NXT 430

January 17, 2018 – Atlanta, Georgia

Tino Sabbatelli & Riddick Moss def. Otis Dozovic & Tucker Knight
This is happening because Dozovic tried to physically move Sabbatelli & Moss’s Maserati with his bare hands and they objected. Percy Watson finally addresses the fact that they share everything. I feel better now. What makes me feel not better is this 50/50 bullshit where Sabbatelli & Moss lose half the time, but win against the teams I really love. At least they had to cheat here, and at least it was a fun little match ahead of the cheating. **¼

Roderick Strong def. Fabian Aichner
Cute little match with a good effort from both guys. Strong got a submission victory to really put him over. Aichner’s getting lost in the shuffle a bit. After the match he calls out Lars Sullivan. Curious, since Sullivan seems preoccupied with Killian Dain. **½

Shane Thorne is all healed up and TM61 is coming back. They show a video to give us a little background on the duo, and Thorne comes off as a lot more interesting than Nick Miller. It’s a really good video that makes sure we all know that Harley Race cares about these kids, and that he flew out to Japan to see them win NOAH’s GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Titles. I wouldn’t be surprised if they got called up to 205 Live soon to back Buddy Murphy. Oddly enough, they only wrestled in one match with Murphy when they were all in Australia.

Lacey Evans def. Aliyah
This wasn’t awful, but I’d definitely say Aliyah is still not ready to be on TV. There was a cute finish here wherein Evans knocked out Aliyah with a punch and seemed genuinely surprised at how powerful she was able to hit her. After the match, Evans says she wants to clean up women’s division. Shayna Baszler comes out and scares her off, but then goes into the ring and chokes out Aliyah. Ember Moon makes the save. That last bit was a little cheap, but I guess the idea is that Bazler was baiting Moon into giving her a fight. Moon is still pretty awful at promos. Right after this, Regal completely contradicts himself from last week and gives Baszler a title match at Takeover. What a wuss. **

Johnny Gargano comes to the ring, angry about a conversation between Regal and Zelina Vega about Gargano getting humiliated at Takeover. Gargano insists that he’s not a broken man and his run up to the title is not a fluke. He proves he’s just as much of a fragile geek as Regal by acquiescing to Vega and Velveteen Dream by putting his title shot on the line against Dream next week.

Akam & Rezar def. Montez Ford & Angelo Dawkins {Number One Contenders Match}
Um, this was weird as hell. The Street Profits got built up for weeks to get totally dominated in a bad, short match here? What even was this match? It felt like there were five minutes missing that should have made up the body of the thing, rather than going from an opening stretch into the Super Collider. Just bad all around. ¾*