![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/tatum_paxley_havoc.jpg\")
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Over the last few year and change, there\u2019s been a lot of hullabaloo surrounding the state of the WWE following the company\u2019s sale and eventual restructuring into being an arm of their new parent company TKO.\u00a0 Questionable decision making as far as staffing, personnel and eventual booking choices, but more primarily how they\u2019re killing the WWE with their flagrant price gauging, cost increases across the board on tickets, merch, and various other microtransactions, masterfully finding each and every nickel and dime to bilk out of wrestling fans.<\/span><\/p>\n I often said to my friends that I didn\u2019t really feel impacted by much of it, because I had little interest in going to any live events; I\u2019d been to Wrestlemania twice now, and numerous other ppvs when they were still called ppvs, and at the prices of tickets these days, I would way rather just watch from the comfort of my own home.\u00a0 Over the summer, I went to NXT\u2019s Great American Bash, solely based on the fact that it was at my favorite venue (Center Stage), but after paying $130 for almost literally the last row of the venue, only to be seated next to 1.75x of humanity, I almost want to swear off going to WWE shows outright, fearing a similar fate the next time I plunk down grown up money just to be in attendance.<\/span><\/p>\n Additionally, I would say to my friends that as long as TKO doesn\u2019t fuck around with my viewing experience, then I don\u2019t really have many qualms with how they\u2019re operating the company.\u00a0 But over the last few months, WWE PLEs have all been shifted over to ESPN++ to some new tier that I can\u2019t get access too without actually having to pay money for it, so I\u2019ve missed the last two major events.\u00a0 NXT remains on CW which I don\u2019t have access to in a streaming capacity, and I haven\u2019t seen an episode of Smackdown in years because I don\u2019t have the means to watch whatever channel they\u2019re on now.\u00a0 RAW on Netflix is still available to me, but the production of the show is really wonky and weird, and it\u2019s hard to stay engaged when they\u2019re being so flagrant with performing at 60% so that they can save their ammo for the next PLE.<\/span><\/p>\n In other words, TKO has been fucking around with the viewing experience, and it definitely sucks as a fan.\u00a0 Not knowing what shows are on what platform, if I can even watch them or not, and if and when I can, there being paywalls in order to see things as simply as storyline promo packages and performer entrances.\u00a0 Obviously, I\u2019m not going to swear off wrestling by any stretch of the imagination, but I am entitled to air out my grievances about the state of the WWE when I find their operational conduct to be annoying.<\/span><\/p>\n All that said, I wanted to chirp a little bit about how much of a breath of fresh air NXT\u2019s Halloween Havoc felt like, because it definitely felt like a positive reprieve from the suffocating corporate cloud that the main roster WWE has been feeling like over the last year.<\/span><\/p>\n It was on Peacock, which had the occasional commercial break here and there, but the show as a whole had a banger of main song that they spammed throughout the evening, and the replay showed all the promo packages, which helped a viewer like me who can\u2019t actually watch NXT to the minute, to catch up with what to expect in the show.\u00a0 The show itself was at a smaller venue in a part of Arizona that I\u2019d never even heard of, but it looked like the type of show that I\u2019d have definitely been interested in going to, because it wasn\u2019t a mega arena, and it wasn\u2019t in a clusterfuck of a place like Atlanta, and looked like a fun place to watch wrestling.<\/span><\/p>\n And of course, the matches were all pretty entertaining.\u00a0 Call me crazy, but sometimes some matches don\u2019t really have to have a convoluted storyline behind them, and you can really just take a bunch of entertaining workers and throw them in a match together to great effect, and that\u2019s how I felt with the opening match of Je\u2019Von Evans and Leon Slater vs. La Parka* and Mr. Iguana.\u00a0 No real story, just an NXT guy teamed with a TNA guy against two AAA guys, and they tore the house down to open the show.<\/span><\/p>\n *What\u2019s funny is that on this exact date, there was a Lucha show in Atlanta that advertised La Parka on the card, so I\u2019m amused by the fact that one of these shows got the actual current La Parka, while the other got an imposter, or they\u2019re up to like La Parka IV or V at this point, like the Villanos, but whomever NXT had that night was wayyyy too talented of a La Parka than what fans of his from WCW might have remembered.