I was thinking about my teeth all day today. You may recall a few weeks ago I mentioned that my back teeth on the bottom half of the right side were killing me… Well, it’s gotten worse, probably because of some trauma on that part of my jaw (let’s just say, for the sake of argument, I was punched there about a dozen times). So now, I’m starting to think whatever the problem is, it’s abscessed: there’s some serious pain going on, but it’s oddly below my jaw line. Like, there isn’t any swelling and you can’t see any damage, but if I press underneath my jaw line, it feels like I’m being stabbed. 
  

I’m trying to control the pain, but I can’t. Orajel isn’t working, Tylenol barely works… about the only time I’m free of the pain is immediately upon waking up, though it starts up within a half-hour. I’m going to try to control the pain now by having liquid meals from here on out for a week or so. I don’t mean a “liquid lunch” (which, honestly, may help too, with my teeth AND my other issues), but just soup and so forth. I’ve noticed bread, especially, makes my teeth just ache, whether I’m chewing on that side or not.

All right, enough of teeth issues. While I’m basically sticking to my All You Need to Know formula, I’m going to get into slightly more detail about what all the girls are doing, especially in the ring, than I normally would. Given that I’m going to pretend this is a serious competition and want to address who actually would make a valuable diva for WWE (and not just by body type), I’m going to be the Internet wanker asshole that WWE openly hates and we at OO try to ignore. I’m not going to have a stopwatch or anything, but matches that are mediocre won’t get just a “Decent but nothing special” from me, as I’m going to back up my analysis. Hopefully that doesn’t make this too long to read.

Pre-Segment 1: Naturally we’ve got a new song, a generic piece of crap that probably belongs in a dance club. Matt Striker is in the ring, and introduces the pro/rookie pairs… First up is Kelly Kelly with Naomi, who apparently has “LA Laker cheerleader” as her primary résumé item. Second up are the Bella Twins with Jamie Keys, who was the ring announcer for NXT Seasons 1 and 2. Third up is Primo with AJ, the five-foot-nothing dark haired perky chick, who apparently is a writer and nerd. Fourth up is Alicia Fox with Maxine, who seems to have a snobbish bitch gimmick, making her a good teammate to Alicia. Fifth up is Goldust with Aksana, who was Miss Fitness International and looks strikingly like Trish Stratus.

Now, sixth up is Vickie Guerrero. You may or may not know that Vickie’s rookie was supposed to be the 6’9” Aloisia (also known as Isis the Amazon). Off-camera, Aloisia was fired, and there haven’t been any extremely clear reasons why. Aloisia herself, on her official website, says that she doesn’t know why she was removed from NXT, but that it might have to do with some (rather shitty) “suggestive” pictures. As far as I’m aware, she’s supposed to be still under contract to WWE and just stuck in FCW, but yet she lightly insults WWE in that blog post on her site, and we all know WWE overreacts to criticism from its employees (see: Carlito), so who the hell knows.

Anyway, as far as on-camera goes, Vickie fired Aloisia for no goddamn reason other than “being bigger than me.” So instead, her rookie is Kaitlyn, who has a wonderful rack and... uh… that’s about it. Well, just on résumés, I’m forced to give Aksana the nod for now since she’s got the only remotely athletic background. And for cuteness, I’ve got to give it to AJ. But we all know I like dark-haired women.

Segment 1: Okay, so now, in the ring, all the rookies get to put themselves over for 30 seconds. Kaitlyn goes first, who says she’s the bad girl of the neighborhood: “I’m the girl who gave you first kiss, then gave you a wedgie two seconds later.” Heh. She wants to capture our hearts too.

Matt wants to get on to the next one, but Vickie immediately stops the proceedings and says that Kaitlyn’s efforts sucked, and forces her to do it again. So Kaitlyn takes the mic, and just says that she’s so totally excited to have Vickie as her pro, and oh, by the way, she’s going to give us all wedgies. The crowd is absolutely dead for that last bit, but Vickie is pleased, since she probably stopped paying attention after her name was stated.

Second up is Aksana, who speaks in broken English and refers to herself in the third-person, then randomly breaks into Russian or whatever the fuck she’s speaking. She puts over Goldust, even blowing him a kiss, which I think is about on par with giving a pedophile a picture of your naked ten-year-old son, but whatever. Aksana’s cute—and like I said, a cross between Trish and Maryse, which probably makes her Rick’s eye candy favorite [Ed. Note: Guess again. You are defiling Trish's good name, too. She's Canadian. Not foreign. Like those other two bleached-white lab creations.] —but doesn’t really have a whole hell of a lot of personality. At least not in this promo.

