Hey guys, and welcome to another edition of The NXT Rant. Before we head into all things NXT, thought I’d chat about a TWF related matter. That thing being a feud that has captured the imagination of all those who read this site… I’m of course talking about the Andariel Halo-Jordan Hule feud.

A very curious feud, as it began as most things on this site begin… completely at random. Jordan ends a column one week with “Halo is a whore”. Halo ends a column with “Hule better watch his back”, to which Hule then writes an amazing column, which contained the phrase “Halo is a whore” about 1,123,255,999 times.

All the power to them for trying to make an entertaining feud. It’s made me consider getting into a feud with another writer. The obvious choice is Cameron Burge, but that’s like Danny Davis challenging Hulk Hogan, I’m not quite there yet. Maybe “Great” Scott? No, he’s too nice a guy. I dunno, guess I have to wander here in midcard for a little while.

NXT is coming from Buffalo, NY. This is the big elimination show, so its interesting to see what happens here. Striker is out first of course, and introduces the Rookies to their amazingly awful music. Replay is shown of the Rookies victory over John Morrison and the RAW Job Squad. Happy moment as Bryan got his first pinfall victory. Striker shakes Bryan’s hand and congratulates them… oh boy, things are too nice right now.

He walks up to Tarver and asks him if he remembers saying this, and they show a replay of him saying he should be eliminated to protect the other rookies from himself. Striker then extends his hand and tell him he’s been eliminated by the WWE management. The reason being because since he doesn’t believe in himself, he shouldn’t be in WWE… WTF?! This made no sense. He wasn’t saying he should be eliminated cause he thought he couldn’t win; it was to protect the other Rookies! Out of all the reasons they could have used to eliminate Tarver, they go with that one?

Tarver’s reaction also makes very little sense. First he seems to be sad, which is okay, he was eliminated cause management changed the channel before he finished his promo. Then he starts smiling, as if he understands that it means he’s off this crappy show. Finally he starts yelling at the crowd and leaves.

They then go to Daniel Bryan and they show him saying he should be eliminated from last week. Striker then shakes his hand, and tells him he’s also eliminated as well… WTF?! I guess this is an OMG moment, but it makes no sense. Bryan was the top face among the rookies, and his struggles have been a focal point. Now I assumed that the quick matches and embarrassing performances were going to lead up to him eventually making a Rocky-like comeback to win it. If they honestly just hired Bryan with the sole purpose of embarrassing him, this really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Bryan leaves, and Striker reveals that neither of those eliminations are the actual pros poll elimination, and that there will be another poll later to eliminate someone else. Ooookaaay. I’m getting the feeling that Vince realized how much this show sucks, and decided to speed up the process.

Striker also reveals that the rookies have one last chance to impress the pros before their eliminated. We have six rookies, and 3 matches for tonight. I feel like I should be happy that we get no freakin challenge this week; however the two eliminations have me weirded out. I apologize as my match recapping may go down a little.

Anyway, we head to our first match.

WADE BARRETT VS. HEATH SLATER

Pretty nice back and forth, and forth between these two. Nice mix of powerhouse vs. high flyer action. End comes as Slater comes for a high cross body only for Barrett to catch him, and hit that FU variation finisher.

WINNER: BARRETT BARRETT is 6-4
SLATER is 5-4

Tarver is given a final interview, which is also weird. Despite being an obvious heel, he gives this promo about not knowing now how to feed his family and what not. He does have a good line about while believing the elimination was fair, that the contest was not. Amen. He gives a final impression that he’ll be back… Ted’s getting a new Virgil.

Oh, and Striker reminds us that’s he’s a douche by using the “Good luck on your future endeavors!” line on a guy who just admitted he may not be able to feed his family. Stay classy, Striker.

