NXT TakeOver: Chicago II 6/16/18

Roderick Strong/Kyle O'Reilly vs. Danny Burch/Oney Lorcan

ER: Holy shit this match starts off my night go go go go. They are taking no breaths and it is hot as hell. Burch is working fast and everybody is whipping around the ring, and we get an awesome early match exclamation point when Burch catches O'Reilly on a leapfrog and catches his ankle, slamming it to the mat. Strong is working a weird MMA bully style, grounding Burch and peppering him with mounted punches, and O'Reilly works that too with a nice hardway double leg. O'Reilly's mounted elbows look pretty lousy, but his palm strikes have a nick smack. I'll allow it. Strong has a super underrated dropkick and he absolutely scalps Burch with one. But this match is all about the Lorcan hot tag, one of the hottest we've seen in ages. Lorcan throws a lariat straight outta hell, a couple of massive flying European uppercuts, sick fast flip dive onto everyone, total house on fire. They dump Strong on his head for good measure, Lorcan takes a disgusting bump off the top rope to the apron to the floor. We get a great dramatic 90s direct to video action movie moment with O'Reilly locking Burch in an armbar and a slow camera zoom as Burch is holding two fingers together to keep his arm from being fully extended. Lorcan re-eneters the match to hit a double blockbuster off the apron to Strong and O'Reilly, and then hits a bonkers doomsday device European off the top. Good lord that sentence is a mouthful and this match is really fun. I didn't love the Adam Cole interference and thought it slowed the match down a bit too much, and I didn't like the phone booth fighting spot, but the end run picking apart Lorcan was great. Strong saved his most vicious shots for the death blows, a nasty chop to the neck, a leaping knee to the face, a great diving lariat while O'Reilly hit a legsweep. A lively match, hotly paced, real crowd pleaser.

PAS: Lorcan is a blast, one of the better guys I can remember at pure intense sprint wrestling, actually reminds a bit of Sting as a hot tag, just an intense explosive killer. Lorcan sprints have been some of my favorite things in wrestling for the last couple of years, and I am glad he got a showcase match finally.  That bump to the floor was totally nuts, the kind of thing we might praise Jerry Estrada or Cactus Jack for, it felt like an all time bump freak bump. I am pretty lukewarm about the other three guys in this match, although they all had moments I dug. I am into Burch and Gallagher bring the barfight headbutt into the WWE, I have been in fist fights with Englishmen, that is a move you always have to be weary of.  I am with Eric on praising that cross arm breaker spot. So much of NXT is built around these cinematic moments, sometimes it comes off as hokey (as it does later in this show for example). Here though  I thought the two finger hold worked really well, and would have actually made a great finish, although the actual finish with Lorcan getting pounded from all sides until he collapsed was really great, reminded me of a cinematic death, I could see that being the way Jon Snow dies at the end of Game of Thrones (if he dies, this isn't a spoiler).

Velveteen Dream vs. Ricochet

ER: This is really rope runny but not in a too annoying way. They're both kind of slithery so it works as a fun style battle. Dream has some fun throwback offense, like a great clubbing double axehandle over the bridge, and modern flash like a ankle flip somersault senton, and hits a cool Aerostar-like springboard flip dive that just floats. Ricochet hits his own big tope and a no hands moonsault that kinda misses, but Dream sells it like it totally upended him. There's a little drag in spots and it's a tough pace to work after the previous long tag. The crowd maybe doesn't react as strong because of that. Dream is a loon though and really throws his body into a middle rope death valley driver, properly selling the damage by bumping almost just as big. His rolling dvd is a legit thing of beauty. I don't really love the stand and trade stuff, kind of goes on a bit long and some of the response bumps are a little too planned. But again this crowd is absolutely on fire for this so who am I to be the joyless crap sack? But I don't know, I think Ricochet doing his own just as good rolling dvd is a little silly, and then he hits his own elbow (and we don't even get the best elbow in the business from Dream!?!?), but he eats knees on a crazy far shooting star press, but then Dream whiffs on his elbow, literally landing almost completely across the ring a couple feet from the ropes. It was a bit longer and slower than it should have been, but they kept the crowd through most of it and that counts. A solid if flawed match.

