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WWE NXT Recap – Will the Real KUSHIDA Please Stand Up?

On WWE NXT this week, NXT finally sees the "real" KUSHIDA. Plus: Cameron Grimes has PTSD from last week's Haunted House of Horrors match. I'm Jude Terror, and this is The Shovel: Wednesday Night Wars Edition, covering the most important contest that will be decided in the country this week: AEW Dynamite vs. WWE NXT! Here's how it works. I've been watching cable news nonstop for the past 36 hours straight, but now I'm gonna take a short break to watch four hours of wrestling and tell you what happened. Is any of this good for my mental health? Absolutely not. But that's how much I love you, dear readers!

WWE NXT Recap for November 4th, 2020 Part 1

Ember Moon kicks off NXT by coming to the ring inside the Covid Wrestling Center in Trump country as we see a video recapping Halloween Havoc. Last week, I thought it was a pretty great show, carried a lot by Shotzi Blackheart's amazing performance as host, the over-the-top set, and the gimmicks. A lot of people agreed as NXT saw a big ratings boost and even beat Dynamite in viewership, though they still lost the demo. After the video, Dakota Kai is in the ring. Raquel Gonzales is at ringside.

Ember Moon vs. Dakota Kai

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around Ember Moon's NXT return. She's was out for a long time with that Achilles injury that threatened her career, and I wonder if she changes her wrestling style as a result. This match is submission-heavy and deliberately-paced, though that's with Kai in control, working Moon's left arm. When Moon does get offense, there's some athletic stuff there, but nothing too high risk. Whenever I see Moon hit her finisher, I feel like it's taking years off her career. It just seems like a really brutal way to land, especially when you see what taking that kind of bump (on your ass) has done to the hips of people like Hulk Hogan or the spine of Matt Hardy. And she's taking it off the top rope. I don't know. It makes me cringe every time. And I say this knowing that the injury she was out for so long with wasn't even from wrestling; it was from chasing R-Truth during a stupid 24/7 Championship skit. But even still, I hope Moon uses this opportunity at a career reset to adopt a different kind of style, similar to how Daniel Bryan did. Anyway, that's my lecture for the night. This is a good match and a long match, and it ends when Moon goes up top, presumably for the Eclipse, but gets distracted by Gonzalez, allowing Kai to hit the mat.

Winner: Dakota Kai

Well, I guess I was wasting my time worrying about Ember Moon's health when I should have been worried about WWE jobbing her out when she just made her big return like three weeks ago! McKenzie Mitchell asks Cameron Grimes if he's okay after losing at the Haunted House of Horrors match last week. Grimes claims to be fine and over it. "Whatever happened last week, that was weeks ago." But when a ref taps him on the shoulder for his match with KUSHIDA, he freaks. So clearly not over it.

McKenzie talks to Shotzi Blackheart. Blackheart says William Regal let her choose an opponent tonight in exchange for hosting Halloween Havoc. She's chosen Toni Storm. Welcome to the ball pit, Tony Storm. Kushida and Grimes are in the ring for a match.

Cameron Grimes vs. Kushida

I didn't like Grimes when I first saw him, but he's starting to grow on me. I think. The thing with WWE gimmicks is they walk a fine line. On the one hand, I like an over-the-top personality, and WWE certainly loves to write a lot of their wrestlers are over-the-top personalities, but the problem is you have to be really good to make those characters work in the heavily-scripted WWE environment, or it just comes off as cheesy and immersion-breaking. I think Grimes makes it work, so I gotta give him props for that. KUSHIDA, on the other hand, has no character, or at least none that NXT has shown me in the time I've been watching, but they're giving him a gimmick where he's gotten very aggressive lately, so we'll see where that goes.

This is another long match, and as a general rule in WWE, I think the matches should be shorter because they all follow a general formula of "beginning, big move (usually a dive) leading to a commercial break, a long boring middle part of no real consequence (maybe with an additional commercial break), finish." WWE incentivizes just paying attention to the finish, so why drag it out? In this case, the finish sees the ref take a bump, and Grimes gets the would-be pin, but the ref is out. Then the zombie ref from Halloween Havoc runs out, and it scares Grimes, allowing KUSHIDA to put on the Hoverboard Lock and get the win.

Winner: KUSHIDA

Vic Joseph claims that the "real" KUSHIDA is finally loose in NXT. Good to know he was phoning it in until now. Toni Storm puts over Shotzi Blackheart in a video package but says she's gonna kick her ass tonight. NXT takes a commercial break. Then Io Shirai tells us what's next for her in a video package. She has her sights on Rhea Ripley next. She wants to defend the title against her. So we'll have that to look forward to.

You know what else you can look forward to? Reading the second part of this NXT recap by clicking below.

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