NXT Takeover Dallas is coming up tomorrow night at 10PM Eastern, which I think is 3AM GMT, and it's sure to be a blockbuster show. I don't watch the weekly NXT show but I make sure to catch every single Takeover. There hasn't been a bad one yet. There are six matches on the card and none of them are sleepers and all of them will have storyline importance going forward.
1. Austin Aries vs Baron Corbin
Austin Aries is a former Ring of Honor champion and a former TNA champ, holding all of their major belts (World Heavyweight, X-Division, and Tag) at one time or another. The self-proclaimed Greatest Man Who Ever Lived, Aries is a gigantic douchebag in and out of the ring but he's a fantastic wrestler who, because of his size and his attitude, was thought of as a dude who would never in a million years get a shot in the WWE. THQ actually used him as a voice and mo cap actor for the WWE games a few years back which was as close as anyone thought he'd ever get but look at him now. I have no idea what his finisher is in the WWE but his old finisher was the Brainbuster. He also does a bridging choke sort of like a reverse Cattle Mutilation called the Last Chancery.
Baron Corbin is a washed up football player with a receding hairline and a torso that looks like a face. He's almost seven feet tall and apparently Stephanie McMahon loves him because he looks like he should be in Twilight to her. His nickname is the Lone Wolf and there are motorcycle samples in his entrance music despite him not actually having a motorcycling related gimmick. Baron Corbin is a product of the WWE Performance Center and the NXT system. A couple years ago he was pushed very strongly as an unstoppable babyface which, as it turns out, isn't very endearing. Once the fans got tired of him squashing people, they turned on him hard. After being pushed as a babyface for way too long, they finally turned him heel around this time last year. His character didn't really change, he was just a snooty dick to babyfaces now. His finisher is the End of Days, a flatliner that only really looks good on smaller guys (like Aries) but he also does a Black Hole Slam he calls the Deep Six that puts guys away.
A couple months ago, Baron started a feud against Apollo Crews. Baron was upset that someone who didn't come up through the WWE system and instead paid their dues on the indie circuit and in Japan got to jump him in line for an NXT title shot. Baron won that feud and in the process told Crews to "go back to Ring of Honor" despite Crews never having worked a single match for ROH. This created Baron Corbin, Indie Hater and whoelse could this new Corbin set his sights on other than a newcomer to NXT, a man who is one of two people to ever hold the Ring of Honor World Championship more than once, Austin Aries. Corbin jumped Aries and beat him down at the TV tapings on Rumble weekend and this grudge match is signed for Takeover Dallas.
2. The Revival (c) vs American Alpha, NXT Tag Team Championship match
The artists formerly known as the Mechanics and Dash & Dawson, The Revival are Dash Wilder and Scott Dawson. These two dudes are the second coming of Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard, the Brainbusters for the new millenium. They work a really old school, punishing heel style and are known for antagonizing other heel teams on the internet and in promos (including teams not even in the WWE like the Young Bucks) for doing flashy moves and trying to sell shirts rather than actually work heel. I thought the Mechanics was a much better name than the Revival because like they're about the "mechanics of the human body," methodically dismantling dudes. They're not travelling preachers so I don't the Revival thing at all. Their finisher is the Shatter Machine, a flapjack/Codebreaker combo.
Jason Jordan and Chad Gable, American Alpha, are two legit wrestlers. Jordan was a number 2 ranked NCAA Division 1 wrestler in college and Gable was a legit Olympian, wrestling Greco-Roman in 2012. They were in a stable years ago called ShootNation that never made TV. If The Revival are the reincarnation of the Brainbusters, American Alpha are the second coming of the World's Greatest Tag Team. They're fantastic and their shoot-inspired style is so refreshing in the WWE, very unique. Their tag team finisher is called Grand Amplitude, a suplex combo that involves Jordan throwing someone in the air, Gable catching and then suplexing them.
