NXT TakeOver Main Event: Phil and Eric Disagree, Now You Decide

Last Man Standing: Johnny Gargano vs. Tommaso Ciampa

ER: What a fantastic main event, super violent and hate-filled, a match that truly deserves to be called a war. They've been so good at taking this match to match, building upon other interactions and throwing in neat callbacks, that it's really easy to follow along and get hooked in. The energy they throw into every big moment is great, and they know how to space those big moments to make them as effective as possible. I've seen some complaints about drag during a couple portions of this, but I thought the pacing was super successful and made all the biggest moments stand tall. Their street fight at the last TakeOver felt like a classic ECW brawl, and this match was basically a culmination of all their interactions and match styles: the learned behavior counterpoint match, the big match nearfall epic, the late 90s brawl, and the overly emotional "Fight Forever". And Last Man Standing was a great way to combine all of those into one blowout. But LMS matches have their own pitfalls (guys asking for counts too frequently is one that happens a lot, which can grind a tempo down immediately), the big moments landed big, and they nicely wove in their ongoing drama.

This managed to feel like a fight for it's 30+ minute run time, never a This is Awesome contest or a Kurt Angle "We're going to have a MOTY" showcase. This felt like two guys who used to like each other, who really hate each other. Barely into the match Gargano is already exposing concrete on the floor, and not long after Ciampa is exposing the ring boards. They knew what this was. There were so many great set pieces, and I loved the escalation. Outside of the big moments we had a ton of small painful moments, like Gargano getting his back rammed into the edge of the steps, or Ciampa getting a chair flung hard off his patella, or Ciampa eating a DDT onto the edge of the exposed ring boards, to some nice messy strike exchanges where not every punch lands because not every punch needs to land, or Ciampa waiting out a count while sitting in a chair, only for Gargano to beat the count and find Ciampa at the perfect height for a superkick.

The big moments were tremendous, I especially loved Ciampa running full bore into Gargano with a knee on the floor, with a chair leading the way, sending both of them crashing through the barricade, That looked devastating enough, but when Ciampa starting piling other humans and chairs and anything he could find on top of him to make it harder to get up, that's just a guy after my heart right there. Ciampa tossing big announce chairs onto a heap is a visual I won't soon forget, and the whole count he's just perched on the announce table like King Kong. I kept waiting for things to feel like they've gone too long, but that moment never came for me. By the time Johnny had Ciampa handcuffed on the stage and was superkicking him while mocking his apologies, my own inner dark side had taken over and I just wanted Johnny to give him 50 straight superkicks, to guarantee he wouldn't be getting up. I wanted kids crying. "Stop! Stop! He's already dead!" But I loved the finish as it's real evidence of how badly these two want to make this match and feud work. Gargano flying knee first into Ciampa's face, his own momentum sending him violently sprawling over equipment crates to the floor, was as crazy looking as anything I've seen in wrestling. Ciampa falling off the stage onto his feet was delicious icing, as Johnny lied crippled on the floor. These two really got me hooked on this one. This was something I really loved.

PAS: We don't normally have this big of a disconnect on a match.  There have been times when we have had long back and forth discussions over whether a match is 19 or 26 on a list. Or whether something is 2 or 5, or whether a match makes it low or misses it,  but here is a match that Eric thinks should be near the top of a MOTY list, and I would be perfectly happy leaving on the cutting room floor. For the most part I thought this was a pretty standard WWE Last Man Standing match, the kind of thing they do half a dozen times a year, with some pretty big highs and some pretty cratered lows .

There was stuff I really liked, Ciampa's running knee with the chair into the barricade was great, and I loved him tossing chairs, containers and a KO camera guy on top of Gargano to keep him from getting up.  That is up there with some of my favorite LMS spots ever, although the WWE LMS matches tend not to stick in my brain, Big Show had some cool ones right? The exposed ring boards is getting to be a bit of a 2018 trope, but I thought it was done well here, and is a good way to escalate a match when you can't have blood.

There was some smaller stuff I didn't like too, some of Gargano's punches got a little Lisa Simpsony, there was one turnbuckle punch spot that was especially windmillish. I thought the big table spot, which was teased and teased, ended up looking pretty weak, Ciampa ate a superkick and kind of gently fell through the table with no height. For a match with a lot of reckless bumps, this was super safe and looked it. Did the Dudley's ever put Linda McMahon through a table? That felt like a bump she might take.

I had two main issues though. For one 35+ minutes is just too long for a match with this many big spots. We both criticized Kairi Sane for shrugging off that vicious ankle smash, but this match had Gargano take Ciampa's finisher three times less then half way through the match, plus taking his secondary finisher on ring steps. Ciampa got lawn darted into a chair 3 minutes in. Yet they still soldiered on seemingly forever. This kind of brutal war works best in a third of the time they did this in, I can't imagine Magnum vs. Tully would have been good if it was 30+ minutes long. Last Man Standing rules mitigate that a bit, at least we don't have a million 2 counts, but man this started to drag.

Also I thought that finish was incredibly stupid. The whole multiple superkicks where Ciampa is begging for mercy and Gargano is making his hack "I am a good man? Have a forsaken my humanity" faces was duuuumb. It felt like someone making fun of an antihero basic cable show about a pediatrician with a gambling problem who ends up working for the Sinola cartel. The last spot, where Gargano dramatically removes his kneepad (let me remind you this is a match where they have been bashing each other with chairs the whole match), like he was pulling out a machete or something, and then Shockmasters himself off the stage felt less like an epic wrestling finish, then something you put Benny Hill music over and mock on Twitter.

ER: So there it is, and since we're at an impasse we're leaving it all up to you. The poll is up on Twitter to decide how to handle this great and/or atrocious match.