The NXT women's title match is my favorite match of 2015, the match was amazing, and the story may have been even better. I could go on about everything I loved about it, but instead I'll just copy/paste what Brandon Stroud thought of it, because it says everything I want to say and more:
NXT isn’t afraid to give us perfect moments.
When I explain being a wrestling fan to people, I often say that about 80% of it is garbage. Wrestling is terrible, almost exclusively. It’s regressive, it’s stupid, it’s insulting, it’s embarrassing. We sit through three hours of Raw every week, watching the same bad idea get sewn and reworn, watching the same people distract the same opponents in the same way as last week. Being a wrestling fan is like being Sisyphus, pushing a rock up a hill only for it to roll back down the other side. Sometimes, though, wrestling is great. When wrestling is great — truly, undeniably great — it’s the perfect human artform. It says what nothing else can say, and makes you feel like nothing else can. It takes the love you’ve put into it and funnels it back to you, finally, at long last. Being a wrestling fan is wading through the garbage to get to those moments, because you know they’re coming. You don’t know when, or for how long, but you know they’re there.
Sami Zayn winning the NXT Championship was a perfect moment. It took him 18 months to get there. We watched him earn Cesaro’s respect in a loss, we watched him take his eyes off the prize and lose Championship matches by being too nice. We watched him struggle with his conscience, and the reality that every successful WWE Champion has been a total jerks. The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Triple H, Hulk Hogan … they were all basically heels who justified their actions because they were being cheered, whether it was the right thing to do or not. They’d take shortcuts, cheat, beat up managers, whatever. Ruthless aggression is what they call it sometimes. Zayn didn’t have that. He wanted to be a Good Dude and win the title on his own terms. At the end of his match he held the NXT Championship in his hands and was ready to use it as a weapon, but threw it down. He wasn’t going to sell out. 18 months brought him here and made him the man he is for a reason. He won, and the good guy was actually a good guy, and it mattered.
At TakeOver: Brooklyn, we got the end of the Sasha Banks vs. Bayley story they’ve spent two years telling. Two years ago, they were enhancement talent. They worked hard and came up on two different paths — Sasha looked into the NXT Oculus, sold her soul and became “The Boss” to create a false air of confidence that’d carry her through the tough decisions of becoming NXT Champion; Bayley stayed true to herself, handed out headbands to special needs kids and hugged little girls cosplaying as her in the front row. She got turned on time and again by every woman she considered a friend. Sasha became champ, got called up to Raw and tapped out the Divas Champion in the main event. Bayley stayed down here in oblivion, getting beaten up by Dana Brooke. Bayley vs. Charlotte happened and Bayley lost, and we got footage of her standing at ringside crying because she’d let her friends and family down. The Divas Revolution started, and Bayley broke her hand. The pre-match video package of her being Back to the Future’d out of the Four Horsewomen of NXT photo says it all.
I don’t know if I’ve been as emotionally invested in a match in my adult life.
NXT isn’t afraid to give us perfect moments.
There are three moments that get me. The first is after Sasha has dismantled Bayley’s wrist guard and started wrecking her hand. She gets Bayley in the Banks Statement, and when Bayley goes for the ropes, Sasha starts stomping her hand. That moment of visceral, competitive rage is the single moment you point to as an example of what NXT does differently with female wrestlers, and how women who wrestle can be everything the men can be if they’re talented, and are given the time, story and audience of the men. This is beyond what the men are doing … this is pro wrestling at its best, where the little things feel life and death, and the physicality of drama becomes everything.
The other two moments come one after the other. Bayley hits a reverse hurricanrana from the top rope, and Sasha comes down on the top of her head. It’s a death blow. Bayley stands up, aggressively throws her scrunchie down and adjusts her pony. This isn’t the Bayley we know who is kinda awkward on the microphone and doesn’t know when to pull the trigger in the ring … this is a CHAMPION. This is a woman who knows she just hit the biggest move of her life and is ready to win. It’s a plasma cannon of goosebumps. The final moment comes seconds after the pin, when Bayley’s on her knees. Everyone’s looking at Bayley, the new champion, but look at Sasha. Watch her face.
She’s crying.
It’s not a cry of sadness, or of happiness, or relief. It’s everything. It’s all the things. It’s the rush of emotion from having wrestled one of the best women’s wrestling matches in WWE history, in front of NXT’s biggest-ever crowd, at its biggest-ever event. It’s finishing a story. It’s the end. It’s the last moment they’ll be them before the curtain call. Everything’s changing. The NXT Women’s Division is becoming the Raw and Smackdown Divas Division, and their job descriptions are changing. They’re not gonna be independent wrestlers trying their best in a Performance Center anymore. They’re gonna be world-traveled millionaires, TV stars, the works. This is the moment when that absolutely happens. This is the reward for years of hard work, for dedication in the face of impossibility, for standing up and making a difference in a sport that has never treated women right, and may never. It’s something. It’s raging against the dying of a light until an entire arena is bright as hell. Also, it’s being dropped on your head and getting Belly-to-Bayley’d out of your shoes. It’severything. All of it.
I loved this match. This is my favorite match of the year. An absolute classic, and the end of an era.
Here’s to hoping the next era knows how to fill those shoes, and that Bayley’s the one to show it how.