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

Read more!

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

Read more!

NXT TakeOver: Stand and Deliver Night Two 4/8/21

Night One turned into a really great show after we got past the first two matches. I'm less excited about the Night Two lineup, but they got a lot of good will from me after the last 80 minutes of Night One. 

Santos Escobar vs. Jordan Devlin

ER: I think modern ladder matches have done passed me by. There hasn't been enough "new" done to the format or match layout to keep me interested. On paper I thought this was a cool pairing, but in execution it didn't work for me. You know there are going to be a couple of cool spots, and there were, but these matches are just designed to be 3 minute YouTube highlight reels at this point. That's fine if that's their purpose, but it doesn't make for an interesting match. Escobar seemed off through the first half of this, moving through spots real tentatively, like he was overly focused on hitting his marks, and it made the opening exchanges look really bad. Devlin had a few big bumps, like his fun one bouncing from a ladder to the top rope to the floor, or that nasty bump getting shoved backwards off a ladder into another ladder. We got a nice dive that plastered both guys into a ladder, and Devlin's moonsault off the ladder looked great, but took an eternity to set up. And "looked great, took an eternity to set up" is a great masthead for WWE ladder matches at this point. This was very disappointing, would have been better off with a normal singles match. 

Candice LeRae/Indi Hartwell vs. Shotzi Blackheart/Ember Moon

ER: The Dusty Classic was filled with great matches, and I'm all for this because I would love a serious tag division. And while the match itself got a bit messy at times, I liked the energy and they never let the messiness divert from the match. Now, it is true that one of my favorite things about the Dusty Classic was how focused a lot of the tags felt, like each team was bringing in their own style, and this match felt more like WWE Great Match Style, which isn't nearly as interesting. Dusty Classic had a lot of personality, this was more cookie cutter "plug in fast workers" style, and I think the personality aspect is what made those matches shine. Indi and Candice felt like a typical workrate team here, not at all like how they've been the past several months. Ember had a couple fun sequences, got an unexpected laugh out of me when she finished a strike combo with a Suck It. Shotzi will always be Shotzi, and that leads us to Shotzi spectacularly splitting the uprights on a tope con giro. I have no idea how it happened, but Shotzi has this magical ability to find no bodies on dives, and she somehow flies right in between Indi and Candice and straight into the barricade. This felt too rushed, never got the time to settle in and get anyone isolated, felt way too get in-get out the whole match. A couple double teams looked good, like the Indi/Candice pancake slam. Ember's double team Eclipse was a bit too ambitious, not sure it really worked in practice, but Shotzi's big senton landed heavy and I loved the way Indi sold it. 

Bronson Reed vs. Johnny Gargano

ER: I've been really loving NXT the past several months, and it's because they've gotten away from the house style that ruined much of 2020. This match went back to that style and it sucked. Reed used to work as a big guy, but now that they don't have Keith Lee on the roster it's like they needed a big man to work 50-50 exchanges with a 160 pound man. It sucks so bad, and we all knew it was going to suck 20 seconds in when Gargano hit a sloppy headscissors and Reed missed a beat before doing a cartwheel. The cartwheel looked entirely disconnected from Gargano's headscissors, and Beth Phoenix screaming "SHADES OF BAM BAM BIGELOW" really hammered home how shitty this was going to be. Last night we got an insanely good women's main event, with Raquel Gonzalez doing an excellent job of selling for someone so much smaller than she, and here's Reed working as Gargano's equal the entire match. I hate it. This brought back all of my least favorite parts of NXT house style, the mirror exchanges, the selling entirely disconnected from the moves that each man just took, and the stupid offense that spins somebody into position to hit their own offense. Reed is not good at working equal to Gargano, so you knew they were going to throw out the stupidest tropes of the style. Was there a poison rana? Brother you bet there was, and brother you better believe that it looked like Reed leaping backwards onto his own head. Gargano was just dangling off Reed's neck, hanging there, no momentum, and Reed just threw himself over. Reed was always a second behind on every exchange like this, the entire match. Did we get a superkick exchange? Brother you KNOW we did! Reed hits a tope on Theory (he's a big man, but look at him MOVE!!) and I cannot tell you how uninterested I am in modern big man "moving like a cruiserweight" wrestling at this point. I thought Reed's crucifix bomb from the ramp into the ring looked great, but it meant nothing whatsoever because this is throwback NXT house style baybee! That move should be a finisher, not a forgotten footnote in an uninteresting match. You're a big round man, think of all the cool big round wrestlers you could be, Reed! Instead, he's like my old boss's dog who was 50 pounds and was scared of 15 pound dogs, like he had no idea what size he was. 

Karrion Kross vs. Finn Balor

ER: Feeling bad for Ray Rowe here, as they gave his whole look to the new bald guy. And it wasn't going to take much of a match to look better than the trash that came before, and it was fine! I can't really get into the Kross character, still really don't know what I'm supposed to think about him. But the Reed match set a low bar, and it looked like gold coming after. I liked how Kross actually recognized that he was larger than Balor. I personally always know if someone is larger than I am, or if I am larger than they are, but a lot of people in NXT do not know that! So when Balor locked up with Kross and Kross threw him down on the mat, I thought "Now there is a man who recognizes when he is larger than another person." And that's why this match is a win! Balor didn't play total underdog, but didn't play equal, and that's important. I like how Kross threw him around, dug how it looked like Balor was really getting upended on every big Saito suplex. We didn't go overboard with shocked faces and kickouts, no surprises whatsoever. It was just a bigger guy throwing a smaller guy around and eventually beating him, and that's all it takes to stand out in my brain right now. 

Kyle O'Reilly vs. Adam Cole

ER: This match is unsanctioned. It's on Peacock, broadcast from their own Performance Center, with commentary just like any other match, but someone back there does not agree with it and will not sanction it. Men fell dangerously into ladders an hour ago, and that was sanctionable, but one of these men is now wearing a denim vest and we cannot sanction that. The problem with giving a couple like this too many toys to use in a match, is they get too cute with their toy usage. We can't just have a couple guys braining each other with a chain, we need to have one of them bent at the waist for an eternity while the other takes forever to wrap his boot in a chain. Just hit Cole with the fucking chain, Kyle! You're holding the chain! Hit him with it! You knew this shit was going to be unbearably long, and even though it was UNSANCTIONED I wish we could have sanctioned some time limits. Save the fans from the unspeakable actions these gladiators were going to put themselves through. We go through all the same tired stuff that they always go through whenever any indy fed goes through an unsanctioned match, other than the actual ring being taken apart. You know what makes a brawl interesting? Blood and guys beating the shit out of each other. If you have a chain, you can just hit a guy with a chain. But the spots get way to cute way too fast, and you know these two are absolutely killing each other out there, but it's the worst combination of painful violence and cornball violence. I knew they were going through the ramp, I knew just knew it. It was either going to be the ring taken apart or the ramp crashing through, and I'm most shocked that it wasn't both. There were parts of this I liked, with my favorite spot being Cole grabbing the chain and clotheslining O'Reilly with it. But this was predictably long, and had too much over thought out bullshit. There's no excuse to go 40 minutes in a match like this. Going that long makes the punishing things you are doing come off LESS punishing. Cut this in half, focus on the violence rather than the humanity, and then maybe you have something. 

