2 things that went right on the July 26 episode of NXT 2.0

If nothing else, you can’t accuse NXT 2.0 of not giving the women’s division significant time to develop.

Now, with that time for development comes a lot of growing pains. After all, many of these ladies are athletes from other sports who have slightly more in-ring experience than you and I, and most of them are given preposterous gimmicks and equally ridiculous scripts that give them little chance of getting over.

Basically, most of these feuds that the women are taking part in aren’t great from a money/viewership drawing perspective. However, as we saw on this week’s episode of NXT 2.0, the brand is at least seeing what they have with these women and giving them a chance to succeed or fail, which is far more productive that doing slightly less than the bare minimum.

Oh, and some other decent stuff happened on this show, too.

These are two things that went right on the July 26 episode of NXT 2.0.

Zoey Stark’s pursuit of the NXT Women’s Championship

Nothing better exemplified this dichotomy than everything that involved Zoey Stark throughout this episode. Her re-introductory promo to start the show quickly rallied the fans to her side and reinforced her status as an affable, blue-collar babyface. Cora Jade and Toxic Attraction interrupting her, on the other hand, didn’t work as well, another example of tired WWE tropes bogging a segment down.

Later on, Stark took on and pinned Gigi Dolin, which continued to build Stark’s credibility as the number one contender to Mandy Rose’s NXT Championship. The post-match angle where Stark ran off the rest of Toxic Attraction, took some kendo stick shots from Cora Jade, and then got saved by the returning Roxanne Perez accomplished a lot in a brief period of time.

In one segment, the creative team teased physicality between Stark and Rose, got Jade some of her heat back with the attack, and advanced Jade’s feud with Perez to the next chapter while showing that Perez is a decent person by having her check on the fallen Stark.

Again, we could’ve done without the interruption parade to open the show, but WWE deserves credit for everything else.

Andre Chase vs. Giovanni Vinci

Based on this recent winning streak, the NXT creative team has big plans for Giovanni Vinci, so his match against resident jobber-to-the-stars Andre Chase seemed like a foregone conclusion. Indeed, Vinci scored the clean pin over Chase after crushing the former Bravado Brother with a sit-out Last Ride, but Chase got in far more offense than expected, which turned a probable squash into a great 12-and-a-half-minute match.

The Chase U gimmick’s inexplicable popularity — derived from the fans simply enjoying the silly gimmick for what it is — enhanced this match, too, but Vinci and Chase’s in-ring chemistry handled most of the heavy-lifting here. We even saw Chase break out a Tiger Driver during the bout’s late stages!

This keeps Vinci’s streak of good matches on NXT 2.0 alive and the post-match confrontation with Nathan Frazer sets the stage for him to have another in-ring clinic.