NXT recap & reactions: Meta Girls on top – Cageside Seats
Filed under:Trick Williams loses it, Fallon Henley defends it, and the Meta Girls prove it on this week’s episode of NXT. What a moment! @BiancaBelairWWE and @lashlegendwwe facing off! #WWENXT pic.twitter.com/rCsgllnkm5Main eventing for a championship against Bianca Belair and Naomi is a big deal. That’s what I kept telling myself while watching the Meta Girls compete in a match I knew they weren’t winning, despite how hard I rooted for them to get that W. Rather than complain about the loss, or how Bianca & Naomi seem stagnant, or even how this story with the champs and Jade Cargill seems stuck in neutral. Instead, I bring good tidings! Let’s talk about how this match shows how far Lash Legend & Jakara Jackson have come, and how the territory made them look like stars. It started with the presentation. We barely saw Jakara & Lash before the match. When we did, they had on game faces usually reserved for football. They looked focused and serious. Then when the match started, they didn’t back down from the champions. Jakara taunted Naomi very similarly to how Naomi taunts her opponents, while Lash outmuscled and outpowered Bianca. Oh, and she mocked her. In a few short minutes, NXT told us these two were not only up for the challenge but on the same level as the champs. Lash practically battled Bianca to a standstill. She pulled out new moves and mirrored Bianca’s. Jakara was aggressive and utilized her aerial ability. That produced moments like this:THIS IS AWESOME #WWENXT pic.twitter.com/MF8hTICELCThe Meta Girls got a spot where they almost won. If not for Naomi breaking up a pinfall at the very last possible moment, this column is radically different. But that brief hope, again, illustrated how close they are to the division’s current measuring sticks. And for a team that truly came together in the wake of everything going a bit sideways for Meta Four, that’s a pretty remarkable thing. The crowd knew it too; they booed the finish! Ref shenanigans aside (which also gave Lash & Jakara an out), that ATL crowd really wanted a title change. That speaks to all the work these two put in over several months, along with what they do in the ring. This was a big deal for Lash & Jakara. They looked just as big as two of the biggest wrestlers in the company and almost go the win. They did it while completely winning over a crowd who showed their appreciation by booing those two big stars. This was laying groundwork, footprints if you will, for something larger down the line for these two. And I can’t wait to see what they do next. @_trickwilliams has SNAPPED! #WWENXT pic.twitter.com/Dq1qyh3QJOI wrote at length last week about Trick Williams’ whole man of action thing. He continued that action this week but showed a bit more. The former NXT champ displayed unhinged behavior to get back the championship he lost pretty fair and very square. It started with the latest episode of the Grayson Waller Effect. And no, Austin Theory didn’t turn on Grayson, sorry to disappoint all you Theory heads. Instead, we got a lot of trash talk between Oba Femi and the two hosts. Oba put them both on blast for never holding the championship he proudly brandishes, and welcomed the challenge of not just one of them, but both men. This is about Oba proving that Raw and SmackDown aren’t less than, but also him boosting his profile. That’s when Trick came into the picture. He anxiously watched this whole thing on a monitor backstage. All that frustration boiled over, resulting in a very weird strut to the ring rather than rushing out for a fight. Trick interrupted the Ava and launched himself into the ring for a shot at Oba. I wanted more urgency to the ring given his state of mind but maybe my man was constricted from what looked like a very narrow corridor. OH NO! This is not what @_trickwilliams had in mind for tonight…#WWENXT pic.twitter.com/QoR15y2TGiAnyway, Trick leapt before he looked and took a big slam from the champ. So big in fact that it hurt his back and put his status for a match against Wes Lee in jeopardy. That was also weird. Trick’s taken big shots from Oba before and never reacted that way. It helped the narrative that Trick is so obsessed with a rematch that he’s not thinking clearly, but there was another way to do that given how his match with Wes played out. Trick let all that emotion get the better of him against Wes. He ignored the ref’s instructions multiple times and got DQ’d. Then went awol with a chair even though, grant it, Wes’ boys sued the chair first. He was unhinged and went straight to Ava when the whole thing ended. Pissed that Grayson & Austin get a title shot before him, Ava told him to earn it. But how will he possibly do that in a tag match with Oba Femi next week? I like this idea that losing that belt again made Trick lose his mind and he’s seemingly more about his business than he any time before. But will it work out for him? I really enjoyed NXT this week. Set up some matches with a lot of juice at Vengeance Day, and tag team matches book ended the show. But the biggest accomplishment is that it put the Meta Girls on the level with Bianca Belair & Naomi. That bodes well for everyone. Hopefully the next time they meet, the decision goes in their favor. What say you, cagesiders? Were you as impressed with Lash & Jakara? Check your inbox for a welcome email.Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again.