Third up is Maxine, who opens by saying she didn’t understand what the fuck Aksana said. Then Maxine starts to talk that she has three senses: business sense, street sense, and common sense. The problem is, she’s talking Randy Orton speed, and she gets What?’ed to death. She goes on that she’s so totally awesome because it’s rare that anyone has any one of those senses let alone all three, and the only “position” for her is on top. Feisty… and can’t talk worth a shit.

Fourth up is AJ, who immediately breaks into an honest-to-God shit-eating grin as she waves to the crowd and looks at Striker. She turns to Maxine and opens that someone really needs to hug her… which Alicia is only too happy to do immediately, so OMG LESBIAN SEX FOR 12-YEAR OLDS~! or something. AJ then goes on that she is now living the dream because she’s always wanted to be a diva, and has busted ass to get here. She has goals too, now that she’s within WWE, including “a WWE action figure with exaggerated body measurements,” which I assume is not referring to Tazz’s old action figure. Anyway, she’s clearly speaking off-the-cuff and isn’t doing a great job of it, even getting the shit booed out of her at the end of the monologue. Not helping was ridiculously exaggerated body and facial movements, so it was like her words were under-scripted and her body language was over-scripted. Strange… but she has a ton of energy (which is more than I can say for Maxine), and she looks like Sarah Silverman. She’s still my favorite so far.

Fifth up is Jamie, who is sporting some rocking biceps, and I’m wonder how new those are. I’m not saying she had “bicep implants” or anything, but she wasn’t on screen long enough as an announcer for me to figure out her body type or anything, so I’m not sure if she’s always had those muscles or just busted ass getting in shape for NXT. Either way, she knows how to talk, and is certainly the most confident talker of the five so far, though her words aren’t exactly anything beyond generic self putting over. She also says she’s so totally hot (which Rick and I completely disagree with each other on) [Ed Note: You've got me dead to rights on this one, so long as I'm in the "she's right" column. Still if The Me is getting to rank purely on shallow/surface hotness, the rankings are: #1 Kaitlynn, #2-5 Everybody Else, #6 Naomi. Kaitlynn is smoking, while Naomi is too tall, has no ass, and sports the wang kryptonite that is BANGS. Oddly, Naomi clearly "won" the night in terms of talent, and my non-shallow self noticed that, too.] , and she’s looking forward to the hard work and dedication it takes to win this competition.

Finally up is Naomi, who immediately gets a cheap pop by saying hi to the arena before even speaking her name. She’s got a lot of energy and confidence in speaking as well, and uses it to say that she’s not here to blather about her accomplishments. She says that actions speak louder than words, and she’s going to show us that it will be her actions that will get her the win. Sadly, this concludes her speech; I was hoping after those words she’d turn and smack Maxine in the face with the mic or something, but no joy there.

Okay, so if we assume this was the first test (which it was not officially), I’d have to give the win to Naomi. She had confidence in her words, had the energy, made sense, and didn’t act like a moron. Kaitlyn was decent, but once Vickie demanded the do-over, she was clearly a little shaken; she wasn’t able to roll with the unexpected as well as I’d hope. Maxine was most worthless as a talker, with AJ right behind. Hopefully we’ll see a better side of them after the commercial.

Segment 2: As we come back from commercial, all the rookies are in the ring, but the pros are gone. Striker lays out that the first elimination is in four weeks, but whoever wins the most diva challenges will be immune. And this is our first official diva challenge: a… dance off? Oh dear god, I’m suddenly regretting volunteering to be the NXT recapper.

Kaitlyn is way overly excited about this, but she’s not up first: Naomi is. But before we get started, Striker calls for Cole to come up and be the dance partner… and Cole is prepared, because he’s wearing white ballerina shoes, red leg warmers, and a black fedora. God help us all.

Naomi starts off with a… well, with an axe kick. It doesn’t take long before Naomi can’t stand Cole’s white dude imitation of a black dude’s imitation of a white dude’s imitation of another white dude, so she completely ignores him, finishing the dance by doing a left/right split, laying on her side, and kicking her disproportionately long leg over her head. I point that out because that means Naomi is clearly highly flexible, and as we all know from My Melina, that can be an asset in the ring.

Second up is Jaime, who clearly doesn’t know any dance moves other than three-inch squats and random arm pumps. After that, Striker dismisses Cole from the ring, then calls up Tony Chimel as the next dance partner. Cole donates his fedora, but luckily Chimel isn’t wearing anything else that’s stupid. AJ is up next and opens up by being aggressive with Tony’s tie, which certainly speaks to her energy, though she dances for about five seconds before giving Tony the floor.

