish just seconds into the match was fun. The Dixon character is just getting started, so it’s not like losing so quickly and decisively is going to stick with him over the long haul. Meanwhile, I like that Eddy Thorpe is playing a weaselly heel rather than a chickenshit heel in that his character was confident enough to challenge Williams to the recent strap match and now to an NXT Underground match.

Jordynne Grace vs. Cora Jade: The match was fine before it was stopped due to Jade suffering a head injury. The reason it landed in the Hit section is due to the fact that it was stopped quickly. It looked like she was communicating with the referee, who wasted no time in putting up the X sign and calling off the match. We’ve seen recent examples of matches carry on that should have been stopped due to injury, so it was encouraging to see this situation handled properly.

NXT Roadblock build: NXT has loaded up next week’s show with a premium live event quality lineup. I wish they had more time to build to the Oba Femi vs. Moose match, but that match and the Hardys vs. Axiom and Nathan Frazer sell themselves. On an unrelated side note, it was great to see backstage interviewer Kelly Kincaid back from maternity leave.

NXT Misses

Hank Walker, Tank Ledger, Yoshiki Inamura, and Josh Briggs: I did not include Matt Hardy and Jeff Hardy in this Miss, because it was cool to see them at the WWE Performance Center. I assume the idea of having these teams come out was so the Hardys could give them a rub, but it just didn’t feel like it worked since the live crowd booed both teams. I like Hank and Tank, but they deserved to be booed just for wearing those tacky cutoff jorts. Someone in NXT must like that terrible look, as I remember groaning when Brooks Jensen briefly wore cutoff jorts.