WWE Week in Review: AJ goes off, Rollins looks ready, NXT title match

WWE 205 Live

WWE Cruiserweight Champion Neville cut a promo to start the show. He discusses breaking his ankle a year ago, an injury that kept him out of WrestleMania, and that nobody cared, which is why he came back the way he did. He hyped the main event as the biggest in the show’s short history but said that it doesn’t matter who wins because The King will take them down. I’m still really into this version of Neville and he’s doing such a great job in his promos. Good start.

Mustafa Ali and Drew Gulak kicked off the in-ring action in a really fun little match. Ali is a fantastic wrestler and I’m hoping he gets a nice push down the road. He picked up the win after about five minutes with a tornado DDT followed by the 450. Fun stuff. Gulak cut a quick promo following the match about not being appreciated.

We got some tag action next as Jack Gallagher and Rich Swann took on Noam Dar and Ariya Daivari. This was a decent enough match with Dar pinning Swann for the win but it wasn’t anything special. Gallagher and Daivari just doesn’t interest me anymore — not that it did much in the first place — and while I was with the Alicia Fox stuff early on, it’s starting to wear on me a little bit. I still think she’s good at what she does but it’s getting to be enough. But she did get a teddy bear for whatever that’s worth on WWE programming.

The No. 1 contender’s match for Neville’s title closed out the show and featured Austin Aries, Tony Nese, TJ Perkins, Brian Kendrick and Akira Tozawa. Kendrick and Tozawa brawled early on while Aries just kind of watched for a second before getting into it with Tony Nese. Perkins interjected and got a shot in on Aries, then we got a really nice interaction with all five men and a couple of nice near falls. Nese hit a fantastic knee on Aries on the outside, which was essentially done to get Aries some rest. But Nese was the first man out after tapping to TJ Perkins at about the nine-minute mark. I liked that we didn’t get a quick elimination as each competitor was given a chance to shine.

Nese hung around to get a little revenge on Perkins and Tozawa tried to help out TJ but the distraction cost him and he was eliminated by Kendrick, which was the right move to keep that program going. Kendrick and Perkins battled for a moment but Aries made his way back in for a nice sequence before he and Kendrick eventually eliminated Perkins together. Aries and Kendrick fought it out for a few minutes with Aries finally picking up the win to claim his spot as the number one contender. Austin Aries is going to WrestleMania. Did you ever think you’d hear that sentence?

Overall, this was a pretty solid episode. I don’t think the main event is quite what it could have been but I still had a fun time with it. The buildup to Neville and Aries should be a lot of fun but that match is all the division is likely to get at WrestleMania. I’m sure they’ll get some sort of tag match on the kickoff show. I still would have gone with my ladder match idea but Neville vs. Aries should be pretty solid.