The New Innovative Let Down: WWE NXT

NXT, the new exciting and innovative show from World Wrestling Entertainment, it was going to revolutionise the business, a hybrid show between wrestling and reality television. We were pumped up for weeks about the new superstars of the WWE the rookies who would shape the future of the business.

Instead we’ve been treated to a badly filmed, botch filled, speech stumbling piss poor attempt at a wrestling show that can be compared to fingernails scratching their way down a chalk board.

Now we all know WWE blew a huge angle when they decided to debut NXT, with WrestleMania around the corner and the retirement of the last ECW legend Tommy Dreamer a few weeks prior WWE missed out on a huge opportunity not only to give ECW and the ECW championship one final hurrah at the grandest stage of them all, but the could have easily tied in a great storyline with Dreamer.

Setting that storyline stuff up aside NXT did pull good ratings on its first show, unfortunately the entire first show was carried by the Miz on the mic and Jericho in the ring, the rest of the hour was filled with bad video segments, horrible hair styles and all round bad gimmicks.

Now as far as NXT showcasing the future of the WWE I think it is safe to say that is hardly the case, most rookies who will go on to be future stars will continue debut in a similar fashion to Drew McIntyre and Sheamus. Sure some of the NXT rookies will go on to have careers with the WWE, but so did guys like Eugene, at the end of the day I’d be willing to bet a pretty penny we aren’t going to see names like Skip Sheffield or Michael Tarver headline wrestle mania any time soon, hell unless a show finishes with a 30 man over the top battle royal i don’t see either of those two even main eventing WWE Superstars.

That being said there have been a few bright sparks come out of the crap fest that is NXT, I can see reasonable success for Justin Gabriel, Wade Barret and everybody’s Indy favourite Daniel Bryan. While only time will tell the rest of the rookies are probably just there to provide a roster greater than 3 men.

David Otunga, the A list superstar, a guy who manages to bore the shit out of everyone in the arena just by picking up a mic, nothing screams I’m a superstar than “my wife is famous” everyone can read the headlines that will hit the tabloids a year from now “Jennifer Hudson divorces failed wrestler” with a personality that just about befits a golf commentator David Otunga has somehow been forced down our throats in the form of a Squash match with John Cena and a repeat tag betrayal.

Then on a show that was starting to lose crowd interest and drop in the ratings someone decided it would be a good idea to have the rookies compete in contests that are almost like a train wreck to watch, first we get to watch them run with a keg, and frankly Daniel Bryan looked almost as bad as Michael Cole made him out to be and after getting treated to 20 minutes of guys running with a keg we got to see a bad epileptic fit of a dance from the winner. And of course we all remember week two of the challenges with such beautiful sentiments as the Daniel Bryan Manliness meter, Bubble gum is for morons, and my personal favourite, Yup Yup Yup. Not surprising the only one who didn’t get boo’d out of the arena was the local boy Wade Barret, although his speech wasn’t all that bad. But what moronic writer backstage thought they could keep a crowd entertained with such riveting topics as flowers, bubblegum and rainbows.

So far there have only been three things that have made NXT bearable to watch the first is The Miz week in week out he has been extremely good on the Mic and has had by far the most entertaining segments on the show, the second is Chris Jericho let’s face it, if by now you don’t know that everything Wade Barret has done or will ever do is because of Chris Jericho then you’re probably deaf because he always seems to be close enough to a mic or one of the commentators and he isn’t shy about reminding us. Probably the best line uttered on NXT so far is between Jericho and Cole

“so which rookie did you vote for Chris?”

“Wade of course”

“you can’t vote for your own rookie”

“I’m the world Champion I’ll vote for whoever the hell I want”

And finally the last saving grace of NXT is Michael Cole, I know we all hate to admit it and we all wonder how any of the rookies can do anything that can be considered vintage, but Michael Cole has made the commentary quite interesting between his bashing of the IWC, Daniel Bryan and Josh Mathews, Cole has managed to steer away from his quiet image and has actually been quite aggressive on all fronts, and that keeps me interested.

Unfortunately three saving graces all of which can be found on the other WWE shows aren’t enough to keeping the sinking ship that is NXT afloat, with rumours circulating about the Cancellation of the show and others about its departure from SyFy all the wrestling fans can wonder is.

Why couldn’t we get what we were promised an interesting innovative show.