ER: Well, this was easily the worst of the two nights. This show was bad, not even sure what match I would most recommend to someone (probably the tag match? It was fast paced and didn't step on its own dick), but a lot of this show was a MAJOR step back. This show was a microcosm of every single thing that I hated about 19/20 NXT. I've been loving 2021 NXT so far, it's my favorite weekly show, and this show was like they decided that EVERYTHING they've done this year hasn't been working, and throwing it into reverse to bring us back into the worst era of NXT history. Absolutely terrible. 

Read more!

NXT TakeOver: WarGames 2020 Live Blog

I don't think we've gotten a good WarGames match from NXT...yet. That said, I think this looks like a really good card on paper, and I'm excited for both WarGames matches, really like how both teams match up. 

Toni Storm/Dakota Kai/Raquel Gonzalez/Candice LeRae vs. Ember Moon/Rhea Ripley/Io Shirai/Shotzi Blackheart

ER: Shotzi comes out in her new deluxe tank, with TCB on the front (I assume that means Tankin' Care of Business?). I like Dakota Kai to start the match, but I don't think Ember Moon was a great choice. Ember Moon is someone who always does a disservice to her own offense, because she chains it in a way that you see her opponents brushing things off quickly just to take something else. She has a very good low superkick to a kneeling opponent, but it's always done just to set up something else, even when it looks better than a lot of her other offense. I don't think her chaining things through the first 5 is a good thing, but I liked Kai a lot. Some of her offense isn't as plausible, but she uses her thrust kick wisely and it always looks good. 

And somehow they make the rookie mistake of letting the babyfaces add a man first. WHY would you voluntarily set up Dakota Kai as de facto babyface? It's the easiest mistake to avoid under the specific booking parameters of a WarGames!! Commentary keeps trying to think of things to say, and every single thing just makes it sound like Kai is a valiant babyface. "This is the hardest 3 minutes of Dakota Kai's life" or "you remember Kai was out of action with a knee injury", just everything they said about her pointed out how hard she was fighting through this genuine disadvantage. I don't know how you lay this match out and decide to make Dakota Kai the top babyface, but this is what they did, and Kai is putting in the best babyface performance of the match. She gets powerbombed down the cage by Moon, who then hits a sick crossbody into her. But Kai fights back, and soon she's down two to one, but she jumps on Shotzi's back and tries to fight off the unfair double team, gets dropped with a great Doomsday Device missile dropkick, but somehow fights back from that! Later she gets beat up by Rhea Ripley the second she entered the cage, eating a ton of short arm clotheslines as the commentary continues to struggle with the undeniable fact that Kai is the babyface here. Shotzi was so incredible in the build up to this match, and she is the most afterthought person in the entire match. This makes no sense!!

They are also working this WarGames the least interesting way: Pretending the cage is not there. The knock on a lot of these NXT WarGames is that they are normal matches that happened to be surrounded by a big cage. This is that. Kai takes a nasty spill into the cage 2 minutes in, and the rest of the match is as if the cage is only there to obstruct our view. And since you can't bleed, it means the match becomes an exercise in Singapore cane shots, which is not as interesting to me as someone getting their face smashed into chain link. Ripley eventually takes a bump into the cage 20 minutes later, and Io Shirai does a Great Sasuke tribute by flying off the cage into everyone while entirely in a trash can. Raquel Gonzalez makes a great catch in the middle of it all, really absorbing all of a tiny person wearing a trash can. Kai even gets walking tall moments down the stretch!! It's amazing! She hits a killer double stomp off the top, flatting Shirai under that trash can, then triumphantly beats down Ember Moon and stands tall with a chair. Things do finally get good and heated after, with Moon hitting a pretty disgusting Eclipse, with Kai whipping her neck across the back of a chair. I didn't think Moon was doing that move anymore (don't think I've seen it since she came back), and it's cool when someone breaks out something big like that in a big match, and I like that Moon crashing through a chair taking Kai out of the match also took her out of the match. LeRae kicks a trash can lid into Ripley's face, Shotzi sentons LeRae off a ladder, Shirai eats a Gonzalez powerbomb through a ladder, tons of great stuff down the stretch. But I gotta say I'm pretty stunned how marginalized Shotzi was in this match, for a match that really felt like it was announced and built as HER match. I don't know if anybody would have picked Gonzalez pinning Shirai for the finish of this, but most of this was brutally backwards. 

Tommaso Ciampa vs. Timothy Thatcher

ER: I've really been digging Thatcher bullying guys on NXT, but I like when we get big match Thatcher. I think a lot of this was really good, and I bought into a lot of the attacks from both. Thatcher really looked like he was choking the life out of Thatcher (Ciampa's head veins are a gift when it comes to selling a sleeper), and Ciampa's bully choke down the stretch with Ciampa attacking Thatcher's freshly bloodied ear was great. Rhea Ripley got an earring ripped out of her ear against Io Shirai, then competed in a WarGames without a drop of blood, and then immediately following WarGames Thatcher gets his ear ripped open somehow. Ciampa's back neck is a compelling match story for me, and Thatcher is a guy who can do painful looking things to a neck. So I bought into Ciampa's neck selling and also loved when Thatcher would whip his head back with uppercuts. I do think the match went way too long and really didn't need to be worked as an epic, didn't need stuff like Thatcher bumping for 6-8 straight clotheslines (things like that felt transported from a different match), and I think Thatcher should have won here. I don't want them to fall into the temptation of turning Thatcher into a shoot guy who only picks on guys that can't defend themselves but never uses those skills to beat better guys. 

Dexter Lumis vs. Cameron Grimes

ER: Trevor Lee was someone who always wanted to work long matches and big title defenses in CWF Mid-Atlantic, and he seems like a guy who would get into trying to have interesting matches within somewhat limited match gimmicks. So far his performances in a cinematic match and blindfold match have been appropriately stoogey but perhaps too silly. And he brings strong stooging to this strap match, but just like the WarGames match earlier in the evening, it is a gimmick match that keeps pretending like the gimmick isn't there. Long stretches of the match are spent without them tied to a strap, and I was actually interested in how they were going to work in turnbuckle touching until realizing that of course it would just be a normal pinfall match. The best parts of this are Grimes taking a hard beating around the ring. He did a really good job at getting dragged and flung by the strap, including two painful bumps into the protective hockey arena siding, got pulled nicely into an uppercut, did a great job of falling while being yanked. My favorite bit of Grimes offense was when he just punched Lumis in the eye, and Lumis sold it like a guy who just got punched in the eye. They worked a few good spots around getting tangled up in a strap, and I loved when Lumis wrapped Grimeses' ankles and yoinked the strap, sending Crimes crashing head first into a chair. The finish submission looked good, like Grimes getting hogtied into a choke, overall liked what Grimes tried to do with the gimmick. 

