Wrestling is a weekly storybuilding world. A unique blend of reality and fiction where the truth can be bent into something extravagant and where imagination can be molded into something factual. It’s comparable to stage plays. However, unlike them, professional wrestling must work towards making you accept that what you see can be real. Cirque Du Soleil doesn’t have to worry about that. It’s meant to be a pure spectacle. But with wrestling, if some small components of the act remind you that this is all a pre-determined act, you lose interest.
Enter Kyle O’Reilly. One half of NXT’s latest ‘golden goose’ feud. He and Adam Cole follow the same, exact beats as Sami Zayn/Kevin Owens & Tommaso Ciampa/Johnny Gargano before them. I can’t blame NXT, it worked immensely well twice before. Why not a third time? However, chinks appeared in the armor when the “Black & Gold brand” started hatching this proverbial golden goose. See, with Sami Zayn & Kevin Owens, NXT was able to take successful advantage of their history outside the WWE to start their feud immediately. With Johnny Gargano & Tommaso Ciampa, they took two years of developing them as a team before their split. But with Kyle and Adam, NXT tried to take elements from these two previous examples but didn’t do them to the best of their abilities.
We’ve seen the growth of The Undisputed Era in NXT for years. As most of NXT’s fanbase would know, Kyle and Adam share history in PWG, ROH & NJPW. They know Kyle O’Reilly has had great success not just with tag teams. So when Kyle, out of the blue, won a random number one contenders match to challenge Finn Balor, at least we knew they can have a great match. They did. But we start to see the glaring flaw to NXT’s Kyle O’Reilly plan. He spent years in NXT as a tag team wrestler becoming the only 3-time NXT Tag Team Champion. Again, out of the blue, he’s instantly in the main event. Before that, Kyle had not had a singles match of any kind in NXT. The brand creative conditioned you to see him purely as a tag team wrestler for 3 years. To then ask you to remember that “oh yeah, he’s a former ROH & PWG World Champion”. We steered right for years to then make a sharp turn left.
But things were still pretty good for Kyle. He had two spectacular matches with Finn Balor for the NXT Championship, then started his feud with Adam Cole. It was the highlight of NXT’s time period directly competing with AEW Dynamite. Come NXT Takeover: Stand & Deliver, both men sport new themes and new outfits. We get to see a very fierce Kyle O’Reilly, focusing on submissions, showcasing his Jujutsu & kickboxing background perfectly. Winning the match with a good ol’ Bruiser Brody style ‘King Kong Kneedrop’ with a chain wrapped around the knee. No better hardcore brawler to imitate than Bruiser Brody, right? A star seems to be made here. But, then the next time we see him, he’s wearing a bowler hat, a Hawaiian shirt, and skinny jean shorts, looking like the most typical of hipster you can picture. All he was missing was a Starbucks coffee cup with his name misspelled.
It was an absurdly sharp contrast to the man we saw at the Pay-Per-View to say the least. It wasn’t even some sort of heel turn. However, as weeks went by of the commentators coining the nickname “Cool Kyle”, it seemed someone thought he had to look cool. Or whatever that one person deemed as “cool”. For all we know, Kyle himself may have pitched this wardrobe change. However, we as NXT fans, have never seen the man dress like this or exhibit this “cool” attitude he sports now. It’s been an aspect of this would-be main event star that feels extremely forced because someone thought “he needed a character”. A Vinceism, basically. It’s such a sharp contrast between the way he dresses and the way he wrestles that you get distracted and forget the legitimate talent the man has. He’s not even the only person in the brand to have this bizarre flaw, just look at Johnny Gargano the last year. One of the best wrestlers in NXT, ever. But he’s a complete comedy guy now. Except when it’s a Takeover. Then he MUST be “Johnny Wrestling”. Is he a comedy guy? Or a great wrestler? NXT wants both, resulting in a very jarring contrast that may make for great matches once in a while and great laughs once in a while, but no consistency. Like WWE likes to preach, but never takes to heart, “there’s no music between the notes”. So, you wind up getting detached from the spectacle. Reminded that these guys are parts of a play. When they’re done playing one part, they pass to play another.
If NXT was so bent to give Kyle O’Reilly a “character”, it’s very silly to do it after he’s had matches for the NXT title and after he’s headlined a Takeover where he showcases himself completely independent from the Undisputed Era act for the first time. Kyle won his #1 Contenders match in December. He faced Finn Balor in January and February. He faced Adam Cole at the start of April. He took a trip to Urban Outfitters about 2 weeks later. That’s four months to think about Kyle O’Reilly’s presentation as an independent single star. At the fourth month, he gets a new look. That’s poor storytelling on any front. An extreme sharp curve in a story that has been told for 4 years. You can say “it’s just his clothes”, yeah. You’re right. He still has fantastic matches. But wrestling is an audio-visual medium. Especially in WWE where “looks” have been so important even when it shouldn’t be. Kyle’s is a case so glaring it impairs you from remembering how great he truly is. The sharp turn in storytelling, the sharp contrast in character during a match and not during one. It’s a tale of too many small details compounding to make a large one for Kyle O’Reilly, his growth, and the story that has been the implosion of The Undisputed Era.
And let’s be fair. If your best friend betrays you, nearly breaks your neck and you must face him in a bloodfest, what compels you to then start dressing like a really bad time-capsuled stereotype as you chase the World title as your now-rival tries to do the same?
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