WWE NXT Heatwave 2024: 3 Things We Hated And 3 Things We Loved

Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s review of "WWE NXT" Heatwave, a former "NXT" TV special that graduated this year into a full-on premium live event! And what an event it was — set foot on social media after Sunday's event (if you dare) and you will likely find many people comparing Heatwave positively to Money in the Bank the night before, or even saying it was WWE's best PLE of the year. Here at WINC, we're not sure we'd go that far — we largely agreed the event started out a big rocky before really turning things on by the end, complete with a title change that almost nobody saw coming. Did we love some parts of it? Absolutely. Did we also hate parts of it? Obviously, or we wouldn't be here, writing this column about our favorite and least favorite parts of the show.

We're basically talking about all five matches in this one, so it's more comprehensive than usual, but you should still check out our Heatwave results page for any further information you might require. With that said, here are three things we hated and three things we loved about "WWE NXT" Heatwave 2024!

Oba Femi is the closest thing WWE has had to "The Guy" in a very long time. A massive, dominant presence who has captivated fans by conquering a corner of "WWE NXT" programming. Wes Lee is a plucky underdog who wrestles like Matt Sydal. The two of them on their own are perfectly fine but they are at a point in their career where they need to stay the hell away from each other.

Femi took way too long to crush the diminutive Lee, who can't seem to get a truly substantial win since returning from injury (and losing to Femi didn't help matters). It was like a match scientifically designed to undercut what works about both men. Long in the tooth and lukewarm at best, this is the kind of performance neither guy should be turning in if either of them are ever going to be worth anything on WWE's main roster.

Lee would probably be a better fit for "WWE Speed," or maybe even an alliance with the insanely-fast Axiom and Nathan Frazer. It just feels like he's dangerously close to becoming "a guy" with the way he's had to play little brother to giants like Oba Femi or Joe Coffey. Femi should probably be crushing people's heads in 30 seconds flat. Competition doesn't benefit everyone, especially when you're stuck in the midcard of a developmental league. Neither man is dead, far from it, but it's still on "NXT" creative for putting them in such a heatless, lifeless position.

Written by Ross Berman

The women's North American title match between Kelani Jordan and Sol Ruca worked well in many respects. The athleticism on display was remarkable, their chemistry was good, and there were big spots aplenty. For two women who signed with WWE in 2022 having zero previous wrestling experience, it was a really strong showing (though Ruca remains a level below Jordan at this juncture).

The problem for me (as usual) was that there wasn't a ton of meaning behind the work. The story going in was basically just that they're friends, which is why Jordan offered Ruca the first shot at her new championship. Friends entering the ring can work as a set-up for a story that is then told in the ring, but that means the relationship has to clearly change somehow over the course of the match. I know not everyone loved MJF vs. Adam Cole in Wembley Stadium last year, but that match is the perfect example of what I'm talking about — you can tell the match is about their friendship because at some point during the match (several points, actually) the nature of their friendship changes.

Sadly, there was nothing really like that here. I can see this match and the result serving as a catalyst for a story about Jordan and Ruca's relationship, but that wasn't what the match was about — the match, as far as I could tell, was about gymnastics. It was telling when former WWE star Ricochet compared this match to his famous/infamous bout with Will Ospreay in 2016 — I agree with the comparison, but coming from me, it wouldn't be a compliment.

I appreciate the showcase that was put on here, and I understand the inclination to book Jordan in a face vs. face spotfest for her first defense rather than a complex psychological thing, seeing as literally everyone knew Jordan was winning. But this contest was desperately lacking some kind of emotion, the moment where Jordan and/or Ruca start caring more about being champion than about being a good friend. Hopefully the Jordan/Ruca match I wanted to see is coming down the road; this one was a little light on anger and hatred for my tastes.

