WWE NXT 6/27/2023: 3 Things We Hated And 3 Things We Loved

Welcome to your Wrestling Inc. review of "WWE NXT," aka Gold Rush pt. 2! Last week, the two-part special event kicked off with some fantastic matches, including Wes Lee vs. Tyler Bate for the "NXT" North American Championship and — perhaps slightly higher-profile — Seth Rollins vs. Bron Breakker for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. But despite the presence of one of the main roster's biggest stars, that was just an appetizer. This week's "NXT" had four championship matches, including Nathan Frazer vs. Dragon Lee for the "NXT" Heritage Cup Championship, Gallus vs. Malik Blade and Idris Enofe for the "NXT" Tag Team Championship, Tiffany Stratton vs. Thea Hail for the "NXT" Women's Championship, and Carmelo Hayes vs. Baron Corbin for the "NXT" Championship, a match that got some unexpected build when Hayes made his "Raw" debut Monday night against Judgment Day member Finn Balor.

If you haven't watched "NXT" this week and just want to see the results, you can check out our live coverage, but we'd definitely recommend watching it, because Tuesday's episode largely delivered in a big way. That doesn't mean we didn't have a few complaints, however. Here are three things we hated and three things we loved about the June 27 edition of "WWE NXT."

Wrestling shows often have a tendency to rely on surprising results and big changes to maintain audience interest, but if there's one thing WWE appears to have learned in recent years, it's the value of taking your time and building up a champion, so that both their reign and its eventual ending actually means something. Over the course of two weeks, Gold Rush presented no fewer than six title matches, and given that the event was branded around championship defenses, you'd be forgiven for expecting at least one of those belts to change hands. But they didn't. All six titles on the line, including all four on the line on Tuesday, were successfully defended, and in the wrestling business, you don't see that very often. Forsaking the thrill of the title change and relying entirely on match quality and storytelling is a gutsy choice, but it was a choice that paid off for "NXT."

All four title matches were uniformly excellent. Thea Hail lost, but did so in a fashion that emphasized the strengths of the Chase U stable and heralded an important return (more on that later). We're not terribly interested in Gallus or their current title reign, but Blade and Inofe very much looked like they belong in the championship picture and made the contest far more exciting than we'd expected. Nathan Frazer and Dragon Lee put on an absolute masterclass in the Heritage Cup match, rendering our faint distaste for the complicated rules system utterly irrelevant in the face of such an athletically superlative battle. And Baron Corbin not only put on what might be the best singles match of his career against Carmelo Hayes, he did so using his old "Lone Wolf" persona and music, which was a massive treat for those of us who still light candles for "NXT" Black & Gold. Moreover, Hayes — who has started to look suspiciously like he's main roster-bound, putting the outcome of this match very much in question — cemented the legitimacy of his title reign with a hard-fought statement win over an established main roster star.

No championships changed hands, but the results didn't really matter. What mattered were the matches, and most importantly, the stories behind the matches, and in that crucial area, Gold Rush shined.

Of course, just because you're telling a story, doesn't necessarily mean that you're telling it well, or that the story you're telling is good. The frequently cinematic mafioso narrative that surrounds "The Don of NXT," Tony D'Angelo, has its moments — we've particularly enjoyed all the times an enemy of the family has been written off "NXT" by being straight-up murdered; looking at you, Zombie Pretty Deadly — but it can also veer frequently into silly nonsense territory, and we have no idea what to make of tonight's revelations.

Last week, Channing "Stacks" Lorenzo kidnapped Gallus third wheel man Joe Coffey by shoving him in the trunk of his car and driving away. Typical D'Angelo stuff, nothing to see here. This week, with Joe obviously not at ringside for Gallus' tag title match, Stacks appeared and ran at Joe's brother, Mark Coffey, but Mark dodged, and Stacks hit Enofe instead. It seemed like an accident, but then Stacks rolled Enofe back into the ring, allowing Gallus to seal the victory. Even the announcers seemed confused about how to make sense of this development.

At that point, it seemed to be a somewhat Uso-esque case of "Whose side is Stacks on/who did he mean to hit," presumably with the idea that we'd tune in next week to find out more. Except later, Joe Coffey visited D'Angelo in the cell where he's locked up and revealed that Stacks let him out of the car, told him he could have done worse, but that he could make things work out for Gallus because he was the Don now. Stacks subsequently went on Twitter and seemingly confirmed this development.

Beyond the fact that they just went ahead and explained the story rather than telling it ... what? Why would Stacks kidnap Joe only to let him go? Just to prove that he could? If Stacks was on Gallus' side, why did Mark have to dodge him in order for him to hit Enofe? Why is Joe sitting down with D'Angelo and revealing all this to him, let alone to us? We are very confused, and not in a good way.

For months, Chase U has been one of the best acts (if not the best act) in "NXT," with character work that has few rivals on the main roster, let alone on Tuesday nights. And whatever the opposite of the Stacks storyline is, that's what Chase U gave us during the "NXT" Women's Championship match.