Commerical:

NXT ain’t messing around as we head to the next match

SKIP SHEFFIELD VS. DARREN YOUNG

Classic match up between big dumb guy vs. medium sized dumb guy. End comes as Darren Young hits several inverted atomic drops and goes for that Awkward Full Nelson Slam. Skip breaks out of it and kicks Young in the gut. This leaves him in perfect position for the Backpack Stunner, and this one is over.

WINNER: SKIP SHEFFIELD

SHEFFIELD is now 2-5
YOUNG is now 7-3

I have to wonder why they keep showing Justin Gabriel’s face on the “Who will be eliminated?” graphic since he has immunity. Whatever, not that this night makes sense…

COMMERICALS!

Smackdown replay is shown, focusing on the Drew/Hardy storyline. I dunno what the point of this feud is yet. Is it simply to move another wrestler to Raw? Sides, it makes Hardy look pretty pathetic as well. I’d love to talk on this one more, but I really don’t care about either wrestler.

Over the Limit rundown which, admitingly, has a lot of potential. Big Show is going to make Swagger look good, and Swagger being in a situation where he can’t use his finisher is interesting. Cena and Batista I’m also happy for as their last couple of matches have been pretty interesting, plus I can’t wait to see what they think up for this match. Plus Stone Col- I mean Randy Orton vs. Edge has the makings to be very special. By Wrestlemania, Orton is going to be huge, mark my words.

They replay the eliminations from earlier tonight, and cut to Bryan’s last promo. Bryan, as expected, is very honest, and once again states it made sense that he was eliminated. When asked about the future, he says while Daniel Bryan’s career is over, Bryan Danielson is still on the rise… which makes me think he was released. We shall see.

COMMERICALS!

We come back for our main event, which is an actual grudge match and feud of sorts.

DAVID OTUNGA VS. JUSTIN GABRIEL

I’m really hoping Gabriel gets eliminated tonight, only because it would show how stupid the writers really are.

Nice back and forth, with the end coming as Justin tries to suplex his opponent back into the ring. Otunga, however, reverses and front suplexes Gabriel onto the ropes. Otunga gets him and hits the Batista Spinebuster for the win.

WINNER: DAVID OTUNGA

OTUNGA is now 5-4
GABRIEL is now 5-3

COMMERICALS!

We’re back with the 6 remaining rookies at ringside. It’s at this time Striker shows off his most annoying character quirk (Actually, he’s been doing it all night). You ever notice how he’ll asking someone a question, and they will start to cut a promo and build to the answer; only for Striker to pull the mic away and reiterate the question as if to say “Just hurry up and answer the question.” What is his problem? This is one of the reasons I can’t stand this show. The show is supposed to be building up these guys as wrestlers to join the main roster, but how can I take any of them seriously when an announcer is pushing them?

Striker interviews the rookies asking them again, asking who should be cut. After being cut off by Striker (Seriously, he does this to everyone but Barrett!) Slater, Wade, Skip, and Gabriel all say Otunga because “He doesn’t belong here.” Awesome job writers! Way to come up with a line that will most likely be taken as racism. They say it because he’s a celebrity, and celebrities have no place in a WWE ring… have any of these people been watching RAW for the last 6 months? Sides that, Otunga has hosted RAW, wrestle for the Unified Tag team championship with Cena, wrestled Cena, and wrestled again in that tag match. So pretty much Slater and Justin picked him because they’re faces and Otunga’s a heel…. But what’s up with Barrett?

For the record, Young picks Wade, cause Wade’s a jerk. Otunga picks Slater cause he’s a poser. I would crack a joke about how little thought was thrown into the answers and reasons for why these people should be eliminated; however the last two people who used logic when asked this question were eliminated automatically.

Pro’s Polls Results are in, and I’ll just list them below:

1# Wade Barrett (I’ve been saying this from the get go. Good pick)
2# David Otunga (Another good choice)
3# Justin Gabriel (Don’t agree with this one, especially him being over Slater who pinned Jericho. Plus good forbid they created some drama with his immunity.)
4# Heath Slater (Should be higher on the list.)
5# Darren Young (who I also think should be higher on the list considering how he went from no wins, to 7 straight wins)
6# Skip Sheffield (Its fair)

So Sheffield is out. He takes it by turning heel and that he should have listened to Regal completely from the beginning. You mean you should have listened to the guy who was hired to get you into the WWE? One viewed as the most underrated technical wrestler in the world? Yeah Skip, that’s a good call. He lets the WWE Universe know that they haven’t seen the last of him, and leaves.