Fourth up is Maxine, who does the most G-rated strip tease ever with her Demi Moore-like suspenders. Maxine demonstrates some decent balance but that’s about all. Tony is ejected, and Josh Mathews is called up to be the dance partner. Aksana is the fifth diva to dance, and despite the retarded dance club music, they start having a slow dance, which Josh sucks at leading. This reminds me of my dance with you-know-who two years ago at my best friend’s wedding… ah, bittersweet memories.

Last up is Kaitlyn, who does the robot. Christ.

My call here is Naomi, again… the crowd, who gets to judge, is split about 55/45 Naomi to AJ; everyone else gets the shit booed out of them. Striker announces that Naomi wins, and I smile a little.

Segment 3 [Tag Match]: Naomi & Kelly Kelly defeat Maxine & Alicia Fox by pin. Match was decent, with Naomi proving that she’s got some in-ring talent, and Maxine wasting space. Alicia was a decent playing partner for Naomi, though Naomi was slightly overselling most of the moves. K2 didn’t get much in-ring action, but no one seemed to care.

Naomi had a lot of in-ring energy, which certainly bodes well. One unique spot she had early was a counter to an Irish Whip. As Naomi was thrown to the ropes, she held on to Alicia’s wrist, then scaled the ropes in the middle until she wound up on the top rope for a split-second. From there, she did an absurdly high angle jump that resulted in her getting over and behind Alicia, turning it into a sunset flip. Naomi’s momentum carried her a bit forward until she wasn’t just doing the sitting pin, she was doing a kneeling pin with 90% of her body weight on Alicia’s rolled up legs, which looks absolutely awesome.

Later, Naomi had a neat counter. As Alicia had her in a chinlock, Naomi “powered out” to a standing position. Alicia still had a hold, but then Naomi took a page out of My Melina’s Flexibility Playbook and did a left/right split to turn the chinlock into a counter-jawbreaker.

Maxine tried to have her own unique spot to, when Naomi was on her ass in the corner. Maxine backed up a few steps and went for a Bronco Buster-like move, jumping and sitting on Naomi’s thighs while gripping her head in a front face lock. It looked bizarre and awkward, and the crowd didn’t buy it.

Soon after, Maxine tried to do something, and Naomi countered into a rather extreme small package that resulted in Naomi being upside-down. Alicia got in the ring and tried to break it up by, I guess, spanking Naomi’s ass. Naomi no-sold that, and the ref seemed to hesitate, but wound up calling for the bell.

After the match, we had a Pier Four Brawl… and there was an odd counter, with Maxine trying yet another move, and Naomi countering with a suplex and float-over. The ref slid into position and promptly informed them that, uh, the match is over. Huh, so I guess the Ass Spank of Doom was supposed to have broken up the pin attempt, but Naomi accidentally no-sold it. The commentators blamed the mistake on Tony Chimel, who so totally should have made his call immediately after the bell, but was too busy napping. And probably having wet dreams about AJ, I’m sure.

Segment 4: Now we’ve got a retarded physical challenge for our rookies. The six of them are lined up at the top of the ramp and are about to play a combination of musical chairs and capture the flag: at the foot of the ramp is a little pole with five flags, but of course we have six divas. I’m sure you can see where this is heading.

Jamie is out for the first part of this. The second pole is in the crowd over the barricade, and it has only four flags. AJ is out from this one; Naomi got the first flag despite Maxine blatantly jumping the gun.

The next pole has three flags, and Aksana is tossed. The next one has two flags, and is over the barricade back at ringside. Kaitlyn is tossed, despite Maxine slipping and busting her ass on the concrete.

The final pole is in the ring, and it’s snagged by Naomi. Naomi actually grabbed the first flag at each pole, and showed some crazy ups in the process. That’s Ebonics for “high jumps”!

After all that, Naomi gets a few seconds to put herself over, and she points out that she’s got better athleticism than any of the other rookies, and she hopes to keep going up. After seeing her in-ring and in that challenge, I’m inclined to agree.

God, I can’t even make it through NXT with my teeth like this… another dose of Orajel and three Tylenol later, I find myself hoping I can sleep tonight. Maybe I need a shot or two of Jack too…

Cut Scene: We get a vignette of Jamie, who tells us about her biceps, interposed with some shots of her from FCW and as a ring announcer. Clearly, she had the muscles long before NXT (or even WWE in general, it seems). She says she wants to model herself after Trish Stratus, and wants to be a role model. “I’m Jamie, I’m strong, I’m sexy, and I’m unstoppable.” Well done.

