NXT TakeOver: XXV 6/1/19

I spent the day up at my parents' place as my sister was in town, and now after hearing my mother tell me in detail about her 50th class reunion three different times, as well as hearing a 20 minute story about how she had a very normal trip to the supermarket, I'm ready to just write as much as I can about tonight's TakeOver as I can before I drift off to slumberland. Whatever I don't finish tonight I will finish tomorrow when I wake up.

Roderick Strong vs. Matt Riddle

ER: Totally wild stiff overkill battle, a match that kept things interesting with inventive reversals and showcasing several ways for men to land knees and elbows to faces. Riddle is a guy who looks like he could really eat Strong's lunch, and yet three minutes into this Strong is dropping Riddle on the apron with a fast backdrop suplex and hammerfisting him in the stomach from the mount I find myself wondering "How is Riddle going to last against this!?" Both guys land such jaw jacking shots that I'm not always sure how they stay standing in a long match, but when I get Riddle dragging Strong by the arm chin first into his knee, or Strong hitting an insane running jumping knee into the ropes, I just want more. Both men move so fast, and land so hard, that it really adds to everything they do. Riddle scrambling down out of a press and locking in a choke, Strong landing a couple hard backbreakers, Riddle landing flush onto Strong's knees on a twisting press, Strong bouncing back and forth off the ropes with hard elbows, Riddle flinging Strong with a German suplex, A top rope superplex from Strong, it's all done with such speed and precision that they always seem a millimeter away from stopping a match due to brain bruising. They never get trapped in a strike loop, they always advance, and I'm never quite sure where every sequence is going. I don't really mind the way these two do overkill, because some of the stiffer sequences just impress me that they're able to keep going, and while somethings weren't as focused as other big matches from these two, I thought they did a great job at building the threat and the violence. Hot start to a show.

Street Profits (Montez Ford/Angelo Dawkins) vs. Forgotten Sons (Wesley Blake/Steve Cutler) vs. Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch vs. Kyle O'Reilly/Bobby Fish

ER: They're really letting matches go long on this show so far. This one probably goes a little too long and features a definitely too long run in from Forgotten Son Jaxson Ryder (and really someone who has that name is probably overstaying every life situation they're ever in), but also has a bunch of crazy stuff on par with most of the crazy stuff in the MITB matches two weeks ago. It genuinely felt like everybody in this match had several opportunities to fit in a couple crazy spots and a couple crazy bumps, like they were all filling quotas. I really liked Forgotten Sons, both guys really exited the ring in dynamic ways when they needed to clear space, and they willingly threw themselves into getting suplexed while wearing a ladder around their necks, or Blake doing a tope INTO a ladder. Montez Ford had some big stuff (overall I thought the Profits came off like a team who kind of snaked a victory, which is weird since they were the favorites going in) including a frog splash so big that it sent him vertical into a perfect headstand and a tope con hilo with a painful landing (a LOT of dives in this match had painful landings, felt like every guy here was taking flat back bumps onto the hard ground), even does a bonkers leap from the top rope to a ladder. Lorcan used his body as a weapon and flung it into people and ladders, Fish and O'Reilly took some nasty spills into ladders, Dawkins hit a huge dive to the floor, O'Reilly may have taken the most painful bumps onto ladders (and another where he just took a big Hamrick back bump from ring to floor), and this whole thing was pretty crazy. This show is a pretty easy 2/2 for me so far, every guy is working this show like it's their WrestleMania or something. Trying to take buzz away from AEW? I don't know but whatever it is I dig it.

Tyler Breeze vs. Velveteen Dream

ER: Breeze is someone I thought was one of the most consistently good performers in NXT history, who got kind of predictably chewed up on the main roster. He's a guy who showed he was really good at 8-11 minute matches, a guy who could have been a real valuable Smackdown TV match guy, who never got much of a chance to work the kind of match he's really good at. So on paper I'm excited as hell for this match, and really WWE should be more willing to send people back down to NXT if things aren't working out. MLB teams do that all the time, send a guy back to work on mechanics before giving them another shake. It doesn't have to be seen as a negative, but it obviously always will be. And I thought this match was pretty awesome, while also thinking that they probably had more than enough tricks and moments for a rematch, and I think they took to much time fitting them all into this match. This was a really good 18 minutes that I think could have been a flat out awesome 14 minutes. Breeze is a guy with a limited offense arsenal, who finds cool logical ways to create openings and reverse moves. I don't think a lot of his stuff feels like a modern do-si-do dance sequence reversal, he just finds simple ways to dodge and strike fast. Breeze is one of the better guys about making space, about not rushing through sequences, and he comes off more like a solid Stevie Richards type than a modern 2.9 count guy. His simple stuff hits hard and he finds ways to smartly get into position for Dream's offense, while having an impressive sense of when a strike doesn't land as hard and thus doesn't need to be sold as hard.