We loved literally everything about this, but the most important thing (at least during the match itself) was the consistency of character. Everything everybody was doing made sense. Of course Drew Gulak and Charlie Dempsey would come down to the ring and try to help Thea win by cheating. Of course Thea would spurn such assistance, her expression telling the story of the fact that she felt betrayed by even the suggestion that she would do such a thing, or that she needed to. Of course Stratton, who had tapped out to Thea's Kimura Lock while the referee was busy chiding Gulak, would take the opportunity and roll Thea up for her first successful title defense. Of course Gulak and Dempsey would blame and berate Thea for this, and of course Duke Hudson would stand up for her, and of course Gulak and Dempsey would finally show Thea their true colors by attacking him. It's simple, and it's been done before, and it works, because that story still resonates and the characters involved are somehow more compelling than any of us could have imagined they'd become when this bizarre, wonderful stable first began.

And to top it all off, Gulak and Dempsey get chased off by a RETURNING ANDRE CHASE. The school's founder has been sorely missed, and we can't wait to see how the next chapter of this inexplicably charming tale unfolds. Take notes, whoever is writing the Stacks story. What we have right here is a teachable moment.

There was only one non-title match on Tuesday's episode, and it wasn't great. From a play-by-play perspective, there was nothing wrong with Kiana James vs. Gigi Dolin. It was a fine match that we've basically already forgotten about because it just didn't really have anything for us to latch onto. James and Dolin haven't had much a feud yet (though apparently the one they do have will be continuing) and what we'd gotten so far wasn't terribly strong. It was nice (at first) to see Dolin get the clean win, but any positive feelings we had about the contest were drowned out, pretty much literally, by the aftermath.

If anybody in "NXT" needed to not get beaten up after a win to keep the heat on her opponent, it was Dolin. The Toxic Attraction split hasn't been great for her (granted, it hasn't really been great for anyone; all Jacy Jayne did this week was get knocked down and threatened before being upstaged by a Rhea Ripley cameo appearance). It's fine to give someone a tragic backstory (or use the one they already have) but Dolin has been playing the bullied victim far too often recently, especially for someone who spent years bullying other people. If "NXT" wants her to work as a babyface, she needs to be doing more fighting back and less lying down, and especially less getting covered in paint.

As for James, this angle didn't particularly work for her, either. Why did she have paint in her briefcase? Does that help with her legal acquisitions somehow? "I covered you in a substance" is such a cheap way to try and get sympathy for your opponent, and it seems totally out of synch with James' character. We don't want James to cover Dolin in paint, we want her to buy Dolin's childhood home and have it bulldozed to make a parking lot. There are so many more interesting things you could do with these two characters, and at the moment "NXT" is choosing to do none of them.

It remains a baffling mystery that WWE still hasn't found anything to do with the profound talent of Mustafa Ali, but he could play this character in "NXT" for a long time as far as we're concerned. When he's performing, even in a brief backstage segment like the one that aired this week, we can't take our eyes off him. Watching him try to talk his way out of his horrendous refereeing on last Tuesday's episode was unabashedly hilarious, particularly his claim that he just wanted to call the match fairly and down the middle. When Wes Lee and Tyler Bate pointed out that he was alternating at times between extremely fast and extremely slow counts, a defensive Ali exclaimed, "For both of you!" We also love that Lee wasn't even that mad at Ali, he just thought he made for a garbage ref.

It's just so good. We can't want for the Lee/Ali North American title match next week, which (we desperately hope) will have Tyler Bate as the referee. More special guest ref shenanigans, please. There is more blood to be drawn from this stone.

You can always tell a stable isn't working when the members of the stable start pointing out that the stable isn't working. On the main roster, it's known as Damage CTRL Syndrome — this group that was supposedly in a position to dominate everyone hasn't actually dominated anyone and also hasn't won anything, and we've gotten to the point where some of the characters are looking around going, "Why are we hanging out with these people again?" It's not usually the kind of thing that happens to factions that have been successful, and Joe Gacy's Schism really hasn't been, particularly since they've never been able to figure out whether their gimmick is "cringe conservative woke culture send-up" or "What happens when you order the Wyatt Family on Wish."

So now we're doing a thing where Gacy signs up Rip Fowler and Jagger Reid for a "Loser Leaves NXT" match against the Creed Brothers, and it's kind of just depressing, mostly because the logical assumption is that this is a way to write the Dyad off TV because the performers behind Fowler and Reid are legitimately unhappy and want out of their contracts. Which, in turn, is a reminder of how completely WWE fumbled the bag with Zach Gibson, one of "NXT UK's" best wrestlers and best talkers who has been languishing in weird obscurity for years at this point because WWE won't release him but also won't take advantage of his abilities. It should be an actual crime to take a performer who can get so much organic heat that audience members take off their shoes — in wrestling arenas — to express how much they hate him, and turn that guy into whatever Rip Fowler is supposed to be. Their contracts supposedly aren't up until October, but if we're actually doing this, WWE, be a pal and let them join AEW by August 27.

And sure, there's always the possibility that the Creeds will lose because they're getting called up, but that's even more depressing, because now Gibson and Jagger Reid, aka James Drake, have to keep doing this Schism nonsense for another four months. In this case, whether the actual storyline is good or makes sense doesn't matter, because the reality of what's happening is inescapable, and it sucks.