NXT – December 7, 2010 (Season 4 Premiere)

NXT
Date: December 7, 2010
Location: Nutter Center, Dayton, Ohio
Commentators: Todd Grisham, Josh Matthews

Season Four of NXT debuts tonight with only six rookies this time. That might be a good thing indeed as having the full monty of eight is too many due to there being dead weight amongst them that takes too long to get rid of. This almost has to be better from a quality perspective than last season doesn’t it? Anyway, let’s get to it.

Wild and Young is back. Awesomeness all over again.

Striker brings out the Pros who bring out their rookies. There’s no Cole this season???

R-Truth – Johnny Curtis
Ted DiBiase – Brodus Clay (He is a BIG old boy. Think a white Viscera)
Chris Masters – Byron Saxton
Dolph Ziggler – Jacob Novak
Daniel Bryan – Derrick Bateman
Alberto Del Rio – Conor O’Brian

Striker says the winner gets a championship match but says nothing about PPVs. Everyone is going to get to introduce themselves.

Curtis says he isn’t going to ask people to cheer him. Instead he wants to give some shoutouts, one of which is to his gym teacher. A vote for Curtis is a vote for freedom apparently.

Clay says he’s coming to this with lemon juice and razorblades. This was almost like a rap thing.

Saxton sounds like Token from the News Reporters episode of South Park. This is rather cheesy indeed.

Novak talks about board games, saying his favorite is Monopoly because you get to own your competition, which he’s going to do this season. Not bad.

Bateman says he’s from Ohio and that today will live in infamy (it’s December 7 if you didn’t get the reference) and he’s mantastic.

Conor does a weird voice to get our attention and says he looks like a rat. Apparently he’s going to take the cheese or something like that. Wow indeed.

Alberto yells at him and says he’s boring, just like Daniel Bryan. The obvious tag match is made.

We get a profile on Byron Saxton who is from a privileged background and has never had to really do anything. He’s a good person apparently and we get a clip of him as a kid wrestling. He mentions being a conglomerate type of man, which I think was the stable he led in FCW.

Johnny Curtis vs. Jacob Novak

Fairly nice back and forth match so far. Both guys look decent out there which is why this show works so much better than something like Tough Enough did. Curtis gets a discus lariat for no cover. I’m sorry for the lack of play by play here but I’m trying to check out both guys instead. Novak misses a charge in the corner and Curtis goes up top. After misstepping a bit he hits a decent looking guillotine legdrop for the pin at about 3:05.

Rating: C-. Nothing that great here but it was fast paced and the finish was clean. This doesn’t really tell us anything about either guy though as neither played to the crowd or showed anything unique at all. This was really just a match and nothing else. Nothing bad though.

Profile on Brodus Clay who comes from Pasadena and a broken home. He liked to be with his brother apparently. We hear about him being a bodyguard for Snoop Dog which is interesting I suppose. He’s in business for himself now though.

It’s already time for our first challenge, in this case capture the flag. You have to run down, get a ladder that is set up at ringside, put it in the ring, climb up and get a flag then run back to the stage to win. Curtis goes first with a time of 28.6 seconds.

Conor (that’s how the on screen graphic spells it) is second and gets a time of 28.2 to take over. This is just for an immunity point I think.

Clay is third and as expected he’s strong but not quick. The time is past the mark to beat by the time he hits the floor to come back.

Saxton is fourth and says he’ll just be himself. He has his own way of climbing a ladder? And he loses too due to intentionally taking his time. He tries to jump down which is illegal apparently. He gets a time of nearly a minute.

Novak is fifth and gets a good start at least. It pays off too as he gets 26.9 to take the lead.

Bateman is last and gets cheered by Bryan. He has a chance at it but just barely misses it.

Back with the Raw Rebound to what I thought was an excellent show.

Ted and Maryse talk to Clay. Maryse won’t shut up and Ted yells a bit.

Saxton is getting ready and Masters comes up and they have a bromance moment. Masters wants to give him some workout tips and Saxton says he has it covered.

Daniel Bryan/Derrick Bateman vs. Alberto Del Rio/Conor O’Brian

No intro for the heels. The rookies start us off with O’Brian being rather aggressive. Off to Alberto who beats on Bateman a bit also. No Bryan yet other than trying to get in once Alberto hits him but to no avail. Bateman gets an airplane spin of all things to make the hot tag to Bryan.

Bryan adds an airplane spin of his own as we all channel our inner Gorilla Monsoons. We actually take a break on an NXT match to see Gene Okerlund pitch us old school apparel. Back with Bryan working on the arm of O’Brian. I guess he doesn’t like the O’ part. The pros are in now.

The announcers try to make small talk by saying Alberto’s last name means the River. It actually means of or from the river but who cares about being correct? Ziggler of all people says something on a mic but I’m not sure what it was. According to a guy that was at the show he was yelling that he doesn’t suck to the crowd and didn’t realize his mic was partially on or something. Works as well as anything I guess.

Bateman gets a running neckbreaker for two on Del Rio as Bryan hits a huge dive to the floor to take out O’Brian. Being alone with Del Rio isn’t a good thing as the cross armbreaker ends this a few seconds later at approximately 10:00 (assuming the commercials were in real time for this).

Rating: C+. Not bad at all here with a decent tag match. Bryan is someone that I wasn’t huge on when he got to the company but he’s been nothing but impressive since. This was another decent match for him but the focus was more on the rookies here which is a good thing. Nothing great or anything but for what it was supposed to be, this was perfectly acceptable.

Overall Rating: B-. Nothing great or anything here overall but like the last match it did exactly what it was supposed to do. We saw a little bit from everyone and got four of them in the ring with vignettes from the other two. The rookies look kind of weak this season but the show at least looks ok. Pretty good start.