2021 Ongoing MOTY List: NXT 2.0 WarGames

26. Team Black & Gold (Pete Dunne/Johnny Gargano/Tommaso Ciampa/LA Knight) vs. Team 2.0 (Bron Breakker/Grayson Waller/Carmelo Hayes/Tony D'Angelo) NXT WarGames 12/5

ER: I was so surprised by how much I liked this match. Nearly every WWE/NXT WarGames to this point has been an interminable slog. What kind of world were we creating for our children when we gave them four different WarGames in four years featuring Adam Cole? The Bobby Fish WarGames Era. America changed a lot for the worse in 2016, but I don't think Adam Cole WarGames have been given their fair share of credit for how horrible the next four years would get. Perhaps this particular WarGames only looked better because the women's WarGames that happened earlier in the night was one of the worst matches of the year, truly terrible. This show started with that 30+ minute match, which was entirely made up of half speed exchanges, bad weapon shots, and moments that looked bungled at best. When a 30 minute match ends and your immediate thought is "Well...I guess Gigi Dolin looked the best out of everyone?" then you know you just witnessed something dreadful. At least we got plenty of Cora Jade working through her acting chops. 

This might be the first WarGames in WWE brand history that didn't feel like an exercise in "Guys lying around the edges of the ring selling, regardless of how long they've been in the match". This was the first WWE brand WarGames that actually felt shorter than its runtime. Those 45 minute WarGames felt damn near PPV length, but this never felt like it was intentionally pausing action to capture hack Moments. The women's match that started the show was almost entirely set-up Moments and brother, they were all bad. This main event just focused on action, not on mapping out the best camera angle to capture somebody's gulp face. My main criticism of this match was that there was maybe too MUCH action, in that a lot of sequences were worked as if this was just a normal 8 man tag, and not specifically a WarGames match, but I have much less problem with what they did here than the new trend of working normal wrestling sequences in Royal Rumbles. This had a lot of chained sequences that didn't necessarily fit the structure of a WarGames, but here at least most of the sequences looked GOOD; they do not under any circumstances look good in a Rumble. 

The women's WarGames badly played up every participants' weaknesses, but this match managed to play to strengths. Grayson Waller bounced and sprang and flew off every surface, taking full advantage of the increased square footage. He took the most/best bumps into the cage itself, and seemed to be on the receiving end of the majority of the weapon spots. He was probably my favorite here, but I thought everyone added something. Everything was timed out really well and we never got into any dead patches. There might have been an over-reliance on weapons, but they used a lot of them for max effect. Tony D'Angelo pressing a crowbar into Pete Dunne's jaw before giving him a crowbar-assisted swinging neckbreaker off the top was a great example of an awesome spot with real added danger; a swinging neckbreaker off the top already looks cool, but with a crowbar being held around a guy's throat? Brutal. D'Angelo taking out Dunne's mouth guard before dropping him was a great touch. Waller exploded Knight through a table with a huge elbowdrop, Ciampa dropped Bron with an Air Raid Crash onto a trash can, and they all did a nice job of escalating the match to build to these bigger and bigger spots. They filled in a lot of time with just fighting, instead of lying around or pausing for Moments, and the chained finish looked good. 

I kept expecting Johnny Gargano to bring a lot of his specific type of dumb face drama, but it never came. Instead he did a lot of things that just made sense, like just grabbing onto Hayes after taking a shot to the balls, holding on for dear life to give Ciampa enough time to level Hayes with a running knee. We got to see Bron stand tall at the end - the absolute correct ending - as he speared both Ciampa and Hayes through a table to put an end to the Fairytale Ending, then gave Ciampa a nightmare ending with a sick press slam powerslam. We're not going to get blood in a WarGames, but this was the only one in the last 5 years that actually focused on fighting instead of drama, a classically simple Next Gen vs. Old Blood storyline in lieu of bad acting, and that combined with strong build and execution made it stand out as the clear best WWE WarGames since the concept returned. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2021 Ongoing MOTY List: Bron vs. Gargano Ladder Match

22. Bron Breakker vs. Johnny Gargano NXT 11/30

ER: This was only our 6th Bron match and first Bron gimmick match, coming after them foolishly having him lose to Ciampa. I was already groaning picturing this absolute beast - who has the clenched jaw and crazed eyes of SLADE but with the DNA of a Steiner - doing derpy forearm exchanges with Johnny Wrestling, but they shut my stupid mouth by working this the exact way they should have. Most of Gargano's offense couldn't move Breakker an inch, so as the match went on Johnny had to lure Bron into some misses, and Bron is a big guy who can miss big. When Gargano would stack his offense while using the ladder, he could move Bron a bit, but only keep him down for so long. The slingshot spear alone wasn't going to move the guy, but the slingshot spear and a ladder getting shoved into his face at least stunned him enough so that Gargano could hit a dive, and the dive connected in a way that sent Bron ass over crown over the announce table. I loved when Gargano would pull slightly ahead and revert to Johnny Wrestling mode and how it never worked, like when Bron literally walked through a rebound lariat as if it was nothing more than a light chop, which, well, makes a lot of sense. The stuff that didn't look like it would affect Bron, didn't affect him, and before long he was tossing Gargano with some violent as hell belly to belly suplexes. 

Gargano changes strategy midway and it's when the match starts getting great, with him focusing on luring the beat into misses: sending him teeth first into the top step of the ladder with a drop toehold, and suckering him into missing a big elbowdrop on the ladder, Bron bouncing off the ladder and landing on his head. It was never enough to keep him down long, and so, Gargano started tightening things up. He hit a series of superkicks that were some of the best I've seen Gargano throw, and the one that sent Bron down was the best shot of the bunch. They got a great camera angle on it and Gargano's boot hooked perfectly up under Breakker's jaw. I also loved how they kept the climbing to a minimum. Gargano tried it early and mostly gave it up after getting knocked off a couple times. When they did climb up at the same time, Gargano hit Bron with the fucking edge of the briefcase up top. This was not a simple flat side thump, he swung that case corner first into Bron's face. A flat sided thump wouldn't have believably slowed the man, but a corner of a case swung at someone's face would stop anyone. It stays perfectly within the story of the match, too, as it knocks Bron down but doesn't really slow him down, as he drags Gargano back down and sticks him through the mat with a powerslam that would make papa proud. A great ladder match that didn't hew closely to the last few years of WWE ladder match structure, this was the best way to work a ladder match with these two specific guys. Too often you see two guys shoved into a House Formula that doesn't suit them, and this was a success because the two actually felt unbound. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

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