There\u2019s a pattern for this year\u2019s Stand & Deliver in that it delivered a lot of solid matches but nothing that felt worthy of this show and its legacy. For a regular Tuesday night in March? Sure, but not for Stand & Deliver. NXT just isn\u2019t captivating at the moment. As Geno noted in our offices, it\u2019s lacking star power. That\u2019s part of it for me but it\u2019s just lacking excitement. Maybe that\u2019s the star aspect. Maybe it\u2019s them making their PLEs feel like regular Tuesdays. Or maybe it\u2019s just not having compelling stories. Or all of the above.<\/p>\n
I think it\u2019s safe to say the Joe Hendry as champ thing didn\u2019t work, at least this time around. Joe was the least interesting person in this Fatal 4 Way, which is never a great look for the champ. Perhaps they go back to him down the line but it felt right taking the title off of him and putting it on Tony D\u2019Angelo. Ethan Page and Ricky Saints will see each other based on their friendship seemingly erupting here. Or at the least, a slight volcanic reaction. That said, we know what things look like with them as champ. NXT needs a shakeup; who better to do that than the guy who called himself The Don? There\u2019s a long story with Tony in NXT chasing the ultimate prize. I like the idea that he couldn\u2019t get it done when he had a crew but finally did as a solo act. Was he too focused on family and not enough on business? Did he need the chip on his shoulder that came from not having a support group?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m probably looking deeper into it than anyone in creative will but that\u2019s what I do here. Anyway, Tony wanted it more than anyone else. Plus, when someone says they have two objectives and they check the first of those off their list, it makes them look bad if they don\u2019t accomplish item number two. Tony somewhat got his payback on DarkState so the championship was the only logical place for him to go.<\/p>\n
I hope his reign is a lot different than Joe\u2019s because NXT needs a spark.<\/p>\n
Stand & Deliver did a lot of standing and not much delivering. This was fine for a Tuesday night but not this brand\u2019s WrestleMania. I hoped that this show might break NXT\u2019s stale streak but nope, it kept it going with flying colors.<\/p>\n
What say you, Cagesiders? Did they make the right call by putting the title on Tony D\u2019Angelo?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a pattern for this year\u2019s Stand & Deliver in that it delivered a lot of solid matches…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,250216,4366,94185],"class_list":{"0":"post-565983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-stand-deliver","10":"tag-wwe","11":"tag-wwe-nxt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}