By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

NXT HITS

None:

NXT MISSES

The Entire Show: In lieu of a traditional Hits & Misses, I am going to look at this episode of NXT in terms of how WWE executed the fundamental point of this show which is to introduce a group of rookies and establish them with the WWE Universe, and to stage a fake competition between those rookies to see who will win the show and become the Next Breakout Star of WWE. In terms of that goal for this show, WWE gets an F this week.

There was very little done to establish these rookies with the fans. They were hardly featured at all. The focus here was clearly on the WWE pros and Nexus. Instead of being introduced as individuals like they normally are on Tuesday nights, the seven remaining rookies made their first collective experience coming to the ring together during the Showtime Percy Watson show. They were not named individually. The pros were. The six members of Nexus who were present were. Not the rookies.

In the opening match, Mark Henry and his rookie Lucky Cannon faced The Miz and his rookie Alex Riley. Clearly, the focus on this match was the follow-up to what happened on Raw between Henry and Miz which makes sense. WWE is trying to sell a PPV on Sunday. However, a better balance could have been struck between Henry's attempts to get his hands on Miz, and Cannon and Riley's attempts to impress the pros and the WWE Universe who will be voting in two weeks on the next elimination. That elimination was mentioned, but only once during the show. If we are that close to the second elimination, a bigger deal has to be made of every match/moment counting for the rookies. After the match came the one and only rookie evaluation video this week on Riley who just got trashed physically (and perhaps metaphorically) dumped on him by Henry. By comparison, last week there were three of these videos. Two more videos like this would have helped put the focus on the rookies where it belongs.

Percy Watson got very little mic time on the Showtime Percy Watson Show. He did a good job in his role, but I wasn't thrilled with how he was scripted to turn on his pro Montel Vontavious Porter and join with the other rookies to beat him up. This was really forced to set up the battle royal main event. The problem here is that the rookies were lumped together and not shown as individuals. There was no motivation for why they would "seize the moment" by challenging MVP like that. The segment was poorly written on a number of levels. It would definitely have been a Miss particularly for the fact that after Watson got a brief moment to shine individually, the rest of the rookies showed up and any focus that they might get individually went out the window. Also, the focus on the rookies went out the window very quickly at that point as it shifted first to the pros, and then to Nexus.

Clearly, the focus of the main event was on Nexus vs. the pros. Most of the rookies were eliminated quickly and with little fanfare. There were a few nice moments in the battle royal, like when John Morrison and Kofi Kingston came to MVP's aid after he had been eliminated and Nexus was about to attack him like they had the others who had been eliminated. But, what was the point? The point was to make Nexus look strong. Mission accomplished. However, did that have to come at the expense of the Season 2 rookies? They did not have a good showing in the battle royal at all. They got over that Miz and Cody Rhodes are jerks, but we knew that already. This show is supposed to be establishing new stars. It didn't this week.

And don't get me wrong. I don't want to see the lame competitions that we've seen the last two weeks. I'm not impressed with a few of the rookies like Lucky Cannon and Eli Cottonwood. I don't necessarily want to see more focus on them. But, Alex Riley, Michael McGillicutty and Kaval can all wrestle. I want to see more of what they can do in the ring and on the mic to accent their wrestling skills. Husky Harris has shown some personality and he does move around the ring very well for someone his size. But, after his boring match against MVP a few weeks back, I want to see if he improves in the ring. I want to see more of where WWE was going with his threats to Matt Striker. Percy Watson is very entertaining and I wanted to see more from his talk show. Also, he seems to have some skill in the ring, but we haven't seen much of him in matches. I want to see more to really get a sense of whether or not his wrestling can reach the level of his charisma and mic skills. There is a way to make NXT a competition show that is entertaining and successfully introduces the WWE Universe to these rookies. The show was better than Season 1 for the first three weeks or so, but faltered once the competitions were introduced two weeks ago. However, at least the last two weeks were presented as a competition show. That aspect of NXT was totally ignored this week.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's WWE Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw, Smackdown, NXT, and Superstars each week. s him at jmezz-torch@sbcglobal.net.

For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare Jason Powell's views to mine by visiting prowrestling.NET's "Hitlist" section here.

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