Welcome back to another Monday Morning Q&A where I toss out some questions to get a feel of how you guys and gals are feeling about certain topics.
So here are 5 questions I’d like to toss out for this week. I’ll give my answers, too, but the key here is that I want to know what YOU think! So make sure you chime in!
1) Roderick Strong wants to have “big money fights” after beating Joe Gacy. Book your best idea of what you’d do for his next feud.
Selfishly, I’d have him drop the belt to Johnny Gargano. That way, Gargano could be the first person to become a Grand Slam Champion in NXT. It does nothing for Strong, but I feel like he’s doomed anyway and the cruiserweight division is on its last legs, so I’d rather him drop it to Gargano (even if Gargano vacates it the next week or it just disappears with him) than for Strong to drop it to someone else who is weak and it goes away just the same.
If not the Gargano idea, and if they’re planning on sticking to Strong and trying to make this work, my next best idea for a “big money fight” would have been Kyle O’Reilly if he wasn’t seemingly out the door. The third option would then be someone from the main roster coming over for a guest match to spark some interest. I’d pitch for that to be someone like Ricochet.
2) NXT New Year’s Evil will be the next special event. What do you expect to see there?
My guess is that’s where Bron Breakker beats Tommaso Ciampa to win the NXT Championship. Given how Cora Jade got the win for her team, I think we’ll see her against Mandy Rose for the NXT Women’s Championship, too, but Jade will come up short.
Outside of that, some other belts could be on the line (Strong’s big money match? Imperium against MSK after they speak to the shaman?) Maybe a blowoff for something like Pete Dunne vs Tony D’Angelo or LA Knight vs Grayson Waller?
3) This was the first NXT pay-per-view not dubbed TakeOver since Arrival. How do you feel about that?
Considering this was one of the weaker events in that it felt like nothing huge really happened and it’s transitioning into a new era where this comes across even more like developmental, I kind of want them to abandon the pay-per-views. It might be better to just stick with special themed episodes of the television show, like the upcoming New Year’s Evil, how they do Great American Bash and Halloween Havoc, and so on.
This works well for AEW with the Dynamite specials and it tends to pop a rating. If WWE isn’t trying to make the pay-per-views the focal points anymore and they don’t bother to travel, it all feels the same inside the Capitol Wrestling Center, anyway. Just do it on a Tuesday night and save the Sunday slot.
4) What do you expect the follow-up to be with Duke Hudson getting his head shaved?
With the way things have been going in WWE lately, where people are pushed and then fired, everyone turns heel/face at random for what is needed that week and the idea of “long-term storytelling” is mostly just an excuse to try to avoid answering fan complaints, I honestly don’t think there will be ANY follow-up.
By that, I mean they’ll show footage of what happened at WarGames and maybe Cameron Grimes will gloat about how he won, but there might not even be any acknowledgment of it beyond that. At most, it might just be a week or two of “ha, you don’t have as much hair now” and nothing more.
I don’t think this is going anywhere in particular. My guess is they had no ideas and figured they would just do this for the sake of getting people talking.
5) Does Team 2.0 winning make you like this new direction of NXT more, dislike it more, or does it have no effect whatsoever on your outlook?
The kayfabe team winning does nothing for me. It’s not as though that is going to draw any heat from this particularly viewer.
However, the idea that they were booked to win, while it was the clear and obvious outcome, doesn’t sit right with me. It truly feels as though WWE is trying to say the previous era was a mistake and this new direction is better, but not only did I enjoy that black and gold era much more, I also don’t have faith they actually like this new bunch.
More so, instead of it being “this new thing is better”, I think this is a case of “screw that old thing.” I think they look at NXT as a failure of a brand because it “lost to AEW” and “anything that isn’t what it was is clearly better because that experiment was flawed, so any change is an improvement.” I don’t tend to think that way. I’m much more the type who wants to look at the situation, determine what the problems are, then fix those specific problems, rather than throw the baby out with the bath water.
Let us know your thoughts about these questions by answering them in the comments!