Damian Priest vs. Johnny Gargano vs. Leon Ruff

ER: I really liked the two quick Ruff/Gargano matches I've seen (I'm a couple weeks behind on NXT TV, not sure what happened right before this show), and would have preferred seeing a PPV level Gargano/Ruff singles. I am also a guy who isn't a big Priest fan. However, having one much larger guy in there could make for a fun dynamic. The story of Priest not wanting to bother with Ruff because he only cared about taking his pound of flesh from Gargano was strong, even though Gargano's work with Priest is nowhere near as well done as Gargano's work with Ruff. All the Gargano/Ruff portions were good, but the Gargano/Priest stuff had awkward timing on several spots (including stuff like Gargano having to redo a tornado DDT spot, and a silly missed ear clap from Gargano after Johnny ducked early). Ruff eats a big razor's edge through one of the safety shields, and I really wish I could hear a real crowd during his eventual comeback. I think he would really be connecting with fans and I think the Gargano angle would play great in front of real crowds. I really wanted that Leon Ruff/Mikey Whipwreck story to keep going. Ruff keeping the title is could have given him a little more legitimacy, leaves you with a Gargano/Priest #1 contender match while moving Ruff onto someone else for a bit, and instead they just have Gargano win the title back. Ruff's involvement still felt like the best thing about this to me, and right up to that spike DDT that ended him he made everything look good. This was better than I was expecting as they dealt well with getting the third man out of there, but I also didn't love a lot of the Priest/Gargano stuff. The Scream mask guys were the absolute pits and killed any chance at the match being actually good, and I can't get excited in any way for an Austin Theory higher power situation. Nobody wants that. 

Undisputed Era (Roderick Strong/Kyle O'Reilly/Bobby Fish/Adam Cole) vs. Pat McAfee/Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch/Pete Dunne

ER: Pete Dunne moves to Florida and within a couple months he's already getting that Crossfit body. He also might have jaundice? But I liked the opening with O'Reilly and Dunne, thought their mathwork had several fun scrambles, and had nasty things like Dunne kneeling on O'Reilly's arm while attacking the body. This WarGames is already so much better laid out than the women's match, with McAfee doing an awesome job being the guy acting like he wants in that cage, and Lorcan being an excellent choice to help Dunne dismantle O'Reilly. Lorcan dropping KOR with a half nelson suplex before Dunne runs in and kicks KOR's arm out from under him is a great asshole move, and seeing Dunne and Lorcan work as real assholes is great. Lorcan is also great at eating offense, so when Bobby Fish runs in Lorcan is expert at taking the UE double teams (I especially liked him getting pump kicked into a suplex). Weapons in WarGames is pretty stupid and unnecessary (you are in a cage you should act like you're in a cage and use it) but the cricket bat is a more interesting weapon that other played out stuff we've seen. Burch smacking O'Reilly in the bad arm with a cricket bat at least gives off a good sound. But we also get way too much table set up. I do not need all of these tables set up!m You have a whole cage, use the cage! WarGames matches do not need long spot set-ups.

Pat McAfee is a real genuine standout, a personality so strong that it only highlights the personality flaws in every other person in the match. It's incredible how much he gets about what he's supposed to be doing in there, and having him hit a moonsault through a table is the best kind of icing on that cake. The home stretch of the match had good energy, but also a lot of misspent energy? All of Adam Cole's offense runs looked bad, and the best use of Cole was when McAfee clipped his knee. Also, Wade Barrett refers to Pat McAfee as "one of the dirtiest players in NFL history" and...I guess I would really need to see footage of a punter who is also a dirty player. That sounds like a hysterical character (that Pat McAfee assuredly was not). I HATE the Undisputed Era "fight between the two cages" trope in these WarGames match. How does a team with guys I like keep doing things that I dislike? And this thing just goes WAYYYYYY too long. Way too many comebacks, way too many "peak" moments to build to, soooo much fat that could have been trimmed. It just felt like they kept building to the same big moment over and over again, like we were trapped in a loop and nobody knew how to actually finish the match. They build to McAfee and Cole alone, everyone else laid out, several times, and it never finishes anything. Every big move would just get a kick out, and then everyone would lie around for awhile before doing it all over again. McAfee completely knocks the wind out of himself when nobody decides to catch him on his bonkers cage swanton, Lorcan and Burch pull off a sick Doomsday Device, McAfee kicks out of Adam Cole's bunny hop flipping piledriver, everyone in the match lies in one part of the ring while Dunne and O'Reilly fight and also refuse to get pinned. This whole thing was 20 minutes too long and they kept building to things they had already built to. I like both of these teams, and like both of them against each other. But this was TOO MUCH of them against each other. I was totally burned out by the home stretch of this match, because it felt like we got too much wasted time and it felt like they were needlessly filling time. No main event should feel like it's just filling time. Still, Pat McAfee is a star. 

This was a disappointing show. But, up until the part of the main that started taking too long, I was still really enjoying this show. It was an underwhelming yet entertaining show, until it felt like I was trapped in an endless series of big encounter kickouts. There were plenty of strong individual performances, in fact every match at minimum had one real standout performance. So we end up with a show that underdelivered on quality, while also having no true bad matches and thus having an entertaining floor. You can't really call that a win, but it's not a terrible loss. 

Read more!

NXT Halloween Havoc Live Blog 10/28/20

I know I usually write up AEW on Wednesday nights, but the Halloween Havoc gimmick worked on me. NXT roster (or the style?) is pretty dreadful at this point and I've been enjoying AEW's Wednesday product much more. But a good gimmick is a good gimmick and they suckered me in, so I'm hoping for the best! Shotzi was the perfect choice for host, and considering that I first knew her as a girl on a local Bay Area Saturday night horror movie show (Creepy KOFY Movie Time!), this is her returning to her true horror roots. 

I am, however, disappointed that Man Mountain Rock has lost a bunch of weight. I mean, good for him, there's a reason why Pig Champion isn't the coolest super fat guitarist anymore. 

Damian Priest vs. Johnny Gargano

ER: I was hoping for one of the truly stupid stipulation matches on Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal, and Devil's Playground sounds like it's just a No DQ Falls Count Anywhere match, depriving us of a blindfold match. The match had me and lost me and had me and lost me. The pluses were that Gargano is a better opponent for Priest than a lot of other guys Priest has been matching up with lately, as Gargano takes big high bumps for all of Priest's "Edge working as Test" offense. Edge's offense always looked terrible unless he was against someone who makes offense look good, and Priest is similar. Gargano's high bumps probably would have been enough to save this, and the big bumps continued all around ringside and the stage area. Johnny's big bumps into and over the stairs were my favorite, but they did a good job sprawling into tables and Halloween sets. Sadly, there was a lot of cool stuff that would have played great on full screen, but happened during picture in picture, like Gargano getting kicked straight through the side of a haunted house. Really thought this was pretty strong until the went too long. Priest can be a daredevil bumper, but there's no many times where he see him looking at his bump before he takes it, getting ready like a sprinter at the start of a race. And the longer this goes the more stupid little things there were, like Gargano hitting a sweet sliced bread on the ring steps, only to see Priest get up from that almost immediately. That, and played out weapons stuff like "holding trash can in front of my face waiting to be kicked" just has no real place in 2020 wrestling. Get more creative with weapon spots! I did love Shotzi cackling offscreen after Priest got tombstoned (literally) into a tomb, but then I wondered why someone waited so long to interfere on Gargano's behalf. If I was Gargano, and knew Ghostface was going to come out and attack Priest, I would be pissed that I had to take a 15 minute beating before the guy came out to interfere in a No DQ match. 

