WWE NXT Weekly Rankings & Evaluation
By George Chiverton, PWTorch specialist

March 28, 2012 - Week 56

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

Comments: For a man who's seen relatively little ring time recently, Derrick delivered a perfectly decent match against Hunico this week. FCW may be a sinking ship (or not), but these two have clearly benefitted from the ring time together and despite both being wrestling benchwarmers for their respective shows, were the best bit of NXT this week. Credit to both for that. Bateman in particular impressed me with some nasty bumps that looked great without making me uncomfortable; a sign of propper in-ring talent.

***

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

Comments: Titus really needs to sort his character out. This week, he left me confused and disinterested, but his in-ring work was passable. There is very little else to say.

***

Rookie: Darren Young
This Week's Performance: 6
Gimmick: 2
Last Week's Rank: #3
Rank: #3

Comments: Occasionally, I lose perspective on how "unique" WWE's talent is in terms of their DNA and muscle mass. For instance, I remember a Kane-Edge Falls Count Anywhere match from Smackdown a while ago where they brawled to backstage, and Edge was a clear foot taller than anyone buying popcorn. Edge wasn't even billed as particularly tall, but next to the mere mortals of the Universe, he was a giant.

Now, Darren, despite being next to the ever-imposing Titus, wore "people clothes" in this week's episode and looked utterly hilarious in the process. His pectorials are ridiculously huge. Like, if you've ever messed around on the create-a-wrestler mode of any of the WWE games, you may be able to picture what Darren looked like, but, otherwise, just go watch. It was slightly scary, but otherwise hilarious.

***

Other Comments: Vince McMahon is the king of all trolls. Without putting a single hashtag or Twitter reference on-screen he managed to dominate Twitter Sunday night in just 18 seconds. Poor D-Bryan. On the other hand, Sheamus is getting booed, the Raw crowd was sensational (Yes! Yes! Yes! Si! Si! Si!), and Sheamus may struggle to get over as Champion with Del Rio ultimately being the star-maker or breaker with his heel performance over on Smackdown.

There is very little else I want to say about Mania because, frankly, Raw introduced and reintroduced stars to make it a distant memory.

Lesnar, oh, Brock Lesnar. It was so perfectly edited. Upon his entrance, every muscular taunt performed was seemingly mimicked by a crazed fan in the audience. If only they'd caught the set-up for the F5 and if Cena were not wearing his awful new green t-shirt (yes, I do fashion and that's just fine), it would have been perfect. But, still what a great asset to have back. All hail the former next big thing.

Then, there was Giant Bernard's return (I'll call him Tensai when I'm used to it). Although his entrance attire is highly questionable, I think that was the perfect debut for any Superstar. Sure, it was a simple squash match, but the match lasted long enough to really get a sense of his methodical style as well as his assets of speed, strength, and heelish meaness. Cole and King in particular did a really good job putting him over, so for all our criticism they should be praised for that. My favorite moment of the match was the delayed butterfly suplex, as not only was the move beautifully executed (which is no easy feat), but for a split-second the hot Miami crowd was seemingly turned Japanese. It was totally surreal but showed how great a hot crowd can be for WWE. A budding feud with Tatsu will hopefully deliver well.

Furthermore, Brodus Clay seemingly being involved in a feud, and a feud with the bump-tacular Dolph Ziggler, has also really cheered me up. That headbutt, followed by that bump was just great and a Santino/Clay tag team could be good fun. No complaints there.

Punk-Jericho should be better at Extreme Rules than it was at Mania for the pure reason of time. If ever there was evidence for the movement of Elimination Chamber, it was this past Monday where the feud got hotter than it ever has been. Really great work from Jericho and really good selling from Punk made the entire segment stand out on a quality edition of Raw.

Finally, seeing Mark Henry re-established would be great for everyone as confirmed by his match with Punk. Three stars on Raw? Need I say more?

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