NXT Becomes NX-LEE as Keith Lee Takes Down Adam Cole For Double Championship! NXT: The Great American Bash Night Two Review (7/8/20)

Overall

This was a really fun show with an incredibly satisfying opening match and a barn burner of a main event! The middle of the show had its ups and downs, but it still had some high quality matches that will make night two of The Great American Bash just as rewatchable as the first night last week.

The talk of the night will of course be Keith Lee taking on Adam Cole in a match worthy of ending Cole’s reign as NXT Champion and cementing Lee as the top guy on the black and yellow brand. Despite spoilers for this match leaking out late last week this match was still a lot of fun and genuinely made me wonder if they had gone and reshot the match to have Adam Cole come out on top considering how strong Cole looked throughout the match.

Other notable performances belong to Candice LeRae and Mia Yim, who opened the show with a fantastic street fight ending with a brutal spot off of a table balanced on the top rope, and the six-man tag match between Legado Del Fantasma and Breezango with Drake Maverick. This tag match was the first time we have seen this new faction in action on NXT (I was informed they have had some matches on 205 Live, but I don’t frequently watch it so…) and it was a lot of fun to see them dominate. I imagine it won’t be long until some combination of the three of them will be challenging for the NXT tag titles.

Overall, the show was a lot of fun to watch and while it didn’t have the same energy as last week’s episode, it did continue to impress me. Now let’s get into the good, the bad, and the ugly of NXT: The Great American Bash Night Two.

The Good

• Getting started with the street fight between LeRae and Yim. This was a brutal match and these two women are the best picks to do a brutal match like this.
• Candace LeRae’s swinging neck breaker onto the chairs from the table that was on the top ropes! The two of them balancing on the table was so much fun to watch and gave me some real anxiety.
• NXT honoring the greatest WWE tradition of them all, huge guys throwing little guys all over the ring. This Bronson Reed and Tony Nese match may have lacked motivation but it was fun to watch.
• Killian Dain and Shotzi Blackheart beating up Robert Stone and running over him with Shotzi’s tank.
• Johnny Gargano and Isiah “swerve” Scott put on a good match tonight. Most weeks it would’ve been probably the second best match of the night, but at an event show like this it kinda get buried underneath the bigger matches.
• Good to see Legado Del Fantasma as a one unit in the ring for the first time. I’m looking forward to what these guys go on to do.
• The backstage interview with The Garganos they play the annoying couple so well! Also setting up a feud with Finn Balor is great!
• Look the entire Keith Lee and Adam Cole match is great and I highly recommend watching the whole thing, but if I had to call out one thing that I just loved, it was that primal yell that Keith Lee let out before finishing off Adam Cole. It was great!

The Bad

• The backstory for the match between Reed and Nese was a dark match from last week? Why are we doing dark matches for the PC recruits?
• I wish I could’ve heard what the members of the undisputed era were saying when they arrived at Full Sail, but it was during picture in picture so that was sad.
• The videos of Drew McIntrye, Mick Foley, and Shawn Michaels all chiming in on who will win the main event, but none of them actually said anything or even really chose a winner. It was kinda dumb.

The Ugly

• It seems like mask rules aren’t being enforced at Full Sail? It just feels like a bad look right now. (If someone can explain what is going on with that, I’d be very appreciative.)