Pat McAfee is not very spooky, but he's better at promos that a lot of NXT people (maybe he can give Ember Moon some tips, as best I can tell based on her return promo a week or so ago it seems like she's never performed anything in front of any size crowd before) but you gotta get the new tag champs back on TV. And align them with a British guy who is not a nonce (they should take phones and social media away from Dunne and Burch just in case). 

I should have known WWE would go to their one nostalgia joke of "have name from past return for 10 seconds and do something somewhat resembling a thing they used to do when they were a TV personality". So they play Badstreet USA, and Michale Hayes gets out of a van looking nothing like a Freebird, and instead looking like a paunchy jazz musician from Eric Andre's band. 

Jake Atlas vs. Santos Escobar

ER: This was a hot cruiser sprint, and a great way to make Santos Escobar look like a real star. I don't think it was at Atlas's expense either, as Legado del Fantasma factored in and he still got a visual pin. Atlas leans into Escobar's coolest stuff and really makes things pop, and Escobar's running shotgun kick at the bell made me think this was going to be a 5 second match. I like when a match starts with a big nearfall and has someone basically on the ropes trying to catch up 5 seconds in. So Atlas plays catch up and it gives him a good opportunity to bump for Escobar's strikes, and the nearfall off the cartwheel DDT was great. It's pretty amazing he makes the cartwheel DDT look good every time, it looks really spectacular, like something you'd expect from 1997 Rey. Speaking of Mysterio, Escobar is wearing these sick throwback Mysterio tights, same purple color as Rey's Halloween Havoc '97 tights but not the full bodysuit, instead Rey'd Riddler pattern but with S's instead of ?'s. This is some great gear. LdF help get Escobar's foot on the rope after that great DDT, and Atlas hits a big tope con hilo into them before getting blindsided back in the ring. Killer sprint, something that feels like it should make a great rematch. 

Oh shit I didn't realize we'd get costume changes from Shotzi! The skin jumpsuit to start was great, but I obviously dig the Elvira homage. Feels like it needed her actually getting a couple of deadpan Elvira jokes in though instead of just screaming. You know, here's a pair (gesture), and now for a scare! (cut to haunted house match)

Haunted House of Terror

ER: I didn't realize this was going to be a cinematic, but Grimes is pretty good at filling the time with amusing running commentary. I laughed pretty good when a rusty trike rolled by and he yelled out "Hey Lumis, you got kids!?" It's not easy to stumble through a mostly empty early 90s Florida home, and I think Grimes did it? The zombie stuff was obviously silly, but I thought he interacted really well with the Samara girl and the brief interactions between he and Lumis were great. Lumis is perfect as this specific horror villain, because he looks like a Defend Your Home divorced cop who would absolutely love to play out some Jason tendencies. So stuff like him popping through the window with a choke or hitting an uppercut (while the camera gave us the angle of a child watching the fight through a cracked open closet), and apparently this will continue throughout the night...

Rhea Ripley vs. Raquel Gonzalez

ER: This match kicked a ton of ass. This is the kind of match that would have killed in front of a big crowd. Gonzalez has not looked like a long match worker so far in NXT. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen her in a singles match that went longer than 5 minutes, but this match was compelling from bell to bell. My brain got tricked midway through this match into thinking that it was the main event, because they worked this match like it was the most important match of the night, and it really felt like a main event. Ripley is able to work bigger than she actually is, making up the size difference, and Gonzalez basically comes off as if she was Rhea Ripley at the size they want to bill Ripley at. There are a lot of strikes in this match, and there was really only one brief section I didn't like, and thought the rest of it played great. Ripley was working body shots the whole night (a smart strategy of cutting that size gap, targeting nothing but Raquel's ribs until Gonzalez is naturally hunching down to her level) and both had cool moments of swinging hard at the other's head. You knew this match was reaching the next level after a standing clothesline exchange that saw Rhea throw a couple of the hardest lariats ever seen in a WWE women's match, really made it look like she was bouncing a baseball bat off Gonzalez's chest. Gonzalez got in one of her own late in the match, and also caught Ripley on a cannonball and powerbombed her into the railing and onto the floor. And they kept doing big slams and throwing bombs, most of the sequences looking strong, really kept me hooked the entire match. The nearfalls were strong, they smacked each other around a bunch, and honestly this was the first time Rhea has felt like a big deal to me since the Charlotte feud mercifully ended. 

Haunted House of Terror (conclusion)

ER: We got a few shots of Grimes running his way back to the PC, where he is finally confronted in ring by Lumis and all of the zombie ghosts. I assume they are the ghosts of people whom Lumis's divorced cop murdered and then torched the evidence. Each murder likely came after he saw Sheila going on *another* date with that nerd shrink who they had gone to for couple's therapy. 

Candice LeRae vs. Io Shirai

ER: They are clearly using several chairs in this match, and yet we were promised Tables, Ladders, and SCARES. It wasn't Shotzi doing a joke in a catsuit, either, because they referred to the Scares on commentary. There was never any mention of Chairs. Those weren't supposed to be there. They promised Scares, and they only delivered one back of novelty severed limbs in a bag. This made is seem like they were still several other Scares left to come, as advertised. They clearly planned one Scare. Why would you only plan one Scare in the beginning and nothing else? It doesn't make sense. There was a lot of weapon set up and some improbable bad climbing, but there were also stupid bumps! The match ended with a bunch of bad Candice climbing, and then Candice deciding to take a 10+ foot fall off a ladder KNEES FIRST through a ladder. Whyyyyyy. Not long before that she got suplexed over the back of a Chair in a way most people will never get to experience. Shirai hit a running knee lift right into a ladder, both took suplexes on the floor and bumps onto chairs, Candice smacked Io across the jaw with a laptop, they went through tables on a neckbreaker, Io splat landed on a moonsault, all of that stuff was great. The match felt like the main event of a big show, and that's in its favor. 

Read more!

NXT TakeOver 31 Live (Until 49ers) Blog 10/4/20

I'll level with you, this card does not excite me. Phil asked me yesterday if there was anyone I even liked currently wrestling in NXT, and I actually had to think about who that would be. The brand is really stale to me right now, and the few people I have been still tuning in for are not even on this show. The brand was great when there was frequent promotion turnover, but ever since it began being promoted as its own thing it has stagnated and seemingly run out of ideas. Maybe guys on the roster realize things have been blah, maybe they take this opportunity to put on a show that will get people talking. I don't care one iota about the AEW/NXT online feud, but maybe a few of the guys on this show DO care about it and want the internet to buzz about it for a few days. Or, maybe it will be the uninteresting show that it looks like on paper, and I will only have myself to blame.

