I actually loved Moxley and Cage - stiff, some crazy bumps and told a great story with Cage’s arm and Taz wanting to keep his meal ticket by tossing the towel.
Moxley can be a bit hit or miss for me, I hated the Hagar match and Lee was also a bit disappointing.
I just find the NXT main event style to be a bit long and the selling just isn’t consistent. Those long Gargano and Ciampa matches were they killed each other and never had a good finish just didn’t do anything for me. Cole I also feel has issues with selling.
I think Moxley is talented, dont get me wrong, but I don’t think he is suited to be “the guy”. The Shield was perfect for him. My gut tells me that he is getting the mega push he is getting right because he was the first WWE top guy to jump ship. AEW seems to be rewarding him for that, and to be honest I can’t even blame them. You want to incentivize guys at this point to jump over.
I’m surprised you have issues with Cole, there is nobody else I enjoy in the ring more then him right now. I have no issues with his selling, best in the business in the ring. Though I didnt care of him vs dream at IYH.
I like Cole a lot but I think his title reign suffered from a lack of good stories and HBK’s influence on the main event style. Much preferred Coles work in ROH to what he’s done in NXT.
As much as I like Cole, I think O’Reilly should be the biggest star in UE. That dude is a selling god
For me this is the break down of NXT vs AEW. I think the main event scene in both right now feels underwhelming, AEW has a more interesting mid card and far superior tag division. NXT has the much better women’s division. I think Cole had an awful run as champion. He had a number of good matches but after Gargano none of his feuds has much of a story. I think the USA move has killed their long term booking. They blew off a Riddle program the first night with no build. Brought back Ciampa and Balor, but then went to a Pete Dunne match because Survivor series, again no build. Then he faced Balor with no build. They strung along Ciampa and turned it into a vehicle to get back to Gargano/Ciampa So not really a story about Cole, then did Dream which was a terrible program, and then a no build Loss to Lee. Lots of good matches but I was not invested in most of them. I feel the same about Moxley right now. I think the Lee and Cage things were rushed and didn’t feel like big matches the way his Jericho program did.
Overall AEW has been telling better stories recently. I care about the story between Kenny and Hangman, Jericho and OC, the Bucks and FTR, Cody acting more like a heel, even the Colt Cabana story. Whereas in NXT right now I care about the women (though I think bringing Flair in hurt them there) and not much else.
When speaking about environment or presentation, let’s not sleep on what has been a constant advantage for AEW…Taking their show to various arenas and placing it in front of enthusiastic fans. As good as a great NXT main event can be, I think the biggest missed pop from the Corona-era was Matt Hardy showing up on Dynamite (or FTR showing up…Hell, I think the Brody Lee reveal would’ve been a big deal in front of that crowd).
For sure, 100% agree with this. Back in the attitude era that was always the best part, I loved that initial pop when someone showed up on a new show. Everyone remembers the Tazz debut at MSG, even guys like Raven and Justin Credible had huge pops when they jumped.
Everything I was saying in here was in relation to NXT vs AEW main event matches.