The story behind the feud here is, as far as I know, a simple matter of American Alpha being next in line in the contendership for The Revival's belts. A great thing about NXT as compared to the main roster WWE is that you can have simple programs like this because the belts are so relatively meaningful. They're portrayed as something you actually want and not just a dumb prop. I saw a Revival vs American Alpha tag match on an NXT Florida house show that was the best match I've ever seen live that didn't involve New Japan Pro Wrestling talent. Like they did The Shield vs The Wyatt Family in Atlantic City when that feud was red hot and it might as well have been a Christian vs Mark Henry match compared to the Revival vs American Alpha.
3. Apollo Crews vs Elias Samson
Apollo Crews is a huge dude who does crazy flips and he always has a smile on his face. That's, uh, about it. He used to work for Dragon Gate before he came to the WWE? He's roommates with Ricochet? That's all I got. His finisher is the Uhaa Combination, a gorilla press slam followed by a standing moonsault. It's called that because his old name was Uhaa Nation and I have no idea what it's called in the WWE.
Elias Samson is Jeff Jarrett.
Remember when I said this card didn't have any sleepers? I lied. Okay, maybe that's harsh. Crews is a really good wrestler and Samson is totally fine. This match just has zero heat. Maybe Samson will hit Crews with his guitar. If he hits him with the guitar maybe that'll justify the hours of screen time they've devoted to this go-nowhere dude.
4. Sami Zayn vs Shinsuke Nakamura
Sami exploded on the scene in NXT shortly after mysterious masked luchadore El Generico retired from independent wrestling to care for an orphanage in his native Mexico. Sami Zayn is Syrian-Canadian and not Mexican at all so they definitely aren't the same person. Strangely, however, Sami appears to do all the same moves as El Generico and claims to have wrestled Kevin Owens countless times despite there not being a single piece of photographic evidence of him doing so. Furthermore, this El Generico guy was the best babyface in the world for a number of years before retiring while Sami Zayn can barely beat Stardust. His finisher is the Helluva Kick, a running yakuza kick to the corner.
Shinsuke Nakamura is the man. Making his debut in NXT after 14 years of wrestling at the highest heights you achieve outside of the WWE, the IWGP Heavyweight Championship scene in NJPW, he's come to America to experience that final frontier available to him. Known as the King of Strong Style, he has a 3-1-1 MMA record and only like two of those are probably worked. They're probably going to call him Nakamura on the show Friday night instead of his full name, presumably because Shinsuke is difficult for idiots and morons to pronounce. His finisher is the boma ye, a running knee strike. He's the most charismatic man in wrestling and his matches with Kazushi Sakuraba at Wrestle Kingdom 7 and Kota Ibushi at Wrestle Kingdom 9 are legendary. There's a funny story Nakamura told in a wwe.co.jp interview a couple weeks ago from when he was living in Los Angeles and training at the Inoki LA Dojo. He was roommates with Lyoto Machida and they were arguing about whose English was worse. Their other roommate, Daniel Bryan, barged in and told them to shut up, they were both equally terrible at English.
This match is being pushed as a passing of the torch almost between Sami Zayn, the heart and soul of NXT, and Shinsuke Nakamura. Sami got called up to the main roster a couple weeks ago just to be horrendously mismanaged and booked in that embarrassing seven-man Intercontinental Championship match so this is his farewell to the NXT universe while introducing Nakamura. This should be not only match of the night but match of the year.
5. Bayley (c) vs Asuka, NXT Women's Championship match
The most pleasant, genuinely inspiring character in WWE history, Bayley is the ultimate babyface. She's not the best wrestler, and she's not the prettiest woman on the roster, but she always tries her best, she's always a good sport, and her title chase was incredibly satisfying. Bayley rules. Her finisher is the Bayley-to-belly suplex, a belly-to-belly suplex that looks like she's giving you a big hug. She's a hugger, after all.
Asuka is an ass-kicker from Japan who, much Nakamura, reached the top of the mountain and the last summit to climb before she retired was the WWE. Formerly known as Kana, he was notorious for her love of nazi iconography and legitimately beating unsuspecting women unconscious but has toned it all down considerably for the WWE. She used to be sponsored by Xbox but much like the ultraviolence, she had to give that up for her WWE career. Her finisher is the Asuka Lock, a crossface chicken wing.