Also I saw HHH called this new performance center something like "The ultimate heavy metal soundstage" and I am curious see what that means. From Damian Priest's entrance it looks like they have a large tron and a screen wrapping the lengths of at least a couple sides of the room. I'm more excited that there are at least some people (in masks) around the hockey rink baseball backstop like guardrail shields. We still have the home viewer screens in the majority of the crowd, but down front is actual people, and it's good having actual people there. On commentary is Sebastian Gorka.


Damian Priest vs. Johnny Gargano

ER: I don't think Priest is a bad wrestler, in that I think he has the tools to be a compelling wrestler, but he would have to be completely broken down and retrained to not be 2020 Edge. Like Edge, Priest is someone who loves to work even sized with small guys, and it comes off like a large dog who doesn't understand that he's a large dog and gets bossed around by tiny aggressive dogs. Priest is 6'5 and 250, similar size to Edge, and yet he works matches like he's a bad version of Billy Kidman working Ultimo Dragon. And I do not like this match. It came off like a modern update of a Lance Storm/Jerry Lynn match from ECW. 20 years ago that was a match and match type that felt fresh and was done well by then. But it's not a style I want to see in 2020. There are other things from that era that I'd rather seen updated than that specific counter based evenly worked style with some extra shitty If-Nova-Was-Taller embellishments from Priest. Priest's tope con hilo looked good, and a couple of the reversals do work, Gargano takes a hard powerbomb on the apron, and a couple of the nearfalls were effectively placed, and Gargano's low blow kick leading right to the finish looked great, but overall I just didn't like this.

Velveteen Dream vs. Kushida

ER: Dream is dressed like Doc Brown to counter Kushida's McFly, which sounds like something I'd shit on but it's also a fact that I went to a high school dance as George McFly. It was a Hollywood theme dance and you were supposed to come as a celebrity or movie character, and I had found a neat vintage suit jacket at the Salvation Army, and a character with big nerdy black glasses was easy for me to aim for. Now, I suppose I was also 16 years old, and not a grown man playing cosplay dress up as one of my last appearances before pressure mounts to have me punished for being a nonce, so I think I can still shit on Dream.

But I thought their match was really good, albeit perhaps a bit too long. The chemistry between them was stronger than I expected, and the strength was that there was an impressive (and unexpected) amount of struggle to everything that happened, so no parts of it felt like a competitive partners dance. Kushida kept going after that arm for the hoverboard lock, and I liked his tenacity. Dream kept using energy to fight back in cool ways, like refusing to go down on drop toehold and making Kushida work for moves like that. It looks so much cooler when Dream struggles and fights before getting dragged down, makes all of Kushida's passes look fought for and earned. I loved how Kushida rolled through to an armlock after finally getting the drop toehold. There was a lot like that, and Kushida built to some vicious stuff like kicking the ring steps while Dream's arm was pinned between stairs and ring, or catching Dream in various triangles that always felt important. This had the feel of a match that was writing Dream off for a bit, which is a thing that I think will only continue to be demanded. The finish felt like a big FU but a cool finish, with Kushida taking working the arm and Dream powering to his feet for a dream valley driver, only Kushida doesn't let go of the arm and gets the immediate tap. Kushida attacked him too long after the match though, and Dream was doing this weird theatrical screaming and crying. It felt like Kushida turning heel and them making Dream a sympathetic babyface, but I hope that's not what they're doing. I hope it was them just writing Dream off TV. We'll see I guess.

Isaiah "Swerve" Scott vs. Santos Escobar

ER: This had a lot of moments I liked even though I think a lot of Scott's embellishments are really annoying. The match really came alive when Scott hit a one man dive train, and that Fosbury Flop was a cool highlight of that. I like Escobar's stable and would like to see them do things other than feud with Scott, but this match felt like the best case scenario for the pairing. Scott's big stuff looked good (one of Escobar's strengths is taking offense, and that shines here) and Escobar got to plaster Scott with his great tope. This one also could have used an editor, as I think it would have been more effective under 15 minutes, but I also think they did a good job at filling those 15 minutes. Ashante Adonis came back for (I believe) the first time in NXT since his name change from Tehuti Miles, and I could see him having fun matches on this roster. He's a guy who is low on offense, but works a similar style to other offense deprived wrestlers who I enjoy (i.e. cruiserweight Stevie Richards is more interesting to me than Isaiah Scott). I'm glad Escobar retained and would love to see his group presented as an actual threat, even pushed to the level of Undisputed Era.

Candice LeRae vs. Io Shirai

ER: I think this one had the right energy and built in a nice exciting way, but the Wife Guy Johnny stuff coming out for the finish and bumping around like he was on a trampoline while making shocked Gargano face was something the match really didn't need. The ref bump to set up the Gargano new referee silliness was inventive and fun, with Shirai eating knees on a moonsault and letting her momentum carry over and basically Pele kick the ref. The ref bounces to the floor and LeRae's curb stomp looked really gross, mashing Shirai's face into the mat. I think the Johnny stuff really took away from all the drama they had built in the match, as it came off cartoony in a way that the match hadn't been. I liked Candice here more than I did the last time these two had a big singles match (last year at TakeOver Toronto). She kept taking me out of that match with weird selling and getting into position too early for Shirai, and she worked this better as an aggressive heel. I don't think Shirai was as strong in this one as that one, but she made the big moments count and took offense nicely. Still, I thought some of the 50/50 stuff in the middle lost track of things, and then when they won me back Gargano took me back out of things, plus the finish looked a little ugly. Toni Storm and Ember Moon returned in two different post match segments, but it's really weird to bring back two people to the same division in segments immediately following each other. It kind of lessens the impact of both, although I can't deny that Toni Storm is a welcome return. Anything that gets a little less Tegan Nox blandness off the weekly show.

Kyle O'Reilly vs. Finn Balor

ER: Watching this one got delayed by me watching a mildly crushing 49ers loss, with an uninspiring Nick Mullens performance paving the way for an exciting but ultimately futile comeback from CJ Beathard. George Kittle is a more fun to watch wrestler than anybody on TakeOver tonight. I want to see Timothy Thatcher work a shoot style match with Kittle, based around Thatcher being unable to take down Kittle but being persistent about it. Brandon Aiyuk hit a ridiculous leapfrog hurdle for a touchdown, the coolest and best utilized leapfrog spot I've seen tonight. But the Niners lost and this match will now lift my spirits.

And this one won me over early, overcoming it's NXT Main Event Epic Drama layout with compelling selling and nice targeted attacks. Kyle O'Reilly put on one of his strongest singles match performances that I've seen, coming off like Bryan Danielson working like a 2001 NJPW kickpads junior. We get the cool story of O'Reilly exacerbating a Balor shoulder injury early, leaving him susceptible to a near match ending attack on a different limb. Both guys hit the strikes and offense harder the longer the match goes, justifying the overly long near half hour match length. It felt like things really ramped up throughout and never skipped ahead at any points. O'Reilly has a cool set of rolling double underhook suplexes and some knees, but gets a rib kicked in by a great solebutt and then run sternum first into the turnbuckles. From here on out O'Reilly is gamely selling a rib injury and while it was dramatic I also thought it was effective. O'Reilly had a couple of big comebacks (I especially loved him dumping Balor with a real high bridged Regalplex on Balor's neck) but Balor did cool things like work an actual persuasive abdominal stretch and stomp the hell out of O'Reilly's guts.