\u00a0 Motherfucker was doing picture perfect Asai moonsaults out of the ring and press slams into gutbusters, a far cry from the dumpy fat luchador in WCW that swung a chair and strutted his way to the bank.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Mariah May<\/span> Blake Monroe got to flex a little bit of her actual wrestling skill in her win against Zaria for the women\u2019s North American title, and I\u2019m pleased that she\u2019s allowed to do some of the work that elevated her so much in AEW, and I really enjoyed Ethan Page\u2019s match against El Hijo de Dr. Wagner, and despite being the heel, Vic Joseph\u2019s commentary about how much of a fighting champion Page has been, it\u2019s hard to not respect the work the man puts into the business.\u00a0 But the match had some really brutal spots, and it was enjoyable from start to finish.<\/span><\/p>\n The Hardy Boyz vs. Darkstate was an entertaining disaster, even if I don\u2019t believe in all at the long-term viability of Darkstate.\u00a0 They\u2019re like a Temu-grade Shield, with less charisma, but given the fact that the Hardyz are still TNA guys, it seemed likely that they were going to have give those NXT blets back sooner rather than later.<\/span><\/p>\n Honestly, it\u2019s not that the Ricky Saints vs. Trick Williams match was necessarily bad, it\u2019s just that other matches on the card were more entertaining and compelling, that theirs just kind of didn\u2019t stand out in comparison.\u00a0 Both are talented workers, but in the context of the evening their fairly vanilla wrestling match just wasn\u2019t as exciting as all of the matches that preceded it.\u00a0 Plus, the finish seemed really wonky and almost rushed, and when it was over, I was just kind of like, that\u2019s it?<\/span><\/p>\n But let\u2019s really talk about Tatum Paxley\u2019s ascension to the top of the mountain, beating Jacy Jayne for the NXT Women\u2019s championship.\u00a0 Firstly, I do want to give my flowers to Jayne for a respectable run with the top prize; I know her win was a surprise, considering she beat the aura-filled Stephanie Vaquer, but I didn\u2019t hate it, because she was a solid hand that was easily the most talented worker of Toxic Attraction, and I always like seeing hard workers get rewarded with solid pushes.<\/span><\/p>\n However that being said, the same could very easily be said about Tatum Paxley, whom I get some Liv Morgan-like, love of the game vibes from, and like Jayne, her hard work has been noticeable and palpable over the course of the last 12+ months, and I\u2019m pleased to see her get this honor of getting to be the women\u2019s champion.\u00a0 I think she\u2019s more athletic than Liv ever has been and works pretty cleanly in spite of her general level of experience, but her character work and portrayal of the weird but talented goth girl seems to have captured the audience, and I\u2019d be lying if I didn\u2019t stop and let the look linger on her; she\u2019s cute as hell.<\/span><\/p>\n But when she won the title, I definitely got those similar vibes to her championship that I felt when Liv won the women\u2019s title for the first time, or when Iyo won the World championship the last time; it was a sense of satisfaction that a hard worker was getting their justly reward.<\/span><\/p>\n Overall, Halloween Havoc was a breath of fresh air of how good the WWE is capable of operating in a manner that I wish were the norm all throughout the company, and not just in NXT.\u00a0 It kind of reminds me of that period between 2016-2017 where NXT was just firing on all cylinders so well that it was clear that they were the best brand in the company.\u00a0 Look forward to the next NXT event, that is until they\u2019re spontaneously sold off to start showing on like Tubi or Fubo or some other rando platform.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the last few year and change, there\u2019s been a lot of hullabaloo surrounding the state of the WWE following the company\u2019s sale and eventual restructuring into being an arm of their new parent company TKO.\u00a0 Questionable decision making as far as staffing, personnel and eventual booking choices, but more primarily how they\u2019re killing the … Continue reading Praise for NXT Halloween Havoc<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[151,79,100,45,191,22,129,83,69,190,54,55],"class_list":["post-50922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-blets","tag-cashmoney","tag-comparison","tag-fail","tag-greed","tag-mexicans","tag-nostalgia","tag-observations","tag-television","tag-white-people","tag-wrestling","tag-wwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50924,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50922\/revisions\/50924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}