NXT TakeOver: Orlando was a professional wrestling event in the NXT TakeOver series. It took place on April 1, 2017, at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida, as part of the WrestleMania 33 weekend festivities. The event was produced by WWE for its NXT brand, the event was streamed live on the WWE Network.
Five matches were contested at the event. In the main event, Bobby Roode defeated Shinsuke Nakamura to retain the NXT Championship. On the undercard, Asuka retained the NXT Women's Championship against Ember Moon and Authors of Pain retained the NXT Tag Team Championship against #DIY (Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa) and The Revival (Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder). The event also saw the debut of Aleister Black. Also, all of the championships were given new belt designs.
Note: This article was posted AFTER my WrestleMania 33 write-up, so I'll be mentioning stuff from after the fact.
SAnitY def. Tye Dillinger, No Way Jose Kassius Ohno, Roderick Strong & Ruby Riot
You guys can go back to one of the earliest entries I've wrote about women's wrestling for here or for the archives from Let's Talk Wrestling, but DAYUM Heidi Lovelace/Ruby Riot isn't easy on the eyes. She's even uglier to me in HD. That being said, it was cool to see what she brought to the table against Nikki Cross. I still feel like she needs to change her ring gear as it looks like she belongs in Sanity instead of against them. Her and Cross didn't do much other than deliver their own unique brands of crazy while the guys did most of the work.
No Way Jose was written off in an injury angle during the preshow so Kassius Ohno was made to be his replacement. Thank god he changed up his ring gear to some more flattering colors to hide his fat. That white NBA jersey wasn't doing him any favors. Now you can focus on his offense instead of seeing his gut and cellulite jiggling around during everything that he does. Can someone tell Roderick Strong to SLOW THE FUCK DOWN? This isn't Ring of Honor anymore so he doesn't have to go a million miles per hour in his matches. I'm sure one of the coaches/road agents chewed him out about that post-match. A part of me hopes Dillinger gets called up just for he doesn't have to be burdened with this feud much longer. I rather see NXT go in a different direction with everyone involved here (except for Ruby and Cross) out of the guys as it just seems to be redundant at this point.
This wasn't a bad match at all and definitely got everyone hyped to kick off the show, but I rather see most of the guys on Dillinger's team in singles feuds than in a huge stable war against Sanity, who could be in the tag team division conversation, especially in a division that's going to be lacking bodies once Revival get called up.
Aleister Black def. Andrade “Cien” Almas
I had no idea who this guy was supposed to be from the vignettes until I read up on message boards and social media to find out that this is the debut of Tommy (FUCKING) End in NXT. The guy definitely lived up to his reputation and I appreciated that NXT presented him like a megastar right off the bat. That's something I'm still shaking my head at how they failed to do with Roderick Strong. That guy was a fucking main eventer for Ring of Honor (which you can pretty much call an unofficial feeder system for WWE nowadays) and they just brought him in like a regular guy with little to no fanfare. Some of the Full Sail folks knew who he was but it wasn't made into a big deal like End's debut here. I've seen Almas work matches at NXT house shows, so he was the perfect opponent to put End over in his TakeOver debut.
If memory serves, isn't this the same guy who had that stellar exhibition match against Neville during the UK Championship Tournament?
NXT would be crazy not to push this guy to the moon. Then again... this is the same company that's deadset on doing NOTHING with guys like Sami Zayn, Cesaro, Dolph Ziggler, etc. at a main event level...
NXT Tag Team Champions The Authors of Pain def. #DIY and The Revival
I've been hearing people call this a MOTY candidate all weekend and I don't know about that. I'm usually biased towards the Revival's matches because they are that damn good at tag team wrestling, but at the same time, this wasn't as flawless as Revival's last few TakeOver outings. Don't get me wrong, Revival and DIY made the Authors of Pain look like a million bucks by enduring their arsenal of moves being laid on them, but the second DIY got eliminated this match went to shits. The Authors of Pain went back to being sloppy and green as grass. You could see that in how sloppy they finished off the Revival for the win here. Everything up to that point was superb though from DIY and Revival.
I was personally pulling for Revival as three time NXT Tag Team Champions but whatever, if they want to keep pushing AoP, I hope they learn something from Paul Ellering in the long haul as they got a LOT to learn about tag team wrestling.
I'm sad that we didn't get a special one night only appearance of Jim Cornette managing The Revival since he raves about them so much on his podcast.
NXT Women’s Champion Asuka def. Ember Moon
This was a great back and forth match with Ember Moon matching and one-upping Asuka move for move and counter for counter. They have fought each other previously prior to signing with WWE, so this was a highly anticipated rematch of sorts for fans who have followed both the former Kana (Asuka) and Athena's (Ember Moon) careers up to this point. I was ready to call this the match of the night until the finish.
I get that NXT are toying with the idea of making Asuka a heel but it really doesn't work when everyone is going to cheer for her anyway when she's beating the shit out of everyone thrown her way. Besides, it doesn't make much sense that she has to cheat when her whole gimmick to this point has been she's been an unstoppable striking machine. The whole referee bump spot just seemed like a cop out since they want to milk this feud until the next TakeOver event or even longer. I seriously doubt they are calling up Asuka to the main roster any time soon anyway. From the way it looks currently, I wouldn't be surprised if they call up Ember Moon before they call up Asuka.
That being said, NXT needs to do something drastic to pull this women's division out of being on life support. I was hoping that this Ember/Asuka feud was going to be the shot in the arm that it has needed since all of the Four Horsewomen left, but I was kinda let down here. Sure, Ember was the first opponent in a long time where she could go all out against instead of holding back (looking at all of you - Eva Marie, Aliyah, Liv Morgan, Billie Kay, and Peyton Royce), but it seemed like they were told to not play all of their cards at once. I don't know what it is about NXT and wanting to wear out something good (the Joe/Balor feud, any feud involving Revival, etc.). Start doing some one-off feuds and a rematch tops after a title change. No need to force feuds to go on and on to bore people to no end. Besides, NXT has a TON of talent that hasn't even debuted on TV yet, so you would think they would be trying to cycle in as many people as possible to get them TV ready for the main roster before they raped clean like last year's draft again.
NXT Champion Bobby Roode def. Shinsuke Nakamura
I'm going to be in the minority here and I'm starting to get bored by these bouts between Nakamura and Roode. They are both amazing wrestlers, but this is getting stale to watch. It's starting to bore me as much as the Nakamura/Joe and Balor/Joe feuds where they blew their load on everything that you can expect them to do. This match felt like the Asuka match before it whereas it's starting to become a chore to watch these repetitive rematches since audiences have become used to what to expect from these two. At least Ember Moon/Asuka was something new, but this was the exact same thing that we saw at the previous TakeOver event without the whole injury angle at the end. I'm honestly ready for both Roode and Nakamura to move onto other things. Wouldn't be surprised if Nakamura gets called up to SmackDown! tonight. At the same time, I don't see why they wouldn't call up Roode for either brand. You got an instant main eventer here that can talk and work solid bouts, so why keep him in NXT? He's not getting any younger.
I forget which podcaster said it best, but WWE need to start worrying about how many guys they have on their roster that are mostly "entrance props" and that's it. The more it carries on, I fear that Roode's music will be more over than he actually is in the eyes of WWE fans. Wrestling fans that have seen him elsewhere in TNA and GFW know better, but I'm skeptical that he's just over because his music is freakin' awesome.
I have to ask at the end of this NXT TakeOver review, but where do we go from here? Solid show as usual that we've come to expect from these events, but what's next for this brand in terms of storylines? It just seems like a lot of feuds have stagnated.
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