Both guys bleed from the mouth, and there's some some strong camera shots of O'Reilly stuck in a nice sharpshooter while blood cuts down his cheek. They also do some nice close up magic, as the closest the camera ever got to an O'Reilly knee strike it happened to be the hardest knee strike he hit all night. Finn stomps him in the ribs more, and O'Reilly fights back with a cool standing guillotine that looked nice and snug. O'Reilly played well as a lower rung FUTEN guy who hangs for 13 minutes against Katsumi Usuda. O'Reilly catches Balor with a couple of dragon screws over the ropes, and then hits a totally killer kneedrop off the top rope directly onto the back of Balor's thigh. O'Reilly's kneebar he locks on is some righteous Volk Han shit. He really twists and bend the ankle and when Balor tries to kick him away he grabs that leg and twists it violently over Balor's other leg. The kneebar was so good it made me suddenly start rooting for O'Reilly to win the title here, wanting Finn to tap. That kneebar got me Immediately invested in seeing a specific result, made me spontaneously root for a guy I've never been super high on, and that kind of moment is special. Balor doesn't tap, and he does finally make the ropes no matter how much I wanted him to tap. And, somewhat disappointingly, while his double stomps to finally slam the window shut on O'Reilly's ribs looked really great, I wish more respect was paid to the tendon damage that kneebar should have caused. Even so, I think the double stomps were a fitting end to the match and worked well in context. This was an unexpectedly strong main event within a style I don't adore, building to actual drama and justifying the overly long runtime with some stiff work.

Read more!

2020 Ongoing MOTY List: Holland vs. Gargano

11. Ridge Holland vs. Johnny Gargano NXT 8/12 (Aired 8/19/20)

ER: This match kicked ass. Other than the joy of Pat McAfee's performance, this was easily better than anything from TakeOver XXX. I haven't enjoyed a Gargano match this much in nearly 2 years, and this was a surprisingly hard hitting style clash of a match. Ridge knocked Gargano around with strikes, including huge clubbing arms, and Gargano was tightening up elbows to Holland's head. Gargano had several fun ways of overcoming the size difference, good use of speed and cheating to make his few comebacks, working to make any headway for probably 3/4 of it. It's smart, as it's less Ridge selling Gargano's offense, and more things like Gargano sending him into the ringpost or making callbacks to that arm for the rest of the match. Both did fun arm stuff, with Holland always shaking out his arms (especially after a cool spot where Gargano dodged an uppercut so Holland uppercuts the rope) and Gargano shaking out his left arm a few times because his small forearm hurt after striking Holland's big head. There were big spills, like Gargano's tope, and both guys took some big bumps, like Holland's slow big man Jerry bump to the floor.

But the universe seemed like it wanted to turn Johnny Wrestling into Johnny Wheelchair. He took a Flair turnbuckle flip to the floor early, but went into the buckle neck first horizontally like he was doing his own variation on the Ray Stevens/John Nord corner bump. But this match really changes when Holland spikes Gargano into the mat on a powerslam. It happens over the break and we come back with Mauro doing quiet tragedy voice, but once they showed replays from a couple angles, yeah, no, that looked bad. You can pause it and see Gargano looking like the man in the warnings on the side of diving boards, just hitting that empty pool head first. The rest of the match felt really dramatic to me, as I kept expecting it to suddenly go home the way Owen/Austin did. But they milk it for a few more surprise kickouts and nearfalls. Gargano hitting a surprise superkick to buy him more recovery time, and Candice distracting Holland so Johnny can kick a ring rope into his nuts were both smart things for Gargano to do to get back into it, and I love Holland having the stones to go BACK to a powerslam. What a cool match, the kind of match that snuck up on me and left me wanting more.

PAS: I had no idea who or what a Ridge Holland was before watching this match, and I am all in. Beth Phoenix compares him to Rick Steiner on commentary, and he definitely has that brain damaged jock psycho vibe down. I thought he did a nice job selling the arm early, and the missed uppercut into the ropes was a nifty bit of limb work, totally looked like he threw it full force and jacked his bicep up. That botched powerslam looked exactly like the kind of thing Rick would throw on a random WCW Saturday Night jobber, and his other throws on the neck looked great too. I have no real problem with the finish, it was a clever nut shot, but I kind of wanted something bigger to bring down Holland. Gargano is way better in these kind of minor key matches than he is in some bloated TakeOver mess (I assume, there is no way I am watching an Adam Cole match unless he is against a punter).


2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

NXT TakeOver: In Your House 6/7/20

So it's Sunday afternoon, and NXT hasn't been hitting the way it used to for the past 6 months, nothing on this card jumps out as something I think will be Actually Good, but I'm gonna give this show a shot. If I'm not into something I can't say my attention will be 100% on it, but I'll give it a shot. But I dig the IYH set, which really just makes me want to get back on watching 1995 WWF and reviewing IYH shows. And I appreciate Pettengill coming back and sounding exactly the same and using the same exact vocal delivery, honestly doesn't sound any differently 25 years later. But it's pretty shitty they aren't giving anybody a house this time. Some people could really use a house right now.

I thought Damian Priest's shitty band was starting off this show, but it turns out that is Code Orange. And you guys, regardless of how Code Orange might sound on album (I listened to Forever a couple years ago, thought it was fine and remembered it sounding more like hardcore grunge and not dog balls nu metal through and through), we can all agree that they sounded like absolute shit here. Show the first minute of this performance to anyone and try to get them to explain why it is cool, and you will be met with a person who suddenly forgets how to speak. This is a bad omen.


Shotzi Blackheart/Tegan Nox/Mia Yim vs. Dakota Kai/Raquel Gonzalez/Candice LeRae

ER: This was a perfectly fine opener, and I think the trios format made it a stronger match than any combo singles match they could have done. This was the first time I think Nox has looked convincing against Kai ever since the turn. The two of them ramming heads got a vocal reaction out of me, and Nox really knocked Kai to her butt right after with a hard corner back elbow. Everybody was given good time here and nobody hung themselves, even with them trying a couple new things. The dive train was fun, dug Raquel brusquely tossing Shotzi aside, the Candice crossbody looked good, Nox's 450 to the floor a fitting closer. There were a couple of not ready for prime time moments, but those coming in a trios are way better than in a singles, because they easily kept the tempo up with quick tags. Big suplexes down the stretch were a cool way to ramp up to the finish, and it still surprises me that Mia Yim of all people is the one allowed to do a full dragon suplex. We go through years of WWE changing the bumps on suplexes - turning the half nelson into a full rotation stomach bump, having some guys throw German's so it's a flatter back bump than up on the shoulders - and Mia Yim comes in and just does bridging dragon suplexes. It would be like Eric Bugenhagen being allowed to do a Jerry Lawler piledriver. But it's good to have a spirited match like this start the show, and to actually have it all tie in to current feuds makes something like this stronger. Also Tegan Nox needs to drop the chokeslam. It looks stupid.

