Welcome to the first ever Tybo Talks… My name is Tybo (or Greg). I guess the most important thing you should know about me is that I own SLTD Wrestling and host SLTD Radio. I’ve not written on any regular basis since The Miz was the WWE Champion! Yeah…remember when that was a thing?
Anyway, I’ve returned to writing basically because I missed it, and if I’m honest, I own this house so I can do what I want!
So, the original idea for this post was going to be pretty random. I was going to talk about NXT Takeover and a little bit about Payback as a PPV, but after a conversation with George, he mentioned the idea of comparing the two and that’s what I’m going to attempt to do!
Now, I’ve purposely not really been on Twitter or Facebook before writing this because the cynical fan says that every smark ever has said how much better NXT was compared to Payback, just because…well, that’s what smarks do!
I’m not an idiot here. There were parts of Takeover that felt a lot better than Payback, especially the absence of any bullshit filler matches, promos or backstage shit that WWE PPVs seem to be full of these days.
Help me out here. If you have the time to have a filler match on a PPV, then you have the time to build the rivalry on any of the shows that make up 15+ hours of WWE TV shows every week. Am I wrong?! Sorry, got sidetracked from the point I was trying to make there!
In my opinion NXT Takeover was an amazing wrestling show. There’s no doubt you can see Triple H’s stamp all over it, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all. The best thing about Takeover is that you saw the hunger in the wrestlers. They all give it their all because they know that they could be called up to the main roster at any time. If that was you, you’d work your arse off too wouldn’t you?
I thought the Zayn/Breeze match was brilliant. I didn’t realise just how over Zayn is. The pop he gets from the crowd is amazing. I hate Breeze’s gimmick but that can be tweaked before he – inevitably – hits the main roster. The NXT Title match was a potential Match of the Year candidate. It’s great to see British wrestlers on top in the WWE. Neville has a very bright future ahead of him.
Compare that to Payback and taking away the Last Man Standing and No Holds Barred matches, the whole show seemed a bit samey. No-one stepped it up any more than they would do for a Raw or SmackDown taping. Even the Payback set wasn’t any different from the ones we see on Raw or SmackDown. It just felt lazy.
But…with that being said, I really enjoyed the Payback PPV, even though it didn’t feel all that special.
The Last Man Standing match was great, except for the Cena win. And that’s coming from a proud member of the CeNation. I think the Usos shone as a great tag-team who take risks to look good. Just like the Shield. They did the same against Evolution, who add a lot of power and legitimacy to the feud.
Taking everything into account, as much as I’d like to compare the two shows, I really can’t. NXT was amazing because it was a solid wrestling show and I’m sure you’d agree that Payback was not!
In a perfect world, we’d have seen the Zayn/Breeze and Kidd/Neville matches on the PPV, as well as Paige/Natalya (that takes nothing away from Charlotte’s performance at Takeover), IC and US Championship matches, as well as the Cena/Wyatt and Shield/Evolution matches. In my eyes, that would’ve been a tremendous show.
So that was the first ever Tybo Talks… What did you think? Do you agree? If you were booking both shows, what would you have done? Let me know below, or find me on Twitter @Greg_SLTD.
To hear more from me, make sure you all check out @SLTDRadio every other Thursday. Click here to check out our show archive.
Owner and operator of www.SLTDWrestling.com, host of SLTDRadio at www.SLTDRadio.co.uk and on Spreaker
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