14 Ups & 0 Downs From Last Night's WWE NXT (Oct 16)

No viewers? No problem.

Finn Balor
WWE

What a time to be wrestling fan. Still.

Chasing their tails and the highs of the first TakeOver-style offering from the first full week on USA Network, NXT have been forced to try and make an awesome product even better to compete with an All Elite Wrestling juggernaut fuelled on novelty as much as nailed-on quality. AEW, with partial justification, also remain the babyfaces in this weekly feud, even though it's the wrestling audience that are served a heroes bounty every Wednesday night.

Actively damaging the credibility of the brand, the wrestling media at large has become so blindly effusive in its praise of the opposition of late that it’s been easy to assume that the “War” is already lost and NXT may as well just cease to exist.

Make no mistake here, WWE are being forced to swallow the consequences of their own actions. AEW’s creative successes and failures would be subject to far more cogent analysis if it wasn’t for the NXT USA move Vince McMahon pushed for. Instead, an expected weekly ratings hammering enhances the exhaustingly cliched criticisms of a very good Full Sail product.

This week in particular, those criticisms would caustically unfounded. This show ruled...

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Contributor
Contributor

Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation over 7 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 30 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz", Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 50,000,000 total downloads. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett