NXT 451

May 30, 2018 – Winter Park, Florida

Tommaso Ciampa & Johnny Gargano are banned from the building tonight because their issues have escalated too quickly. But they’ve both been sent contracts for a Chicago Street Fight at Takeover that they’ll need to sign and send back.

Amsterdam Black comes out to the ring to start the show. He boasts about only needing one shot to put down any opponent because the Black Mass is so powerful. Lars Sullivan comes out and announces that he’ll be Black’s “first” challenger at Takeover. So we’re meant to pretend that the Eric Young match didn’t happen? Then Sullivan blocks the Black Mass with his hand and hits the Freak Accident.

Hanson & Rowe def. Cody Vincent & George Hixon
I don’t review squashes, but we can all agree that Hanson’s cartwheel is stupid, right? N/A

EC3 def. Fabian Aichner
It’s official, Aichner is a JTTS. Gargano shows up in the middle of the match and grabs a microphone to let the live crowd know that he’s signed his contract for the Takeover match. Aichner uses the distraction to hit a crazy dive on EC3. EC3 comes back and wins shortly after. Decent stuff. I feel like they could probably find something more interesting for the talented Aichner to do. **

They show a hype doc for Bianca Belair in which video footage of her high school athletics career shows her smoking all the competition. She excelled in college and then got into Crossfit. Oh jeeze. Then she gets to NXT. Her NXT class has all been pretty successful. She came in with Dozer, Lacey Evans, TM61, Vanessa Borne and Jesus Cross. There are only three people in the class photo that I don’t recognize.

Ricochet def. Chris Dijak
Woah, Dijak is really tall. I’ve seen none of his indy stuff. He was pretty impressive here, but I think booking Ricochet against a guy who is going to catch his dive and then chokeslam him on the apron is counter-productive right now. Case in point: Amsterdam Black just had the Black Mass blocked by Lars Sullivan on last week’s episode. But Black debuted over a year ago, so it was a big deal. When your rising star’s signature stuff is blocked by a guy he’s squashing about a month after he debuted, you’re doing it wrong. You could argue that this was meant to show that Ricochet could change up his game plan when the high-flying didn’t work, but that should happen against a more established opponent, not an interesting jobber. Ricochet calls out Velveteen Dream after the match. Dream comes out and reiterates that he can do anything Ricochet can do, and better. Ricochet calls him and coward for not fighting him. Dream says he’ll face him at Takeover. Ricochet casually jumps outside the ring to the floor, landing on his feet and leaving Dream’s jaw dangling. That was amazing. **

Shayna Baszler def. Dakota Kai {NXT Women’s Championship Match}
This storyline hasn’t given people a reason to get behind Kai, as she’s acted like someone too fragile to be in wrestling. Are we really meant to believe that one pep talk from Cross gave Kai the guts to do this? This was a glorified squash with one interesting hope spot. Baszler keeps attacking after the match, but Cross makes the save and steals the title belt. She wants to wrestle Baszler now with Kai as the referee. This is hilarious. Cross hits the Purge and Kai counts the pin, then Cross celebrates like she just won the title. That’s why she’s our lord and savior. **¼