My college adventures last night turned into an all-nighter. I didn’t get to bed until 5am, Lord knows when I actually fell asleep, and I had to work today. I wound up nearly nodding off a couple times, so I wound up buying those 5-Hour Energy drinks. I slammed two of them (recommended dosage: one) and they didn’t “take” in the minutes the bottle said they would… so I slammed a third one. Now I’m all twitchy, nauseous, and feeling like I’m drunk. But I’m awake, and that’s what matters right now, so I can bang out NXT and organize my college teammates for this final push of my final class.

Speaking of last night’s recap, I think what makes Online Onslaught awesome—other than the mere fact that I write for it—is the dichotomy between Rick and me when it comes to our opinions of shows. Two weeks ago, when The Rock returned, I called the show (other than his promo) slightly above average, and Rick said it was wall-to-wall entertaining. Last night was the opposite: I gave it an A-, and Rick said it was well below average and phoned in. 
  

Who knows? Maybe I’ve got bad taste. Rick has the credibility and history that I don’t and never will, and he tends to think things through more logically and long-term. I, on the other hand, am more easily fooled by WWE’s tricks and tend to think like the fans who we all (including me) deride as being morons. And the winner is you, because you get to hear both sides of the debate at all times and, even if you always disagree with me, at least we have a variety of viewpoints around here. How many other websites, wrestling or otherwise, have that??? [Ed. Note: whether it was "logical" or "long-term," our difference of opinion this week definitely stems from me thinking too hard. After a satisfying opening segment with HHH, everything else was just off-kilter to a distracting degree. I put my full 1600 words on the topic in the OO Forums; if you want the short version instead, it basically comes down to me deriding WWE's time management, as they had the live audience watch more pre-taped TitanTrons than they got to watch in-ring wrestling (22 total minutes of wrestling is all, and for TV viewers, 6 of those minutes were during commercial breaks).]

And at least Rick and I agree that Orton has all the TV chops as a pig that is suckling on its own teats. And he’s got just about the same mic skills. As long as we agree on that, all is right with the world.

Okay, enough of this mutual writers’ love fests (since I already had a love-fest with Matt Hocking’s RAW Satire on the forums). Let’s get to NXT so I can get shit done tonight…

Pre-Segment 1: A few of the pros are introduced, and the pros then introduce the two remaining rookies. Johnny Curtis (with R-Truth) and Brodus Clay (with Ricardo Rodriguez) hit the ring for a match together, but first, each gets to cut a promo. JC goes first, saying that Brodus is a dick and has been trying to put him out since day one of this season, trying to end his dream. JC says that he’s going to knock Brodus’s teeth down his throat. Pretty good, pretty intense, and it seems JC is arguably more effective trying to be straight rather than an over-the-top goofy character.

Brodus replies by patronizing JC first, but then actually puts over JC: he says that when he stared down the other four rookies, they each blinked away from him… but not JC, who just stood up to him. JC is a man’s man… and if it was any other job or any other situation, they’d be friends. But it’s NXT and WWE, and “no matter what this stupid Cleveland audience says,” Brodus is the man, and “like Labron James, I’m going to walk out of Cleveland a winner.” BURN!!!

Fantastic line and mini promo! And after that, everyone is pissed off, and it’s time for them to have a match.

Segment 1 [Singles Match]: Brodus Clay (w/ Ricardo Rodriguez) defeats Johnny Curtis (w/ R-Truth) by pin. Pretty good match but nothing extraordinary. Brodus did a Nerve Hold of Doom for entirely too long, which is about the third-stupidest-looking move after Bear Hugs of Doom and Chin Locks of Doom. Match ended with a rebound splash, which I guess is Brodus’s finisher.

Segment 2: Derrick Bateman is sorta here, in an “Earlier Today” segment. Cleveland is his hometown, and he’s in the locker room with Daniel Bryan. Bateman is all, “You said you’d punch me in the face if I was eliminated last week. But you’d wouldn’t really hit a friend would you?” DB clenches his fist, so Bateman grabs something out of his bag… “You wouldn’t hit a friend… with glasses, would you?,” and he’s pimping horned rim glasses he probably stole from Rivers Cuomo.

DB punches him anyway, and Bateman loses his sense of humor. He sinks to the bench and flings his glasses into the concrete floor. DB starts encouraging him though, saying there’s an “NXT Rookie Reunion Tag Match” tonight, so DB needs to win for himself… for DB… for chicks… for America! As he says that, Bateman stands and looks totally pumped. “Now go get ‘em!” DB screams. Bateman gives a guttural man-tastic growl, then runs off-camera stage right. Sweet! It’s all in the delivery and doesn’t translate well to text, but it further proves that Bateman’s Kaitlyn Factor—which at this point might just be renamed to “the Bateman Factor”—is in full effect. And he plays off DB so damn well!