Damian Priest vs. Finn Balor

ER: So outside of a couple of moments, I thought this was really good. Priest has done nothing for me on NXT TV but I thought he added nice heft to this match. Balor's matches against larger opponents have always been way more interesting to me than his mirror matches against other Finn Balor guys. Priest threw a couple of brick wall lariats and really tossed Balor around, which is the kind of match where Balor can excel. Balor takes a mean bump into the ring steps, looking like he literally aimed to fly in to them like a tackling dummy. 10 minutes later and Balor still had strong ring step pattern tattoos branded into his right shoulder, and that will always kick ass. I mentioned Balor's best work comes against larger opponents, and it's also true that Priest's best work comes against smaller opponents. Watching him against Dijakovic or Lee is torture, but here his exaggerated Edge/Test offense works. His high lift flatliner looked awesome, and the sit out chokeslam from the top was killer. Really, the only part of the match that didn't work for me was when Balor decided to turn things into a step routine out of nowhere. Whatever clown thinks every NXT match needs to stop for a dance party is someone I wouldn't trust with any decision. But the obnoxious thing here, is that Priest allllllmost makes it work. I think Priest did as good a job as possible to physically respond to Balor's shots, making it come close to looking like he wasn't a man merely bracing himself for the next part of the rehearsed combo. A strike exchange is only as strong as the person being struck, and I appreciate what Priest brought to that moment. Seeing Balor's branding didn't make me consider that we'd get an even uglier moment involving the ring steps, but Balor using his shotgun dropkick to send Priest flying into and over the steps was awesome, and I love how it directly lead to the finish. Priest's bump looked great, and this whole match was satisfying as hell.

Johnny Gargano vs. Keith Lee

ER: Before the match we get Gargano sitting at his kitchen table wearing his dress up clothes and cape. When I was 6 I got to be Dracula for Halloween, and had this black cotton cape that had an easy one snap closure around the neck. And I wore that cape everywhere until at least March of 1988. If my mom was going to the market, I would be like "I wanna go! Just let me go get my cape!" And my mother is joyless so one day she just hid the cape so she wouldn't have a "cape kid" when I was 12 years old. Johnny Gargano is that kid. We also get that specific WWE Brand comedy where their idea of a joke is just showing an older WWF character. Similar to the gag of "and then Brother Love shows up and says his catchphrase and that's the joke", we get Johnny looking at a shot of Dok Hendrix. Use Michael Hayes to interview Gargano for the match or something, if you don't actually feel like writing more than the first part of a nostalgia joke. But Keith Lee is awesomely wearing Black Lives Matter gear so if that won't make Gargano a convincing heel then I don't know what will. And now it just feels like Keith Lee is going to lose. It just feels like a thing that they'd do.

And this match was actually good? I wasn't expecting that, but this is my favorite thing Gargano has been involved with in a long time. It wasn't perfect, and I hated the dance fighting stuff here as much as I usually hate it. Take that trash out to the curb and leave the rest of the match the same, and this works great. Gargano as an overwhelmed hero is way more interesting than never say die Gargano or epic match Gargano. Outside of the dancing this felt closer to Jeff Jarrett vs. Mabel on a Coliseum Video than what I was expecting, as that's obviously way better than what I was expecting. I liked Gargano working over Lee's hand and didn't have a problem with the size difference due to how Lee sold for Gargano. Lee was still able to power him around with one arm, but it slowed him enough. This is a match also greatly helped by the NXT wrestlers in the crowd. There's a certain kind of enthusiasm that can happen when wrestlers watch their peers, that same kind of energy that was on early Evolve shows. You can tell when they're not just adding heat to help vs. actually getting into things, and it just felt like we got a little bit more of that energy here. Lee body checking Gargano through the hockey shielding was awesome, a real unexpected moment right after Gargano hits the floor to shake the cobwebs out. Lee just wrecking balled Gargano through that wall and I loved it, a stunt spot that came off organic. I like the way this match rolled out, like that they didn't linger long on lame "swinging to miss" spots, and let Lee flatten Gargano in fun ways.

Adam Cole vs. Velveteen Dream

ER: This is a tough one for me, as I don't want to see these two in a cinematic brawl, but I would probably rather see that than these two in a 30 minute Adam Cole main event epic. Dream's stock as a character has fallen a lot for me and Cole is just not a wrestler that I enjoy. Dream destroy's somebody's mom's 2001 Saturn and I'll always enjoy somebody bumping onto a windshield. Dexter Lumis shows up, and he feels like a genuinely refreshing addition to NXT. He comes off like a pro wrestling version of an abusive cop taking his family out to Olive Garden and ruining the night when he finds out they missed never ending pasta bowl. The stuff at the finish through the chairs looked good, felt more like an indy garbage spot than a big match WWE spot, and that helps things. I'm glad this was kept to 15 minutes, even though I am not excited for Cole still champ. Why is Cole the guy? Why is Strong not the champ in UE? Cole is such a weird choice to me.

Karrion Kross vs. Tommaso Ciampa

ER: This ruled and was exactly the kind of match I didn't expect them to have. This show has really come off stronger than expected for me, because they have played against type for the entire show. Priest/Balor and Lee/Gargano were sensibly and smartly worked, the Cole match went half as long as I expected, and it's almost like I keep dreading the epic and they keep going more understated (compared to recent big match NXT). This was hugely successful for me, a near total steamrolling by Kross, in a way that I don't think hurt Ciampa while making Kross come off big. Kross murdered Ciampa with strikes and lariats and as they were doing his big choke finish I'm sitting here excited because it actually felt like a finish. It's only been 6 minutes, no way they laid this thing out that smartly, and I dug it all. Ciampa really leaned into everything Kross threw, loved how he sold his beating. His small comeback came off really well but I like that it was contained to more of a last gasp than any sustained back and forth. I just really like that they went this route, came off like another breath of fresh air and a nice change of pace from the last two matches.

Io Shirai vs. Rhea Ripley vs. Charlotte

ER: I liked parts of this, but I am beyond tired of big match Charlotte. Ripley seemed like a genuine big deal just a few months ago, and that feels like another lifetime ago. Shirai had some big moments but is still someone where the loud Mauro praise feels real hyperbolic. Ripley felt a little sluggish throughout, Charlotte isn't a good "constantly vocal" Barry Darsow, and three ways in general stink. Three ways being the big main event payoff of the women's division has been death. I liked Shirai going off the house, Charlotte sold the downtime well selling Shirai landing on her nose, we get one of those cutesy three way finishes with Shirai moonsaulting and pinning Ripley before Charlotte could tap her. It came off like a big Shirai moment, but I just couldn't get into a lot of it.


I don't think this show was great, but it delivered better than I was expecting. Kross/Ciampa, Lee/Gargano, and Priest/Balor made sure that it wasn't at all a waste of time, and I call that a win.

Read more!

