Salutations kind NXT friends, and welcome to this weeks stop in the NXT Women’s Title tournament. Over the past three weeks we’ve seen Paige, Alicia Fox, and Summer Rae each advance with a victory, but this week we’ve got the last bout scheduled before we move on to the semi-final action. It’ll be the battle of Lithuania against Australia… the WWE Diva vs. the NXT Diva… the war of the crawls taking on the bubbles… aka it’ll be Aksana taking on Emma in one on one action. Our resident dancing queen has faced off against Aksana once before in a match that culminated with a loss for her, but can she turn it around now that she’s got her groove going over the course of time since that last match took place?
There’s only one way to find out, so crawl or dance your way down below depending on who you’re rooting for:
First up, we head backstage to see everyone’s favorite blond, Canadian Connie Chung herself, Renee Young! She’s standing by with two very special guests, in that of Emma and Emma’s bubble blowing gun. Renee Chung looks concerned and a bit annoyed with the bubbles going on, but Emma (complete with a sick Emmalution t-shirt) doesn’t seem to notice as she executes her dance to burst the circular droplets of water. Renee finishes her question and sticks the microphone up to Emma, but Emma isn’t yet ready as the bubbles haven’t fully been popped. As soon as she’s done, she lets Renee know that she’s now ready to be asked questions, leaving a slightly perturbed Renee having to repeat herself.
Emma reveals her strategy is simply to win… because she’s planning to take the Emmalution around the world. Suddenly, she sees the little gleam in NXT’s own Barbara Walters eye and gets the sense that Renee wants something that belongs to Emma. Now being the history we have with wrestling, you’d think by reading this, Emma would be accusing Renee of stealing her man, or male counterpart in a two person pairing. You’d be wrong though, as it’s actually Emma’s bubbles that she feels Renee is going after like the homewrecker she is! She then reacts as if Renee needs to be tamed from acting on her quest to achieve the bubbles by spraying her down (Side note: hahahaha I love it). Emma then realizes she may actually need Renee’s services and requests that the Diane Sawyer of NXT interviewing keep her bubbles held in a safe place while she competes. Like anyone in her position, our very own slice of Canadiana debates whether or not to set the bubble gun off, but Emma pops back in and leaves her with one final threat.
“Don’t even think about it.”
Renee still has a little spark in her eye, so I’m going to request someone watch her and make sure she behaves herself. Perhaps Tamina Snuka can do the honors. Anyways, out we go to the arena, where the saxophone blasts erupt and out struts Aksana who hilariously avoids slapping a fans hand on her way. Once she’s done posing, the music of resident queen of life, Emma hits and she dances out to the ring alongside the fans in the crowd. She makes it into the ring! The fans are happy to see Emma not fall, as they chant for her immediately after the bell rings. This fires up Aksana, who pulls her back by the hair and starts beating her down. Aksana with a sidewalk slam, then begins to crawl around the ring and score with a kick for repeated near falls.
Aksana sends Emma into the corner, but she slips through the ropes to avoid and attack and rolls under Aksana to score a pin fall. She just gets a two count, and Aksana then bursts into control from there. Some pin attempts go nowhere, but the two now start brawling around until Aksana nails a clothesline and applies a headscissors that gets flipped over and begins bashing Emma’s face into the canvas. Aksana chops Emma, but begins posing which allows Emma to kicks her forward. She slides out of a bodyslam attempt and converts it into the Emma Lock! Aksana tries to fight it, but eventually succombs to the Australian Bubble Lover. The bracket shows the final four that we’re down to, as Emma invites a few children into the ring to dance with her and have a good old time.
Thoughts: I don’t really have much to say to be honest, which is weird considering I normally can’t seem to stop talking. The match was fine to me overall. There was nothing I thought was bad at all, but I don’t really think I will remember much about it other than Emma dancing with the children at the end. What I did love though was Emma’s interview. She’s continuing to evolve with her character, which was already doing great things with just the dancing alone. Incorporating the bubbles makes it even more fun, and I would love to see this take place in the main roster division. I know people might be worried that she could go down the Jillian Hall route of just being a comedic persona, but I truly think WWE knows how over this is getting in NXT and won’t just waste her when she gets to the main roster. Jillian’s singing gimmick didn’t develop when she was in OVW, rather it happened a few years after she was on the main shows so I feel like there’s a difference here.
They don’t seem to be debuting people for no reason whatsoever anymore, rather everyone who’s debuting is being built up or placed in a role that gets them ample amounts of air time. That’s one of my favorite things currently because while the waiting game is painful, I’d rather wait a long time for a debut if it’s going to mean something than to watch someone debut, win squash matches for three weeks, and then fade into obscurity or be relegated to Superstars. Overall, I thought this was fine, but I definitely think the semi-final/finals will be a lot more fun to me as a viewer because the closer you get to the end, the more everyone gives as they don’t want to show what they’ve got this early on.