Nikki Cross vs. Shayna Baszler

ER: Nikki's crazy act takes up the first couple minutes, and it's cheesy, but she's committed and it works enough. But once Baszler takes over then I get into this, dropping her in a backpack on the ring entrance ramp and kicking her around, locking in snug chokes, but then giving generously on Cross' comeback, taking a big bump on her shoulders on a back suplex. Baszler throws such awesome knees, but the finish came off a bit too cheesy to me. Shayna locks in a great choke, but Cross lasts way too long in it and ends with Cross eventually passing out while smiling a big inauthentic Joker smile. Baszler almost saves it while screaming crazily during the choke, and her black mouthguard screaming is a pretty great heel gag. Short and not bad, but I think it comes down to me not liking Cross a whole lot.

Lars Sullivan vs. Aleister Black

ER: Fun quick start after a staredown with Sullivan catching the Black Mass again, but bumping to the floor and eating a double knees and a high knee in the ring. There's a lot of near miss back and forth but it's been done well so far. We've not yet gone full do-si-do. Love the spot where Sullivan runs through a clothesline as if he's breaking the tape at the end of a marathon. Sullivan catching Black on the quebrada to the floor is a great strength spot, and we get a cool powerslam into the barricade and a crushing avalanche. Black is so much fun, I really stupidly want a RAMPAGE battle against Braun Strowman. Love that pop up powerslam but I don't know if I love him going up top. I kind of hate when big guys go up just to get caught, felt a little too cheap Hogan Nitro spot. But the clothesline from the apron was devastating and Sullivan does do a big awkward diving hippo splash off the top, catching a knee to the jaw. It looked messy but that may have been to its benefit. Black has some fun 2006 fast indie offense and I like his kicks to various parts of his legs. But Sullivan has some cool tricks too. You don't usually see big guys with neat offense tricks. His chop block to the front of Black's leg is sick, and a giant dude doing a stretch muffler is a wonderful sight in wrestling. The flying headbutt is stupid as all hell to be doing in 2018, Race was saying to cut it out like 30 years ago. And then it gets a 2 and is it worth it Lars? Lars missing the chop block and eating a double stomp to his lower back is a great Jackie Chan moments, and Sullivan sells for Black's kicks better than maybe anybody else in NXT. Fact. He has 4 different crumbling sells, like he's Kawada with a pituitary gland condition. I thought there were a couple minor missteps, but this felt like a pretty great Street Fighter II tournament final. This worked for me.

Johnny Gargano vs. Tomasso Ciampa

ER: This starts off like a fun 1997 ECW Tommy Dreamer brawl, I mean as if they were following a script, with a crowd brawl that sees Gargano get handed a Gargano sign from a fan, that has a stop sign hidden in it. It's so ECW that the crowd ends up doing an ECW chant. My word. The Gargano dive was big, filmed in a way that made it look like he flew 15 feet. Such a TNN garbage brawl, which is hitting the right spot on a Saturday night after a couple cold drinks. I mean this is taking me right back to some 2001 wrestling in college, watching Benoit doing rolling Germans and worked with that Crash aesthetic. Ciampa gets tossed over the announce table and he essentially spin kicks Percy on the way down. We're going through a bunch of greatest hits from 80s to 90s, Gargano whipping him with a belt and we still get a bunch of 90s garbage trash can spots, trash can lid spots, feels late 90s but violently so.

I love the exposed ring as a prop. It doesn't get used that often so it really does have some freshness and mystery to it. It feels like crossing a line. The vibe with the mat pulled back and exposed padding and glossed wood made it feel like two guys doing a drywall job in a halfway built house and getting into a fist fight over who has a nicer car. We get some nice set pieces here, feels like a really intricate stage fighting scene, tons of props. Gargano attacking that knee gives this some edge, both guys not afraid to go low. There is some wonderful soap opera drama on display. I'm sure there were at least two episodes of Passions that had someone remove off someone's wedding ring and spit on it. End gets really silly. They tease a big Gargano jump and don't pay it off, and I think Gargano goes to "nerve damage" selling a bit too often. But he cuffs Ciampa and delivers a bunch of superkicks he can't defend. The move that finishes the match is something that plays even better the more I see it, with Ciampa hooking Gargano by the neck as Gargano is getting back in the ring, and planting him with the DDT on the exposed ring. I really loved it because they exposed that ring 10+ minutes ago, and I love that exposed ring as a looming danger, and it went just long enough and just far enough away from the ring that we weren't thinking about it anymore. It was a quick power outage and Ciampa came off really hatable. This felt a cut below the other TakeOver Gargano main events, but I liked it's overblown style.

This was a good but not overly good show, but it never felt like a bad show. Everybody was working hard even if they were working at something that I wasn't digging. I think all the matches essentially accomplished what they wanted to accomplish. I also think a couple of these matches could improve on a rewatch, so it always felt like a show that mattered.