After watching a loaded card filled with title matches and a few TNA wrestlers for good measure – though not as many as some fans may have liked – fans sat with bated breath, eager to see Trick Williams and Ethan Page go to war in the main event of NXT Battleground, with the NXT Championship and the very fate of the brand moving forward on the line.

Would Page, the newcomer with an “unprecedented contract,” get the win in his first NXT match, cementing him as a certified problem and forcing Trick Willie to “level up” before he could beat him moving forward? Or would Williams win a hard-fought match with everything on the line, proving that his matches with Ilja Dragunov weren't a fluke and that he truly is the cream de la creme of WWE's developmental system?

Well, as it turns out, the match was kind of underwhelming, with the bout lasting just 12 minutes and Page taking a clean loss in his debut.

What gives? Did something go wrong? Or was this simply a plan that wasn't executed up to expectations? Well, in Dave Meltzer's opinion, the issue largely came down to the men in the ring, as neither performer really did enough to rise above what felt like a simple television bout.

“It was fine. It was a basic professional wrestling match. It was not a pay-per-view main event match. Basically, it was like a normal television match; that's what I would call it,” Dave Meltzer explained on Wrestling Observer Radio via WrestleTalk.

“Trick needs a great opponent to have that caliber of a match. Ethan Page is a very good wrestler, but… I mean, it was fine. It also wasn't that long – it was a lot shorter than the usual main event they would do on a show like this. Usually, those would be like 20 minutes, and this was 12. They just kind of went for a while. Ethan Page pretty much carried it, looked fine doing it. And then they just went right to the finish; Trick does the high knee when there was a distraction and gets the pin, and it was kind of like, ‘Okay, he won,' you know.”

For better or worse, Meltzer is pretty much on the money on this one; HBK didn't book an NXT Battleground main event that really played to his top star's strengths, and as a result, everyone looked worse off as a result. While the aspirations of the bout may have been noble, the execution from Trick Williams and Ethan Page simply didn't match them.

Moose has grander ambitions than Trick Williams and NXT.

As members of the TNA roster attempt to politik their way into a match in NXT moving forward, with everyone from the Rascalz to Ash by Elegance hoping to take their talents to Orlando for future efforts, one performer who isn't as eager to land in the Performance Center is Moose, the TNA World Champion and member of The System.

Discussing NXT Battleground‘s impact on his promotion in an appearance at K&S WrestleFest, Moose noted that there isn't really anyone in NXT he wants to test his mettle against, not even Trick Williams, as he would instead rather go to the main roster to take on one of the promotion's top stars.

“I don’t know if there’s anybody in NXT that is capable of beating me so, for them to make it worth their while, might wanna bring me in to SmackDown or RAW or somebody — I’ve beat (Drew) McIntyre, I beat Bobby Lashley. Am I gonna wrestle Wes Lee? Come on. There’s great wrestlers in NXT, don’t get me wrong, but it’s like, I’ve already beaten guys there on their main roster and their Superstars. I don’t think they would want me to damage the careers of the young puppies, you know what I’m saying? So, for me, bring me in and let me play with the top dogs. That’s what my mindset is. I could be wrong, but yeah,” Moose revealed via Post Wrestling.

“That’s actually two guys (Gunther and Bron Breakker) that I would love to wrestle. Especially Bron Breakker. We have similar backgrounds. We’re both football players, and now we’re doing things — doing the thing we love in pro wrestling, so, Bron, he’s amazing. I love his style. I actually just gave him a huge shout-out. I saw one of the moves he did on TV. I was like, ‘Oh my God. I don’t even think I could do something like that.’ When he runs up the — and does the ‘rana? I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s nuts.’ But yeah, I think him. Gunther is a guy that, when he was in the indies, that we never touched, which was very surprising because was definitely a lot of people’s dream match, and so he’s definitely somebody else I would love to lock horns with. I think it would be a great matchup. I’ve actually wrestled him (Damian Priest) before, and I don’t remember who won when we wrestled. We were both puppies when we wrestled, which was probably like seven years ago, so… It was before ROH. It was at an indie show in Philly. We wrestled, but I don’t remember what happened in the match. I just know we both were young and green and not so good, so, yeah, that would definitely be another good matchup now, now that we’re both very good at pro wrestling.”

Unfortunately for Moose, if he did come over to WWE for a match, he would almost certainly lose the effort just like Jordynne Grace did to a 22-year-old “Prodigy” in NXT. Still, the prospect of Moose versus Breakker is incredibly interesting and, if he turned in a good enough showing, could be the key to a Moose Nation run in WWE before he calls it a career in the future.