NXT 457

July 4, 2018 – Winter Park, Florida

Dakota Kai def. Santana Garrett
That was the best effort I’ve seen from Kai. It was probably smart that they kept it quite short, and Garrett is always reliable. Well done. **¼

Shayna Baszler comes out to say that the Mae Young Classic is only happening again this year because they have to scour the globe to find a new challenger for her. And that’s it. Weird.

Oney Lorcan’s face was broken in his match at Takeover, so he’s on the shelf for a while. The Undisputed Era give Danny Burch crap about it, so Burch challenges Adam Cole to a match next week.

Nick Miller & Shane Thorne def. Otis Dozovic {Handicap Match}
The Mighty attacked Tucker Knight during a pre-match workout, so Dozer had to go it alone. If Dozovic isn’t your favorite wrestler, are you even a wrestling fan? Dude had an orgasm in the middle of the match! Future Vader is a global treasure. He lost here, but he was also over as hell with the crowd. **¾

Velveteen Dream def. Chris Dijak
It’s been a month since we’ve seen Dijak. He got a lot of interesting offense here against the rather high-profile Dream, and then was off TV for months afterwards. Go figure. EC3 comes out for his match as Dream is still recovering from his, mostly to dig at the Dream for abandoning him in England. ***

Meanwhile, Mustache Mountain is offended that their title win is being called a fluke, so they’ll smack the Undisputed Era around at Full Sail next week.

Johnny Gargano def. EC3
The story of this match was cool. Gargano came in too hot, wanting to fight and not paying much attention to strategy. EC3 was  both offended that Gargano was treating him like Ciampa, and able to control most of the match because Gargano was off his game. Later on, Gargano went overboard and got the win, but began to lose the crowd in the process. I dig it. ***½

Because the Cruiserweight Championship is now an NXT title I’m reviewing every title defense of the WWE/NXT Cruiserweight Championship and posting them on the NXT TV reviews that preceded them. Here’s the title defense from the 85th episode of 205 Live.

July 10, 2018 – Manchester, New Hampshire

Cedric Alexander def. Hideo Itami {WWE Cruiserweight Championship Match}
This has nothing to do with this match, but earlier in the episode Colin fucking Delaney made an appearance and nobody made a big deal out of it. It’s like a suffered through his whole WWECW run for nothing. Okay so anyway Itami beat Mustafa Ali and Buddy Murphy in a triple threat match to earn this shot. It’s actually hard for me to believe that Itami lasted another half a year in WWE given his performance here. The guy just didn’t care or was too broken to try. He started to look like the KENTA of old as the match came to a close, but it really wasn’t enough to justify the fifteen minutes that preceded it. They had an opportunity to do something different, like have a striking battle instead of the usual spot-for-spot match this crew tends to have, and instead they just put on a boring show. Alexander hit the Lumbar Check out of nowhere at 15:26 for the win. **¾