As a kid of the Attitude Era, I’m prone to wild brawls in pre-recorded segments outside of areas where a babyface and a heel face off, and it feels a little ridiculous. I thought it might be here tonight, but instead NXT Champion Grayson Waller sent his Halloween Doom rival Tony D’Angelo on a wild goose chase. A wild goose chase that eventually ended right inside the WWE Performance Center with just two minutes left on the show.
I thought we were off to a good start when Waller posted a video that aired in the corner midway through the match, giving a great sense of urgency that he was headed to D’Angelo’s house. I didn’t expect madness on the level of, say, AEW’s Swerve Strickland and “Hangman” Adam Page, but at least I thought it would be interesting. Seeing the video infuriated D’Angelo, and he left the PC to seemingly defend his family against Waller, but when he showed up, the champion wasn’t even there and it didn’t seem like he ever entered.
The story then took us to what I believe was the same restaurant where “NXT” filmed the D’Angelo family segments, which was a nice touch. There absolutely could have been a ridiculous, glass-smashing, pasta-throwing brawl here that would have been much more interesting. But, no, Waller just left her a note saying to “meet you back where it all began.” Even Booker T commented that Waller was sending D’Angelo on a scavenger hunt right then.
“Where it all began” was referring to the Performance Center, which I thought was pretty lame. Waller cut a promo on D’Angelo in the ring and the challenger rolled in his truck and Waller stormed into the parking lot for a brawl with only a minute or two left in the show. It was all very old, same old, the security guards trying to separate them. No meatballs or glasses of wine to drop, missed opportunity.
WWE seems to refuse to go the extra mile anymore, and NXT is usually the show to do it. This felt very half-baked and I hated it because there was room to make this more fun and unique and it would have been borderline ridiculous before the Halloween devastation.
Posted by Daisy Ruth