George Chiverton

NXT Weekly Rankings & Evaluation
By George Chiverton, PWTorch specialist

February 15, 2012 - Week 50

Rookie: Derrick Bateman
This Week's Performance: 7
Gimmick: 7
Last Week's Rank: #1
Rank: #1

Comments: Another week where Bateman only played a marginal role and another week where he once again did perfectly well in his role. I do enjoy the Bateman-Curtis-Kaitlyn-Maxine storyline simply because they're all entertaining, they have pretty good chemistry, and the storyline is very believable. What's not to enjoy? Kaitlyn in particular had a very entertaining week on commentary and her Regal banter was excellent. Regal makes a very good Old English perv, but in a lovable way. If that's possible? All in all, fair play, Bateman.

***

Rookie: Titus O'Neil
This Week's Performance: 4.5
Gimmick: 6
Last Week's Rank: #2
Rank: #2

Comments: Titus's match was sloppy and it was clearly Titus's fault on almost every occasion. It's been an ever-growing concern, as Titus seems to be going in the wrong direction. By the end of WrestleMania Season, he'll be as green as a Prius. Turn this around, Titus. On the plus side, he did generate a fair quantity of heat, so well done on that one.

***

Rookie: Darren Young
This Week's Performance: -
Gimmick: -
Last Week's Rank: #3
Rank: #3

Comments: Nope? Frequent non-features for Darren surely don't bode well. Well for his career, not for me as a WWE viewer.

***

Other Comments: Now, I thought Monday's Raw was actually pretty good. John Cena had a stormer and actually managed to get the whole crowd cheering for him despite him being the WWE's top heel (in some sense). Sure, it was a little cheap, but I really don't care. This was undoubtedly Cena's best week in the Cena-Rock saga and fair play to Cena for setting a focus on WrestleMania.

Triple H-Taker was slow developing, and wasn't helped by truly awful fans who chose to heckle the most respected man in the business, but it still picked up at the end of the segment. And, I know that the entire audience may not have understood C.M. Punk's commentary during the main event, but I did. So, I enjoyed it. And, so did Jerry Lawler. So we had a lovely evening together.

David Otunga, wonderful. Absolutely always wonderful. His ring attire is the best in WWE at the moment and I have always liked his in-ring style of "thrown in at the deep end." Heck, it worked for Sheamus. All in all, I just enjoyed Raw. I thought it was entertaining, advanced storylines, and refocused everyone on WrestleMania. Roll on next week.

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