Pre-Segment 5: AJ hits the ring with Primo, and AJ certainly has the best body. And then Josh Mathews has to throw in my face the fact that AJ is from New Jersey. Of course she does. Why not? Why the fuck should she not be from New Jersey, since I like her? I swear, Fate hates me. [Ed. Note: Dude, nobody out there has any clue what you're talking about. Hell, I don't even think *I* know for sure what you're talking about. The cosmos/fate/god/karma is NOT out to get you, man. They got other things to worry about, like making sure al Queda suicide bombs those dumb-fucks in Florida on Saturday, so that American may stand up and cheer for their stupid people dying while killing OUR stupid people. But just to be on the safe side: if you ARE talking about what I think you're talking about, do NOT do any research into finding out what "A.J." stands for. Ahem.]

Segment 5 [Mixed Tag Match]: AJ & Primo defeat Aksana & Goldust by pin. Well below average, almost into train wreck territory, but not quite.

The guys started things off but basically had one exchange before tagging out since, you know, they’re not the point here. AJ and Aksana both had good energy in the ring, AJ faring better in that department, but AJ’s bounciness wound up working against them. I’m honestly not sure if AJ was overselling, if Aksana wasn’t stiff enough, or a combination of both: but either way, it looked awkward. Every exchange had Aksana pulling her punch, as it were, but AJ sold it like a power shot. For example, Aksana threw a forearm, but stopped halfway through it (like she didn’t follow through). AJ sold it by whipping her head back and falling on her ass. It just didn’t gel, and the crowd was dead.

Also, Aksana did one spot that looked a little dangerous. AJ was on her back in the middle of the ring, so Aksana hit the ropes and did a running leg drop. But, she aimed too high, and nearly smashed AJ’s nose with her left thigh, except that AJ turned her head at the last instant. Still looked awful though.

The end spot saw AJ bounce off the ropes and jump ass-first against Aksana, who caught her. However, their balance was off, and AJ kinda fell forward, catching herself with her hands. They tried to fix it, but it really just looked like Aksana gave AJ the Heimlich maneuver, so AJ wiggled out and kicked Aksana in the stomach as they reset.

The crowd half-heartedly booed this, then increased the booing as they realized the girls were going for the exact same spot. It looked a bit better was still wasn’t smooth, with AJ smacking her forehead against the canvas this time. However, she got her arms in the proper position and Aksana timed the lift right, lifting AJ in the air. However, she let go, sending AJ forward and landing on her ass, with Aksana slamming her own face into the mat. So what was supposed to happen was a high angle face buster countered into a DDT, but it just came across stupid. Again, the crowd booed, but AJ makes the pin anyway.

Post-Segment 5: “Excuse me!” Vickie comes storming out of the back, dragging Kaitlyn along by her arm. Kaitlyn looks scared out of her mind, but the look fits. Actually, she had that look back in the first segment after Vickie interrupted her… I’m wondering how much it’s planned, exactly. Either way, it’s the perfect expression: she looks like a toddler getting led around by her completely insane mother, unsure whether she’s going to the pet store to buy a puppy or set one on fire. With Vickie, you never know.

Vickie says that she’s here to force Kaitlyn to make her introduction again. Primo isn’t happy about AJ’s moment, her first win, getting disrupted. Vickie ignores him and wants Kaitlyn to speak, but then AJ steals the mic and tells Vickie to go away. Vickie isn’t going to take that shit, so she tells Kaitlyn to “sic her.” Heh.

Kaitlyn still looks concerned, but goes ahead and grabs AJ’s hair and readies a reverse DDT. AJ wiggles out and reverses, shoving Kaitlyn from the back, who basically winds up Spearing Vickie. Everyone is happy, except for Vickie, who throws a tantrum. Kaitlyn runs after her, trying to apologize, but to no avail. Damn, what a rack.

Final Thoughts: Not a bad opening episode. We saw four of the six girls in match, heard all of them talk, and we’ve already got an early feud going between AJ and Vickie, and Vickie and Kaitlyn, and probably by extension AJ and Kaitlyn. Could be worse.

I’m talked/typed out here, so we’ll see how next week’s episode goes. I’m not going to give my show rating for NXT since it’s so unique, but I will give my list of my diva picks at the end of every week. It’ll be a bit tough this week because we only saw four girls in matches, but that will stop mattering next week. To wit…

Pyro’s Picks: