Wednesday WarGames: Inner Circle vs. Pinnacle

Cash Wheeler/Dax Harwood/Wardlow/MJF/Shawn Spears vs. Sammy Guevara/Santana/Ortiz/Chris Jericho/Jake Hager AEW Dynamite 5/5/21

ER: I have not liked a single one of the NXT WarGames, and not only have I not liked them, I would rank them among my least favorite WarGames I have ever seen. This match was much better than any NXT WarGames, even if it shared some of my least favorite elements of those tedious Games. The high points of this match far exceeded the high points of any NXT Games, and that feels like the most important note. The bleeders bled, even if the blade jobs all seemed very obvious. I loved how Wheeler and MJF's color looked, great thickness, great trails, gummed up in their hair nicely, good blood. Dax and Sammy were cool guys to start a match with. If you looked at the 10 guys on paper, Sammy would have been my choice to start, because he would clearly be best at taking everyone's offense. No surprise, he was. Sammy's own offense looks great, even 30 minutes into the thing he's doing a coast to coast dropkick, scraping his boot across MJF's bloody face, and still getting crazy height on backdrops and flapjacks. 

Chairs get involved early, FTR work in spine busters and a great assisted brainbuster, Hager and Wardlow work some fun meathead spots, everyone mostly fills their role nicely. I didn't need the big West Side Story showdown that is one of the stupider staples of NXT, but it lead to a chaotic final run that outshone the stupid set up. Inner Circle looked like killers separating each member of Pinnacle, and I like how each Pinnacle guy handled it differently. Spears tries to escape up top and Jericho acts like he's going to hang him from a support strut. Wardlow fights off several men and Inner Circle just keeps leaping onto him, doesn't matter if he can toss Sammy 12 feet into the air when Hager and LAX are all jumping him at once. The ring gets ripped apart, FTR drop a spike piledriver, and I always love when a turnbuckle spike gets used. I wanted to see it hooked into someone's mouth or jammed into someone's eye, but I always love it as a weapon. It always looked solid as hell and the aftermath visual of the undone ropes always looks cool.  And I actually liked the finish, with MJF trying to escape Jericho and then pummeling his balls, getting Sammy to surrender by threatening to throw his boy off the top of the cage. I like a good threat to get someone to give in, and while they could have found cool violent ways to end this, it felt like it worked with the characters involved. Now, I wish the camera crew had shot Jericho's bump differently, as none of us needed to see the "corrugated steel" cardboard topper to the crash pad, really could have benefitted from a lower shooting angle. And, of course, the match went far too long, yet it felt like it went by far quicker than the most recent NXT debacle. Still, those classic WarGames matches were like 20 minutes, there's no need for a match with Jake Hager to get 35.