The Taz Show Recap – NXT Analysis, Kassius Ohno Needs Work, Big Praise for Lars Sullivan, More!

Taz is joined on today’s show by his co-host, Seth.

Taz opens today’s show speaking about his decision to wear suits when he worked on Smackdown’s commentary team. All the other commentators at that time were were t-shirts or other outfits, so Taz wanted to wear a suit to be different. Vince McMahon loved the way Taz looked in a suit and soon mandated that all the announcers needed to wear a suit on air. He got ridiculed by Michael Cole and Jim Ross for a while after that because they were forced to wear a suit because of him.

Taz gets into his analysis of last night’s episode of NXT.

He points out that he liked the cold open of the show featuring The Undisputed Era. He likes that they stared into the camera while cutting their promo, but this was a bit too similar to how nWo would cut their promos during the attitude era for Taz’s liking. NXT even produced this to have a guitar riff in the background like the old nWo promos as well.

Taz urges Triple H to get together with his staff and come up with some original, creative ideas. He points out that this isn’t the 1980’s NWA or 1990’s WCW, this is 2018 NXT, and they have enough creative people there to come up with fresh, new concepts on their own.

Taz says that he’s just going to stop being critical of Mauro Ranallo’s commentary work on NXT programming. It’s obvious that nobody in WWE is going to help Ranallo get better or ask him to fix the things that he continues to do wrong, so it’s pointless to keep talking about it in Taz’s opinion. Instead, Taz simply muted the majority of last night’s broadcast.

Before he muted the audio, Taz noticed that Ranallo’s voice level dropped dramatically when he threw to a video package after screaming over the in-ring action during the match prior. This is a huge mistake in Taz’s opinion, and he also thought the WWE production team failed here because the mix that was done in post production was terrible.

Taz informs that if he was wrestling today, he wouldn’t work the same way that he worked during his career. He worked that “shoot” style back in the day because everyone wanted to be Ric Flair or Hulk Hogan back then, and that made his character different. Nowadays, everyone has that “shoot” style, so he’d find a way to be original with a different type of in-ring style. Taz points out that he loves Velveteen Dream right now because he’s different.

Taz says he’s a fan of Shayna Baszler, but he thinks NXT officials need to be careful with how they present her moving forward. He says that she’s basically the same character as RAW’s Sonya Deville, and her MMA in-ring style has a lot of similarities with Asuka’s character as well.

He says that he just doesn’t get the Kassius Ohno character. Ohno is a big, physical guy who can work, but the “It Factor” is missing in Taz’s opinion. He thinks that Ohno’s ring gear is really bad, and he just doesn’t look to be in good ring shape at all.

Taz points out that Bray Wyatt is a big, bulky man, but he still looks like a polished professional when he appears in front of a live audience. Ohno just looks like cheap, indie worker. Taz doesn’t want to rip Ohno because he doesn’t even know him, but there’s no denying that his ring gear needs work.

Taz says he loves William Regal and he points out that Regal is actually a very funny guy behind the scenes. Regal’s character is a straight-laced authority figure on television, but Taz points out that he’s full of charisma and has a great sense of humour when the right time comes to utilize it.

Taz thinks Lars Sullivan is an absolute superstar in the making. He’s sure that Vince McMahon is salivating at the thought of having Sullivan on the main roster, and once McMahon gets his hands on him he’ll be pushed to the moon in Taz’s opinion. Taz thinks that Sullivan is super close to being ready for the main roster, but he still has a couple small things to clean up before making the jump.

That sums up today’s episode of The Taz Show. You can listen to the show yourself anytime here, and I’ll catch ya tomorrow for another recap!