Hello, mother, hello, father, fleas, ticks, mosquitoes… really bother. Oh, yes, as you can see I’m running out of unique “hello oriented” openings and therefore I’ve taken to K9 Advantix commercials for material… sue me. Anyways, welcome to another tremendous, beautiful gift from the WWE that is NXT. I’m in a chipper mood despite having a paper due soon and not having started it because on this week’s show, Matt Striker confirmed that new faces would be debuting on NXT soon! Oh, the possibilities! Audrey Marie, Paige, Sofia Cortez, Husky Harris… oh wait, I mean Raquel Diaz… yeah, Pro-Diva columnist here!
Anyways, on this week’s show, we get what I believe is a first for NXT Redemption in a Divas match that consists of more than two women involved! Bubbly themed Kaitlyn teams up with former top contender for the Divas Championship, Tamina Snuka, as they do battle with our evil yet brilliant Queen of the Golden Ropes, Maxine, and the “one minute she’s face, one minute she’s heel, but she’s awesome either way”, Natalya! Being that this is the one show where Divas can actually utilize their vocal ability in more ways than screaming “Come on” or “Ahhhhh”, there are also a few segments featuring the three of these four women not named Tamina so let’s get started!
Up first in tonight’s delectable greatness, Queen Maxine in her finest blue and Dirty Curty in his finest “Let’s Get Weird” t-shirt grace us with their royal presence. (Truthfully, I hold them on a higher pedestal than Queen Elizabeth.) They are fortunately, yet unfortunately, arguing, and I say that because they are much more entertaining as a fighting duo than as a romantic couple, yet it still saddens us all to see Queen Maxine aggravated. They bump into senior official, Scott Armstrong, who orders them to follow the rules that they must be handcuffed at all times when in a WWE building unless they are competing in a match.
He attempts to cuff Maxine first, but she questions why someone would want to tarnish her debonair wrist? “Scotty” seems unaffected by her charms, which tells me he must be married because no single breathing male could not be affected by the warrior of empowerment that is Maxine. She tries to build him up as an excellent ref, as Dirty Curty tries to chime in as well by claiming he’s a handsome man.
This throws Sir Armstrong off who perceives Dirty Curty to be hitting on him! Maxine and Johnny’s plan has failed, and Scott then proceeds to cuff them wrist to wrist while our annoyed Queen loses her cool on Dirty Curty for ruining everything as if he were a meddling kid on Scooby Doo. The two agree to go eat… until (insert Jaws music) duh, duh…duh, duh…duh, duh, duh, duh…duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh…(high pitched scream) HORNSWOGGLE appears. Being that words can’t describe my reaction to his mere appearance, I’ll let my good friend Chantay Black take over from here:
Because I’m a trooper, I will continue on with this segment even though he taunts me by wearing a Planet Funk hoodie and top hat that I’ve tried so fervently to locate online and order. This pipsqueak informs us all that he’s the special match coordinator while William Regal is down at FCW scouting Husky Harris… I mean, scouting talent to bring to NXT. Horny lets Maxine know that she will be teaming up with Natalya to face Tamina and Kaitlyn.
This… this UGH. That’s what he is now is just an UGH. He dare tell Maxine that if this wasn’t a PG show he would call her a lot of names, causing our warrior to try and hit him after removing her shoes like the lady she is. Unfortunately, much like last week, Maxine completely misses and ends up falling while still cuffed to Dirty Curty. Maxine screams at Dirty Curty and the two leave arm in arm… cuffed of course, as this creature continues to let us know he can sadly speak.
We return backstage to see the one of my WWE Gods, Tyson Kidd as he stands chatting on his phone, I assume to one of he and Natalya’s cats, Gismo or Charlotte the Harlot. Suddenly, Percy Watson interrupts his conversation and forces either Gismo or Charlotte to run off and read the latest issue of Cat Fancy magazine. Percy claims he’s excited to team with Tyson tonight, as he (or any other person in the world) should be, but Tyson runs down a list of recent partners he’s had and lost due to injury.
