Jim Ross Says NXT is WWE’s Best Program – Is He Right?
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Down in Florida, WWE NXT is making a name for itself with terrific matches, promos, and booking. Everything that goes on during the show has meaning, which we don’t see from WWE main roster programming that much anymore.
The recent NXT Takeover: Fatal 4-Way live special on the WWE Network (for just $9.99!) caught a lot of eyes for the work that was done, most notably the main event of the night for the NXT Championship involving Adrian Neville, Sami Zayn, Tyler Breeze, and Tyson Kidd. It’s being called one of the matches of the year.
Jim Ross has been a supporter of NXT’s programming for awhile now and recently gave it more praise in his latest blog post.
"Another outstanding NXT show which is becoming the best TV broadcast that WWE produces IMO."
NXT has certainly put on a great show. Is this comment valid, though?
The answer to that question is a definitive yes.
Main roster shows like Raw and SmackDown have been mind-boggling at times to watch. The quality of those shows have been on a downward trend for years now, but following SummerSlam, it became more evident by the week. It seemed like we had four “mail-it-in” Raw shows in a row between August’s pay-per-view and Night of Champions. The booking was lazy and there was a ton of meaningless content throughout the shows.
The handling of some characters have been pretty painful to watch – most notably how the Wyatt Family has been treated. They’ve gone from near main event status to floundering in the mid-card. There hasn’t been any type of report of negativity about them backstage, so it’s still a mystery as to why they’ve fell down the card.
NXT, which is handled by Triple H, does none of this. To reiterate the point again – the booking isn’t very flawed. There’s proper character development and the storylines actually get built up into something compelling too watch. Take a look at the budding rivalry between Adrian Neville and Sami Zayn for the NXT Championship. It has been a steady build of a friendship between two babyfaces that took a left turn when Neville pulled the referee out of the ring as he was about to count to three to crown Zayn the new champion at the NXT live event. Zayn would give a baffled reaction and then get super-kicked by Neville. Fans were stunned when they saw the NXT champion do this since he was a face. It also made sense from a storyline perspective of two friends going for the same goal that only one can achieve.
NXT also gives the women a greater opportunity to shine in front of the fans. Most Raw and SmackDown Divas matches last for about 5 minutes or so and maybe an extra sixth minute on PPVs. Fans see the potential of matches that Divas like Paige and AJ Lee can put on, but they are never given enough time to do so. NXT lets their women performers go longer than that and into the double digits in terms of minutes at PPVs. Natalya and Charlotte had seventeen minutes to work with at the first NXT Takeover. Bayley and Ric Flair’s daughter had about eleven minutes to work a match at Takeover 2 as well. I can’t recall the last time a main roster women’s match got that much air time.
WWE’s developmental brand is the best thing that they have going right now, which shouldn’t be the case. Main roster programming should be putting on quality shows every week.
Last time I checked, NXT doesn’t rewrite their shows while it’s going on, either.
Do you feel that NXT is better than shows like Raw and SmackDown?