Keith Lee Gets Burned by Karrion Kross Ahead of TakeOver NXT Review (8/12/20)

Overall

Last night’s NXT had a lot going for it. TakeOver is swiftly approaching and all of the major storylines are getting ready to come to a head. Keith Lee and Karrion Kross continued to heat up, quite literally, as Kross was able to attack Lee with a contract rigged to shoot a fireball at him. Lee was taken to a “local medical facility” to receive treatment after being blinded by the flame. If I had to guess in kayfabe Lee will recover just in time to face Kross at TakeOver 30 on August 22nd.

Other stories also had some good continuations as tension begin to build leading up to TakeOver. Damian Priest and Bronson Reed faced each other in a hard hitting match that leads me to believe that NXT is going to push Reed to the moon. Johnny Gargano and Candice LeRae had a promo looking toward their upcoming bouts with Ridge Holland and Tegan Nox respectively. And we saw the return of The Velveteen Dream to NXT tv following a car accident and new allegations regarding his conduct with minors. (One would like to assume that WWE takes the allegations seriously and has conducted a thorough investigation.)

Overall, I enjoyed NXT this week and while it wasn’t my favorite episode of all time I found very little to dislike about this episode. So let’s look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of NXT 8/12/20!

The Good

• Danny Burch is coming out swinging tonight.
• Keith Lee’s promo on Kross was super good. I popped when he called him a punk ass.
• Loved the fireball! I was not expecting it at all!
• I guess UE attacking Maverick and Dain makes up for how they treated this match earlier.
• I really liked Adam Cole’s promo on Pat McAfee. I’m starting to come around on this feud but only because I really want to see McAfee get his ass handed to him.
• Escobar and Breeze told a great story with their match. Escobar might be good enough to get me to start paying attention to 205 live.
• I enjoyed the Mia Yim match a lot too. I’m glad they didn’t go with the “she lost cause she’s too worried about her boyfriend” story. She deserved a win.
• Bronson Reed is a great! My new favorite to win the North American Championship at TakeOver.
• I really enjoyed Io’s video package on Dakota Kai. This should be a great match.
• Martinez and Aliyah did some kind of a pop up into a neck breaker tandem move that I loved!
• Rhea and Shotzi running in to confront The Robert Stone Brand was great! (Also, justice for Shotzi! Her car was jacked and her ring gear and helmet were in there.)
• I really like these Garganos at home segments. But mostly cause I just love Johnny and Candice.
• Thatch as thatch can is back! I missed these segments.
• Velveteen Dream is also back! Glad to see him back in the title picture too.
• I wasn’t about Grimes winning the triple threat match, but it did lead to a definitive heel turn for Dream so it makes sense. Also we get Dream vs. Balor next week!

The Bad

• The only bad thing I have listed was how they treated the Drake Maverick vs. Killian Dain match. It immediately got picture in picture with Keith Lee being lead to an ambulance and then picture in picture with commercials (which switched back to Lee moments later during the commercials). Finally, we got a few seconds of the actually match in full screen and then Maverick and Dain got attacked by The Undisputed Era. It all makes sense to tell Adam Cole and Keith Lee’s stories but I felt bad for Drake and Killian.
  

The Ugly

• As much as I didn’t like what they did to Maverick and Dain it made sense so it had to stay in bad and not fall into ugly. So we didn’t have anything in this category tonight.