Out of nowhere pops up the girl who gave us our first kiss and then gave us a wedgie two seconds later, the girl who won homecoming queen and class clown all in the same night… the one and only, Kaitlyn! She lets Tyson know that both she and Derrick Bateman have been watching his matches to learn, and that she was super impressed with him like a good, knowledgeable Kaitlyn should be! She questions the name of his new submission move, but Tyson’s reply is cut short with the hot pink wearing Natalya pops up behind Kaitlyn.
She asks if Kaitlyn’s done “flirting” yet, to which Kaitlyn claims she was just complimenting him and that they’re friends. Natalya, having watched NXT and how Kaitlyn has nearly split Dolph & Vickie, and actually HAS split Maxine & Derrick, is not taking any chances when she sees her talking to Tyson. Kaitlyn states that her and Derrick are different than she is with Tyson, but Natalya simply disregards what Kaitlyn has to say but relates to her because of their shared hatred of Maxine. She then goes on to call Maxine, “trailer trash!” Once again, I simply cannot put my expression into words, so this time I will call on Pretty Little Liars’ own Aria and Emily to do it for me:
Natalya thankfully then praises Maxine for being right about Kaitlyn in that she’s a snake that she can’t trust. She pats Kaitlyn on the shoulder and lets her know that tonight, she’s going to take business into her own hands! From there, she lets out a wonderful “by-eeee” and heads off, leaving Kaitlyn to wonder why every girl on NXT is crazy. Because dear Kaitlyn, they actually get a voice here and we love it!
From there, we head to a match graphic promoting the contest coming up next. After I get another dose of AJ’s old theme song that I feel like I’ve heard more times since she retired it than I did when she used it, we go to another backstage segment as Maxine and Johnny are now uncuffed due to them having matches! Suddenly, Natalya walks into the scene and proclaims that she can’t stand our Queen. Thankfully for Natalya, I overly admire her so the following insults she lays into Maxine do not at all diminish my support of all things Neidhart!
Dirty Curty laughs at his former lover turned handcuff buddy getting insulted, even to the point of being called a mutt! Natalya turns the tables and then vows to put their differences aside as they face Tamina and Kaitlyn. Wait… you mean Divas can actually team together in WWE and not be best friends?! What alternate universe have we entered? Natalya states that she could care less about Tamina, and that she just wants to knock Kaitlyn down a few pegs. She asks if Maxine is in, to which she agrees, as the two head off for competition. Dirty Curty tries to weasel his way out, but Scott Armstrong stops him and reminds him that since Maxine is his official manager, he is also hers when she’s competing!
Out to the ring we head to the sound of my personal anthem “TA-MEEE-NAH”. (Yes, that’s the new official name of the song, I don’t care what any iTunes label says!) Both Tamina and Kaitlyn make their way out from the back and pose on the apron, as these former NXT foes turned friends skip out to the squared circle and we get a few highlights of Tamina and her father, Jimmy Snuka performing similar moves and actions. Noice! The guitar riff that is the opening of Natalya’s theme strikes, and out she comes with Maxine and Dirty Curty. With the four women in the ring, it hits me how fresh this match is in that it’s something we’ve really never seen before and I love it.
Dirty Curty sits himself down at commentary, as we see that Natalya has written a blog which everyone should read. She orders Maxine to leave the ring, and as the Queen looks to do so, she instead chooses to head towards Kaitlyn! Nattie follows suit towards Tamina, but both women are met with a pair of dropkicks to the face by their opponents. They roll outside the ring, before Natalya and Kaitlyn decide to start things off. Kaitlyn applies a waist lock, but Nattie quickly fights out and slams her down by the hair.
Natalya begins to choke her on the ring ropes, then proceeding to slam her back and taunt the crowd. “You wanna mess with Tyson?! Screams the former Divas Champion as she introduces Kaitlyn’s face to the ring canvas. From there, she hoists Kaitlyn into the corner and tags out to Maxine, who chops Kaitlyn in the chest a few times and tags Natalya back in. Natalya applies an abdominal stretch, changing it up into a unique variation which includes bending Kaitlyn’s free leg back. Sick!
