Attended the evening NXT show in Chicago last night, along with Justin Phillips who made quite the trek up to get here!
The in-ring action was great (shocking, I know), but as a critical observer I was most struck by how well-balanced and structured the show was. Indie shows, by contrast, tend to be disjoined and built around each individual match trying to outshine everything else; this show had an overall build to it, from the purpose of each match to it’s position on the card to the fact (as a small example) there were no false finishes at all until the first “big” match (Ciampa vs. Zane, which was by far my match of the night).
Unfortunately the venue was terrible (TERRIBLE) and a lot of the crowd around me was very into garbage racist chants, so that impacted my experience pretty strongly. But hey, now I’ve seen NXT live, at least!
