We’re back again this week from the newly revamped NXT. Nothing new developing in the “Exfoliating Ugliness Tour”, so we will just assume that Raquel Diaz is sitting in a dark room with photos of each Diva carefully choosing her next victim. This week, we get to see an interesting match that has never happened before! It will be Natalya taking on Sofia Cortez in what is sure to be pretty unique and exciting, given Cortez’s high flying background mixed with Natalya’s more technical base moveset. I can hardly contain my excitement, so let us jump right in before Natalya screams that she hates us all.
Skip to 4:25.
Out to the ring comes Natalya, looking as perky yet evil as ever. Following her intro comes the typical latin music every Puerto Rican WWE star receives, but our firecracker Sofia Cortez slaps some hands and gets the fans fired up. The bell sounds as these two lock up. Nattie takes control of the wrist, as they exchange counters until Sofia is taken down with a fireman’s carry. She reverses into a legscissors, but Natalya flips out and offers a handshake. Sofia nearly buys into it, as Nattie shows it was all a joke to snatch Cortez up. The lucha-esque Cortez ends up scoring with a very nice handpsring armdrag though! She goes to follow up in the corner where Natalya landed, but Nattie dodges out of the way and hits the discus clothesline for a near fall. Neidhart then taunts Sofia a little and locks in a brutal submission. Cortez tries to do everything in her power so that she will not give up, but Natalya is eventually forced to break the hold due to grabbing Sofia’s hair.
She drags Cortez into the corner and decks her with a few kicks, but Sofia then scores with a boot and a front dropkick! Natalya proceeds to kick her in the stomach and execute a wonderful pin attempt for a two count. Sofia then goes for one of her own for yet another near fall. This results in Natalya performing yet another roll up, but as Sofia kicks out, Nattie falls to the outside and refuses to enter the ring by a count of ten. Sofia Cortez is declared the winner by countout, but this isn’t all from our Dungeon Diva. She slides back into the ring and locks a helpless Sofia into the Sharpshooter! Cortez screams in pain and taps, but Nattie leaves it locked in until eventually breaking it and walking off… leaving Sofia quite the message on their debut match against each other.
Thoughts: More please! I absolutely loved this match (well, the moments we saw of it at least), but that’s no surprise considering who was involved. Natalya is clearly the woman I feel can have a good match with anyone. Put her against a paper bag and she could still probably make it do believable hurricanranas and dropkicks. Sofia is definitely skilled in her own right as well, and I find that when she’s up against someone with a lot of experience, she provides her best in ring work. I kind of feel the same way about Sofia as I do Winter aka Katie Lea. They’re not the best when it comes to having to carry people of lesser experience, but when you put them in there with someone who doesn’t need to be carried, they shine bright. You don’t have to be able to carry someone to be a good wrestler, and in this match clearly nobody needed to be carried at all. I hope and pray NXT continues this, because I would honestly much rather see more develop here than with the “Exfoliating Ugliness Tour”, which is weird for me to say because I’m never one to shy away from the fact I prefer gimmicks/entertainment to pure wrestling. But I guess that further cements how much I was invested into Sofia/Natalya, and want to see more from it stat.
