NXT Stand and Deliver 2023 Review
I woke up before 2:30 am in Australia for… an NXT 2.0 show?
WrestleMania Weekend baby! Bringing out the real wrestling sicko in all of us. NXT has been on a downwards trajectory for a few years now, but you can never quite count them out when it comes to a big show.
Let’s see if the sleep deprivation was worth it!
Match #1 – Roxanne Perez vs. Zoey Stark vs. Gigi Dolin vs. Indi Hartwell vs. Lyra Valkyria vs. Tiffany Stratton - NXT Women’s Championship Ladder Match
This one began a bit stilted, including a bizarre spot where Indi and Zoey stood on the outside, each armed with a ladder, and just banged their ladders against each other for a bit.
Zoey and Lyra are doing the heavy lifting here in terms of wrestling ability and keeping the match on the rails.
The bulk of the interesting spots involved slams onto ladders, rather than dives off of them. Indi hit a particularly nasty-looking spinebuster to Tiffany onto a ladder. At one point the belt was visibly lowered from the ceiling to make it easier to win. Hilarious.
Jacy Jayne predictably comes in to take Gigi out of the match. Tiffany took a DISGUSTING flip bump to the outside where no-one caught her. It looked like absolute death.
The finish came when Indi was struggling to climb the ladder due to kayfabe injuries, when Dexter Lumis appeared out of nowhere to give her the assist for the win.
They then cut to Roxanne looking up at Indi from the floor, smiling. Don’t look happy that you just lost your title, idiot.
3 stars – A few fun spots but definitely the worst of the 3 major ladder matches from the weekend.
Match #2 – Gallus (Mark Coffey & Wolfgang) vs. The Creed Brothers (Brutus Creed & Julius Creed) vs. The D'Angelo Family (Channing Lorenzo & Tony D'Angelo) - NXT Tag Team Championships
The Creed Brothers are the one consistent shining light in NXT right now. They struggle when having to deliver that patented terrible NXT dialogue - but when they’re allowed to just be Dumb Jock Wrestlers, they’re incredible.
Not a whole lot happened here and it felt like a filler TV match, much less a featured PPV title match. Therein lies the issue with the current NXT product, this roster simply doesn’t have enough reps to know how to adjust to different-sized venues.
The work was generally sloppy, with Lorenzo missing the senton on the floor in his shine sequence, and Brutus overshooting what was meant to be the highlight spot Brutus Bomb to a human jenga tower.
The finish comes when noted sexual harassment enthusiast Joe Coffey made his ‘surprise’ return, running in from the crowd to assist Gallus in picking up the win.
2 stars – A boring, sloppy match that would still be underwhelming as a TV match, let alone on a PPV.
Match #3 – Wes Lee vs. JD McDonagh vs. Ilja Dragunov vs. Dragon Lee vs. Axiom - NXT North American Championship
If you put 5 of the best workers on the brand in a single match, there is a baseline level expectation of match quality. While I would prefer they all got used in various singles matches (and also throw Tyler Bate into the mix), they’re all booked and they all deliver the match of the night.
They paid-off all the fun pairings here, with Ilja/JD and Axoim/Dragon Lee getting their sequences. Dragon Lee is having his debut televised NXT match and he hasn’t lost a step since his great NJPW run.
Dragunov goes goblin mode at the midpoint and crumples everyone in a really entertaining hot streak of strikes and suplexes, as blood drips down his head.
Axiom really shone in this match, delivering my favourite spot of the match by countering Wes Lee’s handspring Pele kick with a perfectly timed running superkick.
Wes Lee gets the win by intercepting Ilja’s Torpedo Moskau to Dragon Lee by hitting the handspring Pele on both men. Great match.
4 stars - Five of the best in the company giving fans of old NXT a glimmer of hope for the future. Match of the Night. Recommended.
Match #4 - Johnny Gargano vs. Grayson Waller
I’m higher on both of these guys than most online pundits are in 2023. Johnny is a sentimental favourite of mine since his DG:USA days, and I feel similarly with Waller since his PWA run.
These two have particularly good chemistry and exceed in plunder environments, so long as their tendencies toward the overdramatic are kept in check.
There were a number of fun spots here including a suplex from the ring into a pile of standing chairs on the floor, a midair knee counter to the slingshot spear, Candice battering Grayson with the kendo stick, and a rope walk springboard Coast to Coast.
It went a little long, but it was refreshing to actually have a singles match with a storyline build-up on this show. Thankfully Johnny didn’t do his ‘staring at my hands, I don’t want to hurt him’ routine from 2019 NXT, and instead just kicked ass. It was refreshing on a card full of multi-person matches to have a one-on-one match where the two people just beat the hell out of each other. Wrestling, innit?
Gargano picks up the win by losing his shit and battering Waller with a chair over and over, then locking on the Gargano Escape for the submission victory.
3.75 stars – A fun plunder match that hopefully leads to bigger and better things for both men.
Match #5 - Fallon Henley & Kiana James vs. Alba Fyre & Isla Dawn - NXT Women’s Tag Team Championships
This angle sucks and the characters are not much better, but the actual wrestlers here have more potential than the hand they’ve been dealt.
This was unmemorable, the finish came with Jensen having a crisis of conscious whether to pass Kiana her handbag (ugh) to use as a weapon, leading to Fyre & Dawn capitalising on the distraction with a backstabber / swanton combo to pick up the win and the titles.
2.5 stars – Another TV-level match taking up PPV time.
Match #6 – Bron Breakker vs. Carmelo Hayes - NXT Championship
Megapushed bland babyface Bron is getting rejected by this crowd and it’s delightful to see.
Having said that, the crowd doesn’t seem particularly interested until the closing stretch where Carmelo won them over.
The work was sloppy in the first half, like both guys were gassed and out of breath from the very start. “Melo don’t miss” unless you’re talking about successfully landing any of his springboard or diving offence.
The action was plodding and dull until Trick got ejected for interfering, which lead to a big Tope Con Hilo by Breakker and a top rope bulldog. Bron hits a crisp Frankensteiner to take us into the closing stretch of strike exchanges, and finisher counters.
A ref bump and Trick interfering with a belt shot led to a great nearfall that the entire crowd bought. Shortly after Carmelo hits the Nothing But Net for the win and the championship.
I don’t understand why after the match Bron did the respect spot, offering Melo the belt and raising his hand. HE JUST CHEATED TO TAKE YOUR TITLE. BE MAD. One step forward, three steps back seems to be NXT’s mission statement.
Anyway, the right man won in a technically fine but underwhelming title match.
3 stars – A slow and uninteresting first half is saved by its fun closing sequence.
AVERAGE RATING: 3.04 of 5 stars (or 6.08 of 10)
SUMMARY: A hit-and-miss show that shines brightest in the 5-way NA title match and the Gargano/Waller plunder war. A fun show to pop on in the background, but you don’t need to go out of your way to watch it if you missed it.