Written by Miles Schneiderman

I will be among the first to admit that I really enjoyed the in-ring aspect of the NXT Tag Team Championship match that pit the champions, Axiom and Nathan Frazer, against Andre Chase and Duke Hudson. It was a wonderfully enjoyable match, and I feel as though I haven't said that about Chase U in awhile, even though I love their gimmick overall. I love Axiom and Frazer as a tag team, their super speediness and high-flying action that is constantly bumped up to an 11 just works for me, but, WWE has decided to put a lot of dissension in their storyline as champions and as a team, so of course, we all know they're going to break up. So, why wasn't that tonight? I flipped the Heatwave preshow on as I was working on other things this evening, and they played up the fact that Frazer was "late" to getting to the arena, and Axiom was getting prepared to defend the championships by himself. This plays further in to the story "NXT" has been telling, where Frazer seems to be more concerned with other things, such as a Heritage Cup match against Tony D'Angelo and a WWE Speed match on X. Axiom was getting more and more frustrated with him.

Sunday night, with Frazer not showing up until the last possible second before the show started, then asking his partner "what the game plan was" was nothing compared to Frazer hitting Axiom numerous times, albeit accidentally, during the match. I know if I was Axiom at that point and I was already upset with my tag team partner, I wouldn't have taken that as likely. How many times have we seen tag partners get in each others faces during matches when that happens? All the time. So, again, I ask, why not here? I think a better story to tell with all the dissension between the pair of late would be for Axiom to get wildly upset at Frazer, as he already appears to be at his breaking point, and his frustration cost them the championships. I'm not sure there's a better tag team in "NXT" right now that are set for a tag team championship run like Chase and Hudson.

At this point of the night, I was convinced the tag team championships were the only titles that were going to change hands at Heatwave. When they didn't, I thought we were going to go the whole night without a title change, which in my humble opinion, was going to really suck, even though plenty of matches, such as Roxanne Perez versus Lola Vice, were incredible. I can't help it, I expect titles to change hands during premium live events, and the Axiom and Frazer storyline was ripe for them to drop the titles. This of course will lead into the team having further problems on Tuesday's episode of "NXT," but we were doing a whole special premium live event here that would have been a much better place for them to drop the tag team gold, then officially break up or start a feud between the pair on Tuesday. Now, we have to wait even longer for them to lose the titles and move forward in the story. With The Great American Bash being announced for just a Tuesday special of "NXT" tonight and there seemingly not being another "NXT" premium live event during SummerSlam weekend, I think WWE dropped the ball with not crowning new tag team champions here tonight.

Written by Daisy Ruth

WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross used to say that announcers should talk in sound bites, which led to a generation and a half of professional wrestling broadcasters who talk in robotic sentence fragments, each one designed to be carefully spliced into a montage for a PPV or played in a documentary years down the line. To put it bluntly, it's why everyone on WWE television sounds the same. There's one refreshing change of pace, however, and that's Booker T.

Booker T doesn't talk in clean sound bites. He's too reactionary for that. While Vic Joseph is tidily explaining something that happened 10 seconds ago, Booker is reacting to something happening now, in the moment. He will cut himself off to yell "WOW!" or "OH YEAH MAN!" when something crazy happens. It feels like you're watching the match with him because sometimes he will be borderline incoherent, evoking the emotion of the moment as opposed to some kind of sanitized clip. Booker reacts in a genuine way, an earnest way, that most wrestling announcers have beaten out of themselves lest they come off as anything other than an "esteemed broadcaster." I've actually met some of those guys, and they usually take themselves too seriously.

Give me a fan of '90s stand-up who can't stop paying homage to the great Texas comedian Shuckey Duckey. Give me a guy who essentially ad-libs over his announcing partner's clean lines of dialogue. Give me someone who actually sounds like they're engaging with what's happening in the ring instead of someone who sounds like they got the script ahead of time. I might be in the minority but damned if I don't look forward to Booker T's commentary every week, and at "NXT" Heatwave, he was in rare form, genuinely juicing up some lackluster at worst, predictable at best matches with his wild-eyed commentary stylings.

Written by Ross Berman

Lola Vice is amongst the most popular women on the "WWE NXT" roster, but she is still relatively fresh to world of professional wrestling in general. Certainly not to take anything away from her own performance tonight, but it's a testament to the unmitigated talent possessed by Roxanne Perez (who is still only 22!) that Sunday night was her best outing in a year of great matches against the likes of Natalya and Shayna Baszler. The Heatwave bout played to Vice's strengths — a slobberknocker, as Jim Ross would put it. Perez was working a more stand-up offensive style, and in a surprisingly credible way considering her stature. And in perhaps the best possible outcome for a title bout, both the champion and the challenger came off looking golden.

