WWE NXT Recap, August 9: Bobby Roode and Drew McIntyre have a conversation

Bobby Roode and Drew McIntyre have a face-to-face, Andrade “Cien” Almas gets a TakeOver match, and the debut of Street Profits!

Sane Statements

It’s never a dull moment when SAnitY starts dishing out beatings to their opponents, but it’s especially exciting when they do it to the team that nobody thought could get a beating given to them, the Authors of Pain. They did it the only way you can do it, by splitting up Rezar and Akam, and attacking them separately. Alexander Wolfe and Killian Dain were taunting the two in the ring, so when Akam decided to rush them from the front, Rezar was a step too slow, and got blindsided by Eric Young on the ramp.

SAnitY has a Wyatt Family Lite feeling to them, but NXT isn’t a big enough pond for a faction that has five members and with the talent featured in this group, it’d make sense for them to all go their separate ways eventually. That’s why SAnitY will be just another chapter in Paul Ellering’s Book of Pain come TakeOver, but for now, AoP may want to withhold from putting this week’s page in the BoP.

Successful Debut

While AoP and SAnitY duke it out on the highest level of the tag team division, we got to witness two teams perform for the first time, with one looking way better than the other.

NXT has been teasing us with the debut of Street Profits, a tag team featuring Angelo Dawkins and Montez Ford, for the past few weeks. They finally got their chance to show what they can do in the ring, and all I’ll say is that they are not boring to watch. Sure, the competition wasn’t super fierce — they fought the poor man’s Danny & Kenickie from the T-Birds, who call themselves the Metro Brothers — but you can tell that these guys will be able to find a way to have fun no matter who they face. I won’t be fantasy booking them for a chance at the titles any time soon, but I can still imagine what fun it would be to see them face a team like Heavy Machinery, or DI….. nevermind. (Too soon?)

Face to Face (to Face)

Anytime you can have the two guys who are about to fight for the NXT Championship in the ring at the same time, you know there’s going to be some fireworks. On NXT, the fireworks came not in the form of immediate violence, but the impending kind.

Drew McIntyre said something aggressive to Bobby Roode, whose rebuttal was something even more aggressive. It was all the normal banter you’d expect from two of the company’s biggest alpha dogs, with the only abnormality being that the dude with the glorious entrance had an army of security guards behind him. The guards weren’t meant to protect Roode from McIntyre, but were instead intended for the protection of Roderick Strong.

Strong’s persistence has had a strong effect on Roode’s road to TakeOver, and eventually hit a boiling point. It’s not about the NXT Championship, it’s about Strong defending his family’s honor. Even the mediator of this conversation, William Regal, was convinced to give Strong his opportunity at Roode after TakeOver … if he gets by Drew McIntyre next week. Whatever happens in that match could have serious implications for TakeOver, not only because it’ll have taken its toll on McIntyre’s body so close to his big fight, but also because if Strong wins, Bobby Roode is going to be under even more pressure to win in Brooklyn.

Round Two

Last time Oney Lorcan fought Danny Burch, they really impressed the NXT Universe. It was such a back-and-forth affair that, after Lorcan picked up the win, Burch made an immediate request for a rematch. Lorcan, ever the gentleman, accepted, which brings us to this week where we witnessed Round 2 of what needs to be a three-round fight.

Burch won this battle, but again the victory was marginal. There was plenty of respect to go around after the match — though it must be pointed out that Lorcan was reluctant about it at first — but there was no mention of making this a best-of-three series. There’s still one episode of NXT between now and TakeOver, which is more than enough time to make this match happen. I have a feeling Round 3, in front of a crazy Brooklyn crowd, would not disappoint.

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Almas Gets Serious

Andrade “Cien” Almas has been in need of a career spark, and he got exactly that. His spark was gift wrapped for him in the form of a match against No Way Jose.

Almas dismantled Jose, and the rest of his allotted time went to his “associate” Zelina Vega, who called out Johnny Gargano. In an interview earlier in the show, Gargano talked about how he wants an opponent for a match at TakeOver, so Vega took him up on his offer. William Regal has final say in matchmaking — as he loudly reminded Bobby Roode earlier — but if he wanted to do what best for business, he will make these two duke it out inside a steel cage. Or just a regular ring. Make it happen, Billy!