Striker then lets us know that there will be another Pro’s Poll NEXT WEEK?! Wow, they are plowing through this series! I maybe writing my last column in 3-5 weeks! I mean they let 2 months go between the last poll… then they eliminate 3 people this show, and there will be another elimination next week? Oh boy, and the show ends with shots of the rookies looking weirded out and uncertain about the future… kinda like me.

BEST THING OF THE NIGHT, OR “THE DEWEY AWARD”: Looking at this night objectively, I guess what they were going for was the “Anything can happen in the WWE” ideal; and hey, mission accomplished! I would argue that what happened was so unexpected it made no sense, however no one saw 3 eliminations coming. By cutting the most obvious eliminations, it did create some intrigue as to who was cutting cut next. Also, I’ve been begging for the “Challenges” to go away and they did. We even got three wrestling matches.

So winner here: NO Challenges!

AWFUL THING OF THE NIGHT, OR “THE REESE AWARD”:

Man, were do I begin?

First of all, you could tell McMahon hit the Abort button on this show. Eliminations have been sped up, with the show possibly being over in 5 weeks! And the fact that they want to get this show over with is clearly shown.

Cole has gone back to his moron face mode (he claimed that he was a jerk only because of Bryan, and that his elimination lifted the curse. Whatever.) which means we don’t have a show with a heel announcer anymore.

The eliminations, while shocking, were poorly executed. Tarver was screwed, and he didn’t need to be! He sucked; it was obvious he was getting eliminated. He didn’t need to be eliminated on a technicality. What’s worse though, he was screwed! He only said to eliminate me first because it was the only way to save the others from him and the beating he was going to give them. Simple, it was just part of a promo. However, he was eliminated simply cause his promo had the phrase “eliminate me first” in it. It was BS, and very poor writing.

With the elimination of Bryan is also BS. Not saying there was poor logic, but its bad wrestling logic. Typically, when one is on the end of a losing streak like this, he’ll eventually mount a comeback. I saw Bryan getting 7th place here, realizing he had to get serious, and then he mounts the comeback climazing with him winning. Bryan endures abuse from the Miz, verbal abuse from Cole, and a massive losing streak… just to tell the world he sucks, and get eliminated for “having no confidence”? For those of you who think “Don’t worry Malcolm! That was Daniel Bryan! Now he’s going to being Bryan Danielson again! Now he’ll be awesome!” Do you realize how stupid that sounds? He changes his name and he’s awesome again? Personally, I saw that more of a desperate plea from Daniel to the audience so that they can see he’s not a complete loser by looking up his Bryan Danielson stuff. I’m starting to think either Vince just hired the guy to make him look like a loser, or writers in WWE don’t know what they’re doing. So in the end, the Miz was right about Bryan? That’s garbage.

As for Skip, it makes sense yes… but him and Daniel were the two most heavily advertised rookies for the show. I’d say 80% of the commercials were for Skip, and the rest was Daniels. How much sense does it make that you cut out your most advertised wrestlers with 5 weeks left? Which is my overall problem with the show, they literally cut out everything that was entertaining about it in one show! Josh and Cole’s chemistry is lousy now, the program makes even less sense then before, and the most charismatic of the bunch are heels!

So your winner: No entertainment value to the show anymore.

WTF MOMENT OF THE NIGHT or “THE FRANCIS AWARD”: Has to go to Tarver being eliminated for cutting a promo.

No character spotlight this week as this show has done a number on me but I shall make up for it next week. Till next time… this is Malcolm NOT in the Middle signing off.