E.K. Prosper and Grayson Waller put on a solid main event match for the NXT Championship, and support them, especially if they didn’t know it Waller’s original opponent, Mason Rook, will be sidelined until today. Anyway, this match and the brawling of the guys trying to get to the ring were both really fun, and the ending to NXT was a little lighter and much needed after all the sad (and in the case of NXT, bad) in recent days.
When Robert Stone revealed that Waller’s defense was going to be an open challenge after Rook was revealed to have failed a medical, I knew someone would just walk out. No, we got all the guys out of the locker room trying to get into the ring like an upside-down royal. I loved that almost Zilla Fatu and Cruz Montana made it there, and I hope that means they compete to become number one contenders before the Halloween devastation, instead of Fatu fighting BirthRight and Montana with Dion Lennox.
When Fatou and Montana were fighting, it was Prosper who got behind Waller. Prosper is such a good wrestler, a guy who works like he has everything to prove, but I feel like I often forget about him. He has been linked in the tag scene as well as the defunct Speed Championship scene this year. He was in a six-man tag team match to decide the triple threat number one contender’s match, though, so maybe I should have known, or hoped, that it was for him. While I hate that Rook may be on the shelf for a while, I love that Prosper was given a chance to show off.
Waller and Prosper got quite a bit of time, especially if it was a last minute thing, and I enjoyed the match a lot more than I thought I would. The crowd loved the opening sequence with Prosper’s near fall on the champion and they went quiet for a bit but the young star worked to get them back and chanting his name.
The ref hit Waller, who was on the commentary table, with a nice springboard at the end of what looked absolutely fantastic, and he got another hard nearfall in the ring before Waller got his foot on the ropes. Prosper took two spinning stunners and Waller saved, which I assumed was happening anyway, but I thought Prosper looked really good in the loss. It was a great showing for him tonight, and it got Waller’s first successful defense, and really, there was nothing wrong with that.
Written by Daisy Ruth