Segment 3 [Tag Match]: Derrick Bateman & Conor O’Brian defeat Byron Saxton & Jason Novak by pin. Decent enough match, pure formula. Conor was designated Face in Peril, which the crowd unexpectedly got into. Well, they got into it half-heartedly, but it was still more than I thought they would be.

Once Conor managed a hot tag, Bateman was so fired up that he left scorch marks on the canvas. He beat the shit out of Byron, concluding his House of Fire sequence by booting Byron in the gut and bouncing off the ropes to Byron’s back. Bateman went for a sunset flip, but Byron fucked it up by going to a knee at the last second. Bateman in midair tried to grab Byron’s neck but clearly missed, and Byron sold a neckbreaker anyway. Awful, and that mistake was all on Byron: if he had remained in his original position, Bateman would have easily been able to do a running sunset flip or a flipping neckbreaker and made it look right.

Byron was only pinned for two, and Bateman pounded the mat in frustration. Byron got up and staggered over to Jason Novak, who chose to hop off the apron and leave the match for literally no fucking reason. Byron threw his hands in the air in frustration, turned around, ate a sweet running dropkick from Bateman. Bateman then followed up by a… uh… flipping reverse Russian leg sweep into a neckbreaker? Sure, we’ll go with that. Sweet move, and I hereby dub it the Man-Tastic Mangle! (C’mon, that’s not a worse name than “Chick Kick” or “Scot Drop” or “Airbourne.”)

Segment 4: Time to announce the winner of NXT Season 4! Both rookies are in the ring with Matt Striker, who gives some parting thanks to the pros, as well as giving a nice dramatic hype to the rookies. Then, he sends it to the Titantron…

JOHNNY CURTIS WON? WHAT THE FUCK???

Brodus and JC both start crying, but for wholly different reasons. R-Truth gets in the ring to congratulate JC, who starts hopping on every single corner to pose… but he’s not posing for the crowd, but for himself. I may think he’s only the third-best, but goddamn, I’m not going to say a word about his reaction.

Truth isn’t going to shit on his reaction either. He brings up that JC’s tears are real emotion and personify everything that NXT is all about. Matt gives JC a mic, and the first thing he does is calls Brodus’s name. Brodus had his back turned with his head in his hand, but finally does face JC. JC offers his hand, and Brodus takes it and gives him a hug.

JC then thanks the crowd, then specifically his dad, and is at a slight loss for words. But he does thank the crowd again, and they give him huge props.

Striker then gives the mic to Brodus, who says that it’s all the fans’ fault for “taking his dream away,” since he “won every competition he was in,” which is demonstrably untrue. He said that the reason the fans hate him is all because he doesn’t have the pretty boy look that JC has, that we all hate him because of what he looks like. So because the fans took away his dream, he’s going to take everything away from us; we broke his heart, so he’ll break ours; he “doesn’t need a roster spot, just a parking lot” to take what he wants, “and we do know that.” Awesome heel promo! And he adds to being a jerk by exiting the ring and immediately screaming to the nearby cameraman, “Get that camera out of my face!,” which I think is a first for WWE.

Truth then absolutely kills momentum by leading a “What’s up!” chorus, which only half the fans get behind. Moron. He’s just happy he gets to go after the Tag Titles.

Final Thoughts: Well… the wrong guy won, in my opinion, but I’ve long since said that JC does deserve a spot on the roster. He can easily fit into the more wrestling-oriented SmackDown, although both rosters are pretty face-heavy at the moment. I’d like to see him go a few rounds with Jack Swagger.

WWE apparently made a liar out of me, because as the show ended, Todd Grisham told us to come back next week for the premier of Season 5 of NXT. So, uh… I guess it’s going to run concurrent with Tough Enough? And every single fucking report about NXT I’ve read is wrong? I can’t imagine Todd was wrong since this was taped and if he flubbed it that part would have been edited out, so… Meh, whatever. If NXT is still going next week, you can bet your ass I’ll be recapping it.

During this episode we dealt with full replays of The Rock’s and Shawn Michaels’s pretaped segments from last night. It filled the time since NXT didn’t have much left, given only two rookies remained, but it was still boring to watch. Oh well.

I’m done, people. My energy is waning and you don’t want to hear any more from me, I’m sure. Check out OO on Saturday as usual for the SmackDown recap!