Because of that skill we got a few sequences that weren't really "clean" but I think benefitted from looking messier. Dream threw a backhand that didn't really land, but followed it up quick with a shot from the other direction that landed much harder, and Breeze knew exactly how to play it. Dream is someone who throws a lot of his body into shots, so when one doesn't hit flush it can look silly, and Breeze is a perfect guy to cover for that kind of flash. I love how Breeze doesn't skimp on shots and doesn't cut corners. Weirdly my favorite part of the match was when Breeze was setting up a superkick, but opted for just a simple (killer looking) front kick to the face to set up the kick. We've seen superkick overkill for a few years now and I thought it was cool that Breeze didn't just go right to it, he kicked Dream into a better position for it. Even though I thought we got maybe two too many kickouts, I thought the placements of them rolling out of the ring and working count outs was really well done, and I thought a lot of the reversal sequences looked cool because they didn't look overly smooth. Dream has a way of looking incredibly graceful while occasionally looking totally stumbly, and I'm genuinely unsure if it's intentional or not, but I think it works. It leads to moments like Dream stumbling face first into a hard enziguiri, which winds up looking nastier because it was face first and he looked off balance. Breeze barely beating a 10 count only to slide back into the ring to get blasted with the Dream Driver felt like a perfect spot to finish things, even though part of me is glad the went longer to make Breeze look more threatening. And late in the match we got an absolute freakshow eye popping move set up where Dream jumped off the top to land past a laid out Breeze, landing right where he needed to so he could hook Breeze's leg to roll him through into sticking him with Breeze's own Unprettier. It looked insane. And I loved the set ups where Dream would purposely throw off Breeze's timing on spots (which is something Breeze did to him a couple times earlier). I really loved this, warts and all, and this show is firing on an easy 3/3 for me.

Io Shirai vs. Shayna Baszler

ER: Apparently Tokyo Sports at one point called Shirai the "greatest wrestler in the world" which just feels like someone somewhere had to have wrongly translated a quote. This was the first match that felt like a miss, felt like something that would have been a decent hour one Smackdown match, but didn't have any big moments to make it stand out on this card. Really the most exciting part of this was Candice LeRae running out to wreck Shafir and Duke with a kendo stick. Candice was really swinging hard, broke the damn stick over them both, really liked that whole section. But the match itself seemed really basic. Shirai just doesn't seem very good to me, and as Shayna is working her over I'm sitting here knowing that it's going to just lead to a bunch of fairly implausible Shirai offense. Baszler toying with Shirai was fun, kicking at her and getting her to flinch, before ACTUALLY kicking her. Shirai isn't a very interesting seller, so her selling limb damage always feels comical, and her staggering around for shots looked like when Jeremy Irons was awkwardly learning geisha movements in M. Butterfly. Her flying does little for me, although I think she may have had a decent missile dropkick in there. The finish itself was really good, as the bridge looked like a plausible way to win but I was confident Shayna would turn it into a choke. I think I'm more interested in the inevitable Shirai/LeRae vs. Shayna/Horse Girl tag as Shirai works better in a tag or multiman setting, but this underwhelmed.

ER: Just want to make a note here about how godawful Mauro Ranallo has been on commentary the entire show. He isn a very specific and infuriating kind of awful, a different side of the Matt Striker coin. The specifically infuriating part about Ranallo - I mean aside from his constant fucking screaming - is that he seems to genuinely LOVE the product that he is announcing for. He seems like he adores NXT and he is living his absolute best life. But he's just so fucking annoying about enjoying his favorite thing. He's the fan you hate to hear talk about the thing he loves, and you hate the specific way he loves it. Striker is unbearable in that way you picture him sitting at home writing hack shoehorned references trying to get himself over, Ranallo is the guy who does that because it's how he can best express his love for NXT.

Adam Cole vs. Johnny Gargano

ER: I actually somewhat unexpectedly enjoyed the first 15 minutes of this match! But as we all know this was not going to be a match than ended shortly past the 15 minute mark. Pro wrestling inspired by the Marvel Cinematic Universe is absolutely one of the worst things to happen to pro wrestling. It just makes me dream of Stan Hansen running into the ring and beheading either of these goofs with lariats. There are always things I enjoy! Gargano can take some bone rattling bumps, and they both have some cool ideas about building off past matches and past interactions. But FUCK them. That Star Search dance routine with Gargano hitting a reverse rana and then waiting patiently on his knees while peeking over his shoulder, waiting for Cole to bounce of the ropes with a superkick, or their little Total Eclipse of the Heart dance recital where Gargano kept getting kicked chest first into the ropes and bouncing off and hitting his own bullshit only to spin Cole into his arms as rain pours down in dramatic fashion, that kind of horseshit can just die. I hate all of Marvel's final 25 minute "Two invincible guys not able to do a ton of damage to the other while causing millions of dollars in structural damage" and it's not something I'll ever want to see in pro wrestling. Nothing damages these guys, until something damages them. Fuck Off Forever.