July 24, 2013 – Winter Park, Florida
Paige def. Emma [NXT Women’s Championship Match]
Taken out of context, it’s lame as hell that this match is opening rather than headlining the show, in the same way that it was lame that they didn’t trust the crowd to be able to handle more than one women’s match on each episode. But to be fair, there hadn’t been a glut of great women’s matches yet, and to judge this harshly would be to judge by modern standards. I will say that it’s wild how quickly things changed for the women once the convergence of amazing female talent and WWE finally pulling their heads out of their asses coincided. The crowd is hot for this match. Then Paige and Emma went and worked the mat like they were in an ESPN Classics match from the ‘50s. That is to say it wasn’t the most exciting match, but they had headlocks and waistlocks on real tight. They knocked the crap out of each other too. I wasn’t expecting a lot out of this and it kind of blew my mind. ***¾
After the match, all the NXT-trained women + Alicia Fox come out to congratulate Paige. Then Triple H comes out and raises Paige’s hand. After all this I gotta say this should have been the main event, but they made it feel like a really big deal even though it wasn’t.
Jesus, these Zeb Coulter/Antonio Cesaro/We the People promos are creepy as hell in hindsight.
Tyler Breeze def. Angelo Dawkins
Good to see they finally found something for Mike Dalton to do. I don’t review squashes, but I really appreciate how much the production team is committing to this gimmick. The only flaw I can see is that a guy like Breeze would never use the iPhone cover he’s using. N/A
Conor O’Brian & Rick Victor def. Mickey Keegan & Aiden English
Somehow this feels worse than the original Ascension, or even O’Brian’s singles push. N/A
Sheamus def. Luke Harper
Brad Maddox on commentary says they’re calling this the greatest episode of the show ever on Twitter. Twitter must have stopped watching after Paige left the ring. This was fine, just fine. Id hope it means that the Wyatts are moving on to greener pastures and off of the show I watch. **¾