NXT New Year’s Evil & AEW Dynamite: Fight for the Fallen Review

Keeping up with the reviews, sort of (laughs) NXT New Year’s Evil happened on Tuesday and AEW Dynamite on Wednesday. But here are my likes and dislikes from both shows for this week’s shows.

NXT (New Year’s Evil) 1/7/2025

Likes
Roxanne Perez vs. Guila was an excellent opening match, both ladies are certainly going to be the faces of this next era of Women’s wrestling in WWE. The match was fine with Guila winning in a convincing fashion, hopefully this will be similar to Asuka’s reigns in NXT while Roxanne Perez hopefully is main roster bound very soon.

Stephanie Vaquer becoming the number one contender for the NXT Women’s North American title means my prediction for her being NXT champion by the end of 2025 is off to good start, especially if she wins the women’s North American title soon.

The main event for NXT championship was good especially with Oba Femi finally becoming champion and the Ruler of NXT finally. The end of the match certainly leaves the door open for a rematch between them, but it has been time for Femi to be the NXT no disrespect to Trick Williams who could be heading to main roster this year, just hope it is not rushed.

Dislikes
While the team of Tatum Paxley, Gigi Dolin, and Shotzi makes sense and fits just something about Shotzi brings it down, as well as feels like another “Put them together” situation that is forced. Also, this Eddy Thorpe situation is dying out fast for me anyway, especially Oba Femi as the new champion I can’t see Thorpe being a legit threat or challenger to the Ruler of NXT right now.

The Rock’s appearance on NXT was cool but again felt like a clunky hijacking. Interacting with Ethan Page when he was in Ava Raine’s office was ok because the father/daughter moment of course, but a bit confusing again raising the question of what the plan with him is and how he is presented going forward this year as far as will he be the People’s champion or the evil Final Boss because being both is not going to work.

AEW Dynamite (Fight for the Fallen) 1/8/2025

Likes

Right away AEW did something good here with the women’s triple threat between Willow Nightingale, Kris Statlander, and Toni Storm. All three women should be serious contenders for both the women’s titles delivering on that night, Statlander is on a roll and no I’m not being bias, and the Toni Storm/Mariah May rematch feels like a match for All-In Texas.

For me a match worth acknowledging is Bobby Lashley vs. Mark Briscoe, there’s only so many times you can be positive about a match involving Will Ospreay until there’s a wrinkle or something in the matches not being a hater, but we are hitting “Copy and Paste” territory. Back to Briscoe and Lashley felt a solid pro wrestling match that’s a nice change of paste on AEW TV. Of course, this could be a main event match in AEW and hopefully can be someday, nothing wrong with good old fashion scrap.

Dislikes

2025 in AEW needs to be time to do away certain styles of matches they tend to fall back on, and these Casino Gauntlet, Royale, etc matches are put to bed! While I am happy that Hobbs won and will challenge Moxneto for the championship, these multi person and multi team chaotic matches have to be scaled back or go away completely because its overkill.

I don’t like to do this, but MJF was a part of the segment that was not good. His in-ring confrontation with Jeff Jarrett was deflating, if this feud leads to Jarrett going through a roadblock of matches before facing Friedman will be annoyingly repetitive and becomes a reoccurring theme with MJF which will be a disaster and disservice to his star power, really wished he left for WWF or even NXT last year because this doesn’t look promising.

Death Riders vs. Rated FTR is clearly the A-story but this is already a dud and hasn’t even started yet. Anything with Moxley and the Death Riders is just awful and a word that seems to fit the dislikes here with REPETITIVE. As much as I want to believe this could be salvageable and meaningful, chances are this will be a letdown and a continue reminder that maybe, just maybe the boogeyman named McMahon may have been right about letting certain stars have that form of freedom.