WWE Week in Review: Staredown City on RAW, Cena & Styles shine on SmackDown

WWE NXT

For the second week in a row, we only got about ten minutes of actual wrestling in this week’s episode of WWE NXT and the only decent match was the opener.

Ember Moon and Liv Morgan kicked off the show and while the match only went about four minutes, it was a good effort. Morgan continues to show improvement but it’s clear that she’s not quite on Moon’s level. Whether or not they go through with the stipulation that the winner of this match goes on to be the real number one contender for the women’s championship is anyone’s guess but Ember Moon will be in the title hunt in the next few months. She’s too good not to be.

Andrade Almas got into it with Roderick Strong in the back after an interview in hopes that somebody might get excited about their match on Saturday. I’m hoping the match is better than the build has been.

No Way Jose vs. Kona Reeves is on next and I was just so bored throughout this whole thing…and it wasn’t even that long. Jose is good at what he does as an entertainer and is likely to be this type of guy forever but Kona just does nothing for me. I know what he’s trying to do as a heel but it’s just not getting over very well and when you can bore the Full Sail crowd, there’s something wrong. And The Drifter showing up afterwards didn’t really help either.

Eric Young picked up a squash win against youngster Chris Atkins, who does have a very good look to him and hopefully continues to progress at the performance center. But this was all about making Young and Sanity look strong ahead of EY’s match with Tye Dillinger at TakeOver on Saturday night.

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The final segment of the night saw the four women involved in this Saturday’s Fatal 4-Way match for the NXT Women’s Championship face off. Regal was out to host things, against his better judgment he said, but agreed to it because the ladies said that they wouldn’t get violent. Luckily, they were lying and we got a fun, short, little deal out of it. Kay and Royce played up their confidence pretty well here to start and were then joined by Nikki Cross, whose crazy thing is a lot of fun to watch. Asuka hit the ring next and after a little violence that wasn’t supposed to happen, we got a face to face between Asuka and Nikki and I really liked that they didn’t have Cross back down at all here. They were attacked by Kay and Royce from behind but before they could retaliate, they were separated by security and it was so much fun to watch two strong women beat the hell out of the security guards. Nikki looked really strong here. Good stuff.

The card for NXT TakeOver: San Antonio certainly isn’t the strongest card they’ve ever had but I’m hoping for the best anyway and this week’s episode furthered a couple of things heading into Saturday night. I’d still like to get back to a little more wrestling though instead of a few quick matches and some video packages.

Next: Royal Rumble Look Back: Stone Cold's controversial 1997 win

And there you have it. Be sure to check in with FanSided all weekend long as we’ll have up-to-date coverage of NXT TakeOver: San Antonio and the Royal Rumble.