Contemporary wrestling has a really bad relationship with the protection of finishers, with seemingly every wrestler up and down the card capable of powering out of the supposed killing blow. While this match had that in buckets, with Vice kicking out of five separate Pop-Roxx — one on the announce table — it felt like it was the right time and the right person to be doing it. Even in a predictable loss against a champion seemingly destined to defend against Giulia, Vice came off as eminently credible, to the point that fans started wondering "Wait, is she actually going to do this?" In other words, what wrestling should be. We know the result is preordained, we know there are bigger plans at play, and we know that it truly doesn't matter about the performance you put out in a simulated fight — to an extent. But there is a way of keeping fans in the moment, and that was what was on full display Sunday night. It wasn't the challenger's night, but she is clearly destined for something, while Perez logged yet another great title defense in her impressive reign, the far-and-away face of the women's division proving yet again that the future of WWE is in good hands.

Written by Max Everett

After Frazer and Axiom retained their tag team gold, I really didn't think we were going to see any titles change hands on Heatwave, which I was pretty sad about. Boy, was I ever wrong, and in both the best and worst ways. The ending to the NXT Championship match that pit now-former champion Trick Williams against "All Ego" Ethan Page, Shawn Spears, and Je'Von Evans was better than I could have imagined — even if I didn't want or expect Williams to lose his championship here. Williams hitting a Trick Shot to Evans and also knocking Spears out of the ring, but not completely taking him out, then hitting another Trick Shot on Page, knocking "All Ego" onto Evans, was executed flawlessly. Spears not being completely knocked out at ringside allowed him to grab Williams and prevent him from breaking up the almost accidental pin on Page, who shockingly scored the victory and won the title.

I will admit, I didn't see much of Page in AEW, but I like his cocky character. I'm usually one to side with the heels, and as much as I liked Williams as a champion, it was time for a new heel to hold the strap. It makes for more interesting stories to me. And there are certainly plenty of stories to tell here, now. Williams and Evans, who were friends before this match, might not be now, with the ways they fought and took each other out of the match at certain points during the night. Williams was also never pinned, so he could argue that he deserves a rematch. Spears was also not pinned and wasn't even in the ring for the match to end and helped out the new champion, so there's another argument there. Heck, there could even be a tag match somewhere on an episode of "NXT" where Spears and Page team up against Williams and Evans. I wouldn't mind that as a main event of a random Tuesday (sooner rather than later, the closer we get to SummerSlam weekend) at all. There's plenty to tell here, still. Though unexpected, I love the way Page's win was executed, and I greatly enjoyed this match. I'm looking forward to seeing more of what Page can do in the ring.

I also would be remiss if I didn't mention the special little blink-and-you-miss it Joe Hendry cameo at the end of the broadcast. Page was holding up the title in the middle of the ring with a "who, me?!" look on his face, which was great to begin with, and then, Joe Hendry's face popped up on my television. As someone who has been singing his silly little song and seeing his face everywhere with memes being sent to me on the daily, I thought maybe I was hallucinating, or maybe Hendry's face was burned into my screen from how often I watch the silly song on YouTube. But nope, when I looked back at it on X, I saw the transition in the video that made me certain there was no mistake on the production truck's end on WWE. That was a strategically placed Hendry cameo, as it was Page who eliminated him first from the number one contender's battle royal a few weeks ago on "NXT." The same spot that had the internet wrestling community up in arms because Hendry was barely in the match after getting his own entrance and cutting a promo before everything kicked off. This is certainly alluding to something, and reports have now come out that WWE is looking to utilize Hendry more, and possibly even sign him. I absolutely loved this little tease, because it obviously means he's going to be involved in the title picture with Page when he graces our screens on "NXT" again. I have to admit: I believe in Joe Hendry.

Written by Daisy Ruth