Matt Striker shouts out Barber Shop Window, as Natalya attempts a powerslam that Kaitlyn escapes from and hits an awesome crossbody for a two count. Maxine tags back in and they take Kaitlyn down in pain. From there, our stocking clad Diva ascends to the second rope and leaps off with a beautiful front face lock dragon sleeper! Kaitlyn tries to fight it, but she starts to fade fast. Natalya, noting from before that she is not the biggest fan of Maxine, proceeds to tag herself in and force Maxine to break the hold. She screams at Nattie that Kaitlyn was going to tap, but the pink and white adorned Diva simply ORDERS Maxine to GET OUT because she wants to be the one to beat Kaitlyn. Tremendous!
Natalya tackles Kaitlyn to the ground and simply beats on her, before lifting her up and hitting an awesome sit out body slam for a two count. From there, Kaitlyn applies a leg lock submission as Natalya screams in agony. Dirty Curty and Matt Striker discuss Maxine’s love of unique foods, as Kaitlyn reverses the submission into a roll up for a near fall and both women tag out! Tamina and Maxine run in, as Snuka drops Maxine with a takedown and then seems to roll her over into a backslide attempt. Maxine fights out and Tamina hits some sort of leg maneuver. From there, she plants Maxine with a leg drop and climbs to the top rope where she leaps off with the Superfly Splash! Tamina covers Maxine and scores the victory for her team!
Maxine rolls out of the ring as Kaitlyn and Tamina celebrate their victory. We witness a replay of Tamina’s finishing maneuver, as Matt then takes to the microphone and orders Maxine over to the commentary table for Dirty Curty’s match against Tyson Kidd. To witness the match in full (featuring Maxine and Michael McGillicutty on commentary), check the following video:
Thoughts: Alrighty, starting with the match, I thought most of it was really great. I loved Maxine and Natalya’s dominance of Kaitlyn with a few shades of Kaitlyn making a comeback. In particular, Maxine’s second rope Dragon Sleeper, Natalya’s sit out body slam, and the abdominal stretch were some great spots. I even loved when Natalya tagged Maxine out simply because she wanted to take Kaitlyn down. This is why I admire NXT so much because if this match happened anywhere else, it would have been 45 seconds long with no backstage fun, and Natalya & Maxine would have been buddy buddy with one another following no entrance as we returned from a commercial break.
That being said, there were some parts of the match I didn’t care for and unfortunately, it was just about everything in the last few moments. Tamina is one of my favorite people in the division, but she and Maxine didn’t mesh too well together. On top of that, she was only legal for about 30 seconds which was kind of weird. I mean, on one hand, I’m glad because maybe Maxine and Tamina can work on their chemistry together for future shows, but on the other, the crowd was actually into Tamina. She got a pop when she tagged in, so it seems kind of odd to not feature her for over 30 seconds in a lengthy match. Overall though, I really enjoyed the match and I hope to see more of these types of matches on NXT as opposed to singles.
The backstage segments were as fun as they always are. I can’t express how happy I am to see NXT not make all Divas who are of the same disposition best friends with one another because that’s not how I feel a division should be. It should be you’re only buddy buddy with a legit tag team partner (like Brie/Nikki or Beth/Natalya when they were together) if you have one because at the end of the day, everyone is striving to be Divas Champion/a top Diva. I’m interested to see where the Kaitlyn/Natalya thing is going, if anywhere, because Kaitlyn honestly seems to have split up every couple that comes through the doors at NXT. Is she targeting Tyson?! Are we soon going to see some new Divas on NXT with Matt Striker basically confirming new faces are coming in the next few weeks?! Will Dirty Curty and Maxine EVER see eye to eye again while locking wrists?! All of the answers to these burning questions can be found by continuing to read YOUR NXT Watch!
Until next week, I am off to actually start writing my paper. Oh joy!