This is a classic duel between babyfaces, a battle for respect. Asuka is determined to prove that she belongs, and has belonged, in the WWE by winning the title and Bayley is a fighting champion, defending her belt against all comers. Asuka has been posting written promos on her instagram leading up to this match and they're all really good. It doesn't look like Bayley superfan Izzy will be in attendance on Friday so maybe the odds will be stacked against the champ.
6. Finn Balor (c) vs Samoa Joe, NXT Championship match
Finn Balor, the former Prince Devitt from New Japan, has been NXT champ for almost a year now, having defeated Kevin Owens for the NXT title at Ryougoku Sumo Hall, Tokyo, Japan at WWE Beast in the East. Balor, like Nakamura, spent some time at the apex of his division in New Japan, although his size and his ethnicity kept him stuck mostly in the Junior division, albeit as a perennial champion. While there, Finn (along with Machine Gun Karl Anderson, Bad Luck Fale, and Tama Tonga) created the Bullet Club, a faction of evil gaijin, sick of native Japanese wrestlers getting preferential treatment and bigger reactions from the crowd. The BC became hated in Japan and loved in America and grew to include guys like former TNA, ROH, and IWGP champ and current WWE main roster superstar AJ Styles, current IWGP Intercontinental champ Kenny Omega, current IWGP Jr Heavyweight Tag champs the Young Bucks, Yujiro Takahashi, Doc Gallows, Meng, Jeff Jarrett, and more. Since turning his back on the Bliz Cliz and coming to America, Finn has not only embraced the fans, becoming a babyface once again, he has also embraced something he calls "the Demon." The Demon is a part of himself that he calls upon during tough matches that manifests as facepaint and a wig made out of leather dreadlocks. After a while, fans have started to tire of Finn's babyface schtick. The reason he took off in Japan was in no small part due to his charismatic heel persona and profanity-laden heel promos. His finisher is the 1916, a lifting underhook DDT that used to be called the Bloody Sunday, both references to Irish independence, but he also puts guys away with the coup de grace, a diving double stomp.
Samoa Joe is, yet again, a former Ring of Honor champion and a multitime TNA champion and one of only four men to hold all of TNA's championships. You can see why "Baron Corbin, Indie Hater" gets him so much heat when so many successful dudes in NXT have such crazy indie backgrounds. Joe, nicknamed the Samoan Submission Machine, was at one time, over a decade ago, one of the absolute best wrestlers in the world. Ten years spent toiling in obscurity and being mismanaged into the ground by TNA severely damaged his rep but over the last year that he's been in the WWE, he's rehabbed a lot. The fat, sad S'mo Joe was reborn as the killer he was in 04 and he looks like he's barely missed a step. Joey Samoey's finisher is the Coquina Clutch, a rear naked choke. He also used a muscle buster but after he almost killed Tyson Kidd and legit ended his career with it, I don't know if he's allowed to use that anymore despite it being a freak accident.
Joe turned on Finn after failing to win the tag titles with him in the Dusty Rhodes Memorial Tag Team Tournament last year. Joe failed to win the championship when he challenged Finn at the last Takeover in London and since then fought his way back up the rankings for another shot, taking out Baron Corbin and defeating Sami Zayn in a 2 out of 3 falls match. The dirt sheet rumors are whoever loses this match gets called up to the main roster on the Monday Night Raw following Wrestlemania so this one has real consequences. Also waiting in the wings and reportedly in Dallas this weekend are Machine Gun Karl Anderson and Doc Gallows, two members of Finn Balor's Bullet Club. Could they factor into the match?
Takeovers are much shorter than traditional WWE PPVs, and this one will certainly be much shorter than the seven hour extravaganzza that's gonna be Wrestlemania this year. And as you could probably tell from this writeup, they're a lot less angle-driven and continuity heavy than main roster WWE. NXT is a lot more about telling good stories in the matches. You can legally watch it only on the WWE Network, which is free this month for new subscribers. If you've never watched pro wrestling or the WWE before, this Takeover is as good a time as any to check it out and see if it's for you!
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