A lot of the NXT involvement was of course very forced and pretty one note. Can't really bash that because there was no way it wouldn't be. But eh... it was a pretty mixed bag for me.
Baszler laying everyone out did nothing for me. I'm not fond of her anyways but regardless of that, the angle was just dry as fuck. She shows up, attacks everyone, doesn't really do anything impressive or particularly vicious looking, and leaves. It lacked a real impact in my opinion. If nothing else, I would have liked a bit of mic time for Shayna to put over the impending invasion or build up Survivor Series at least. Same goes for Bianca Belair jumping Dana and Carmella. I hope I'm not the only one who peeped Carmella totally half ass selling the attack when she was leaning against the crate. Like I was seriously wondering if she was supposed to be hurt or if she was just sad that Bianca was beating up Dana.
I had to roll my eyes at Riddle and Lee pounding Zayn. I'm sure the casual audience gets a real chuckle out of seeing Zayn constantly get his ass beat, but it ain't for me. Zayn's acting was fantastic but man I'm tired of him being the company punching bag. I could say the same for The Miz but at least in Miz's case, despite the fact he takes a lot of defeats, he pretty much always looks like a legit competitor in doing so. I'd love to think Zayn (or The Miz) will eventually get to reap the benefits of putting everyone over but yeah... don't see that happening. And for what it's worth I don't feel like a two on one beatdown on the biggest geek on the roster does a lot to present Riddle and Lee as legit as they actually are either so that was just an all around bust for me.
I also thought Miz announcing that Bray couldn't make it tonight was funny in an off kilter way. Like, the thought of this supernatural abomination being stranded at the airport with the likes of Heavy Machinery and Drake Maverick is just hilarious.
I really enjoyed the main event though. Bryan, to me, carried the thing. What a ring general. Cole played his part well too, though. Quite honestly though, Bryan taking a clean loss brought it down for me. NXT literally swept the whole night and did so with ease, I might add. That doesn't really sit well with me despite the fact that I love NXT. I found it really funny though that on commentary Pat McAfee said the Performance Center makes incredible superstars. Look, there have been some wrestlers who started from nothing in the PC and have become solid stars but a vast majority of your best wrestlers in the NXT era were built on the indie scene and I'd say more often than not, they end up watered down when they make it on WWE TV. But nonetheless. Entertaining main event and I think it laid the foundation for Daniel Bryan to captain a team of WWE guys against a team of NXT guys lead by Triple H. At least that's what I'm assuming. And on that note, Triple H's promo made it sound like it would NXT vs. Raw AND Smackdown collectively. But I've been thinking it was NXT vs. Raw vs. Smackdown. So which is it because it's really not clear to me at the moment?
All in all, I have to say, I wish I would have enjoyed this show more. An NXT invasion is some fantasy booking type shit but they obviously just had to throw everything together at the last moment and because of that I feel like we blew what should have been a landmark occasion on this half baked show. The main event match up is really the only part of this show that I felt delivered and made for compelling TV. I guess they at least tried with Miz vs. Ciampa but it was average at best and really means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Everything else was just generic as possible to me I'm afraid.
But to @Sylar's comment on that, I kind of get how it cheapens the draft a little, but I'd also argue that Brock is a talent that always trumps any measly rules WWE puts in place bc (in storyline and also irl) they've catered to what he wants so much since his return in 2012 that I don't feel your example of Mandy quitting SmackDown and choosing Raw works bc if any other talent did it outside of maybe a select few top guys (and we're just talking kayfabe headcanons here) WWE would just fuckin' fire them for breach of contract, but Brock is Brock and he gets what he wants so I think that's what we're going with here. Also I think it's an alright way to switch the main belts, but if we don't get an awesome blue Universal Championship bc I think it'd look sexy af, then I'm gonna say fuck all this.
