WWE NXT Cincinnati Live Event Results and Review (July 15, 2016): Shinsuke Nakamura Headlines

WWE NXT Live was held at the BB&T Arena in Highland Heights, KY just outside Cincinnati.  Here’s the results and review.

Tonight was my first NXT experience and it was a very entertaining show.  It featured a Women’s Championship match and a six-man tag team main event between Samoa Joe & the Revival vs. Shinsuke Nakamura & American Alpha.

The opening match saw No Way Jose take on Hugo Knox.  No Way Jose is hugely over despite an 80s style gimmick.  He truly knows how to work the crowd and put on a very good show with Hugo Knox.  In the end, the winner was No Way Jose. And the crowd was well into this match.

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The third match of the night may have been one of the most fun matches on the card as Bayley took on Billie Kay.  If NXT Superstars are going to be part of the WWE Draft on Tuesday I would fully expect Bayley to be one of them.  She is completely over with the crowd and is a modern day Bret Hart with how she interacts with the crowd with her hugging gimmick. The cutest part of the night was this little girl who presented Bayley with a little stuffed dog before the match.  The match itself was good but Bayley is a true sports entertainer.  Bailey went on to defeat Billie Key.

Bobby Roode then came out to great cheers from the crowd before cutting an excellent heel promo on the fans from Northern Kentucky. Then Finn Balar comes out setting up a great matchup.  Both guys put on a great show and Ballor ended up winning.  After the match was over “Thank You Finn” chants broke out and he seemed to acknowledge that he would likely be on the main roster soon.

Hideo Itami continued his comeback from injury taking on Wesley Blake.  This was also another good match and Wesley Blake also showed some decent mic skills.  However, his style is very similar to Chris Jericho so he needs to be careful to develop his own style if he wants to advance to the main roster and build a unique character.  Itami looked very good in this match and won the match.

In what was likely the match of the night, the NXT Women’s Championship was on the line as Alexa Bliss took on Asuka.  This match featured a number of near falls and it truly almost looked like Alexa may pull off the upset.  However, in the end, Asuka retained her championship.  It was very cool for a championship match be part of a house show.

Finally, the main event of the evening was a little disappointing.  It was originally set to be Samoa Joe vs. Shinsuke Nakamura, however, Joe grabbed the mic and reiterated that beating Finn Balor did not  mean that Shinsuke would receive a title shot.  While Joe was talking The Revival ran in and attacked Nakamura.  American Alpha came out for the save setting up a 6 man tag team match.

The match was as good as a six man tag match can be.  They really booked the match to hold Nakamura out of the match until the very end.  This did create a huge pop though for Nakamura and the match overall was good.   Nakamura and American Alpha ended up winning the match and all three along with the referee did Nakamura’s signature pose which was well received by the crowd.

I greatly enjoyed the NXT Live Event.  The seats were awesome as I was in the front row.  Also, I greatly enjoyed the interaction between the wrestlers and the crowd.  It is the one thing that is missing for the most part on the main roster as most matches the competitors ignore the crowd versus feeding off them.  There were a lot of funny lines delivered to and from the crowd and superstar.

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I like the old school character development WWE is using for their “developmental brand”.  The only thing I would suggest different is for not having every babyface win every match.  Overall it was a great way to spend a Friday night and I highly recommend going to NXT if it comes to your town.