Kyle O’Reilly vs. Kushida brings plenty of excitement and concern

On this past Tuesday’s episode of NXT, general manager William Regal announced that Adam Cole and Kyle O’Reilly — who are scheduled to face one another at the brand’s Great American Bash special — will wrestle on this coming week’s telecast.

As for their opponents, Regal instructed Cole and O’Reilly to choose their opponents for the June 22 show. While fans have yet to learn who Cole will wrestle, they did find out who will stand opposite O’Reilly: NXT Cruiserweight Champion Kushida.

O’Reilly issued the challenge to Kushida following the junior heavyweight legend’s successful title defense against Trey Baxter (aka Blake Christian) and with one simple head nod from the champion, wrestling Twitter turned into that scene from The Office where Michael Scott goes “It’s happening! Everybody, stay calm!” as everyone rushes to the exit door.

Fans are rightfully excited about next week’s Kushida vs. Kyle O’Reilly match. That said, there is good reason for concern in regard to the booking.

Given how similar O’Reilly and Kushida are in terms of their wrestling styles and skill, the thought alone of these two exchanging holds for any period of time should excite any wrestling fan. However, this match also highlights some flaws in NXT’s booking.

Let’s start with the best-case scenario, which would consist of Kushida and O’Reilly having a dynamite bout before O’Reilly wins clean. In some ways, this is fine. With O’Reilly on the path to becoming the black-and-gold brand’s next top male babyface, he needs to collect as many wins as he can over wrestlers positioned lower than him on the card.

However, a win over the Cruiserweight Champion in a non-title match that ultimately becomes a self-contained event (i.e. O’Reilly doesn’t get a Cruiserweight Championship match) would further send the message to viewers that even the best cruiserweights aren’t as good as the non-205 Live members of the NXT roster.

It’s possible that Kushida and O’Reilly put together the sort of match that renders that concern moot, especially if they protect Kushida with a “visual pinfall” or something in that ballpark, but for a brand that still fights to repel its “no one cares about this and no one should care about this” reputation despite its consistency as a product, having the champion lose as a means to build up a feud deemed more important would do more harm than good.

Of course, there’s a chance that the NXT creative team realizes this, too, which would compel them to go with the worst-case scenario: end the match with an Adam Cole-induced non-finish.

Considering that the NXT writers went to this well a few weeks prior to justify booking a five-way main event for NXT TakeOver: In Your House, fans now know that even WWE’s “alternative” brand isn’t above using this creative crutch to advance a feud and “protect” wrestlers.

Setting aside that some fans already expect this to happen, this outcome does nothing but put heat on the company for its lack of imagination. Fans won’t hate Cole for screwing up the match; they’ll just groan at yet another lame finish scripted to keep Kushida and O’Reilly from losing. Plus it erodes potential fan excitement for future advertised matches: If this advertised match ends with a weak finish, why should they invest in the next match NXT promotes ahead of time?

For plenty of people, though, this won’t matter, as even a small taste of Kushida vs. O’Reilly is enough to satiate their appetite, but for others, these finishes would spoil what should be an upscale meal of a match. Hopefully, the NXT creative team thinks about that before serving this one to its audience.