NXT TakeOver: Portland 2/16/20

ER: I was seriously consider going up to Portland to see this, but instead I am sitting at home wearing soft pants. Nobody I knew was interested in either a) seeing this with me live, or b) spending a few days in Portland, and that is fine. It's a place I frequently look for excuses to travel to, so I will surely be there in the next couple months anyway. Let's see if friends and well wishers were correct to convince me not to go. Although, to be clear, this show could be terrible and I would have had a great time in Portland. Plus I can go up there and eat at Screen Door any time I like without having to also sit through an Adam Cole singles match.


Keith Lee vs. Dominik Dijakovic

ER: I saw the hype video with Mark Henry talking about how big these two are, and how unfathomable it is for big guys to do what they do. And I am so happy that Mark Henry did not do what these two do and instead wrestled like Mark Henry. I want to see a hoss fight, not two big guys cosplaying an Ospreay match. And this match was definitely these two having their match, and their match does very little to excite me at this point. It is their collection of "Isn't it crazy that THESE two are doing THESE moves!?" exhibition, and I have seen it a lot and I hope this is a blow off match. I think all their stand and trade spots look badly rehearsed, and Dijakovic always seems to be 25% off on every super complicated thing he executes. So these matches are always filled with "MAN that's impressive for a guy his size. Imagine if it landed!" moments. The whole thing is one Eliminators move set up after another, with one big move leading to rest, leading to the other guy doing a big move, and then more rest. Dijakovic keeps breaking out new things, and they are impressive, like his twisting moonsault in ring or his gigantic swanton to a seated Keith Lee on the floor, but these moves always seem to get sold about as long as any other less dangerous move he could have done, and that's a "him" problem. We get a lot of "your big move/strike made me recoil off the ropes/mat and bounce back with my OWN big move/strike" and that's something I typically hate from 160 lb. guys, and lemme tell you that it sucks even harder with 290 lb. guys. For every move I liked, there was a moment that immediately showed that it wasn't actually that devastating, and Dijakovic doesn't have the acting chops to pull off the bad fighting spirit faces he always attempts. This was the match I was expecting, and I probably would have praised it to the heavens if they came out and worked a Mabel/Diesel match instead.

Street Fight: Tegan Nox vs. Dakota Kai

ER: I haven't been sold on heel Kai, but her street fight gear is legit. This is the coolest that Dakota Kai has looked. Kai is channeling mid 90s AJW street fight attire and it rules. Meanwhile, the person I'm supposed to root for is just wearing her normal wrestling gear and has her hair bumped up to absurd levels. I think a lot of the small stuff worked here, while a lot of big stuff did not. This was my favorite Kai performance, and it worked because she was making small things look as good as big things. She took an early drop toehold into the barricade and just went into it mouth first. And she continued to pay that kind of attention to every little spot, and it elevated things. My favorite moments of the match were not complicated, they were things like Kai snapping off a quick kick from the apron to Nox's face, or Kai splatting hard on her stomach on the apron, or Nox calculating wrong and throwing a low right while Kai is meeting her head with a trashcan lid, or Nox swinging a chair right into Kai's knee and Kai going down like someone who actually had her bad knee beaten with the odd angle of a trash can. When they kept it to basic street fight elements, I thought it was working well, and only fell apart in the moments where they got too cute or overthought what they were doing. No matter how nice Kai's kicks looked, duct taping Nox's wrist to the ringpost comes off a little silly when Nox is watching you do it, and her hand only shoots up to stop you the second you stop wrapping duct tape but not a moment before. But I liked stuff like trapping Kai's knee in a chair and smashing it, the German suplex into a trash can was nasty, and the visual of Kai's head in the chair on the table was strong. Now, using this street fight as a way to reintroduce Reina Gonzalez (with a painfully flat "Oh My God That's Raquel Gonzalez" read from Beth Phoenix) came off more than lame. She looked bad in her big moment, futzing around on the top rope with Nox, before Nox has to jump entirely on her own "through" the table. Gonzalez took forever and couldn't get into a good position to throw her, so Nox did everything on her own (no camera angles could make Gonzalez look good) and the painful bounce off the table came off much more accidental than "intentional badass move" from Gonzalez. Bad reintroduction, flat finish.

Johnny Gargano vs. Finn Balor

ER: This one was one of the on paper matches I was mildly dreading, having those "I just volunarily agreed to watch a show with a likely hour worth of Balor and Cole matches" thoughts, and then this started out just fine. The problem was that it kept going, and I did not want it to keep going. But I was fairly involved with this when they weren't doing "well scouted like looking into a mirror!" wrestling. Heel Finn don't interest me, Face Finn don't interest me, so there wasn't likely much they could have done to win me over other than surprise me with something different. And I was into this, until I wasn't into this. Once this started getting overly sequenced it got the same kind of silly I was expecting. It's so funny that they work on crafting these fast elaborate reversal sequences, and I am into stuff like Finn catching Gargano's spear from the apron. But I can't help but giggle when they run this fast sequence, Balor drapes Gargano over the top rope, sprints to the apron...and then carefully climbs up every single buckle on his way to the top rope. No matter how quickly and ironed out these sequences get, I'm always left with silly little moments where someone is holding themselves in an awkward position waiting to take a move. And so before long Gargano is doing that offense that Gargano does with a lot of pointing, and I chuckled at Balor kicking him off the announce table. Went too long, but the odds of this ever being "for me" left the building pretty quick.

Bianca Belair vs. Rhea Ripley

ER: This was the match I was most excited for, and while it didn't hit the high level I was hoping for, it was still a good match that delivered much of what I wanted. This was a tough position for Bianca, as the match has clearly been treated like a lame duck to Charlotte/Ripley in all of the build. This match was so clearly second banana, with a result so obvious, that getting people invested was going to be like not getting robbed blind in a trade after the player publicly demands a trade. So they don't work this cute, and they throw hard shots, and the occasional messiness on suplexes added to things for me. NXT has had to much cleanness in their main events, I like a little mess. The important thing is that Rhea threw harder clotheslines to the chest and harder knees to the head than Lee and Dijakovic earlier in the evening. I enjoyed how they handled learned behavior, like Belair eating a big boot after going for her series of leapfrogs, and Ripley scouting the hair whip after taking one to the midriff earlier in the match. I really wish Bianca had been treated like more of an overall big deal, as she's lost on every single TakeOver I've watched so has that "Luger always loses" mid 90s WWF feeling to her. Belair as Luger isn't actually crazy now that I think about it...and I really like Luger...and I really like Belair's power here. This was good, and pretty easily my favorite match of the night so far, even if I am getting very tired of Charlotte.

Kyle O'Reilly/Bobby Fish vs. Matt Riddle/Pete Dunne

ER: This was good! I expected this to be good! Some restraint would have been welcome, but the NXT house style is getting further and further away from any kind of restraint. I got into it from the beginning, with UE jumping Riddle and Dunne in the aisle way, babyfacing themselves by stopping the awful Bobby Fish song, which had the special power of getting less funny every time it was spoken. I thought this was an especially cool showing for Fish and O'Reilly. Bobby Fish is basically the least talked about member of UE, but he brings a cool salt and pepper old athletic guy energy to things. Fish is like the best possible Frankie Kazarian, that tanned guy in his 40s who is now leaning deep into his aged hair, only Fish does great offense catered to his age, and is maybe the finest example of a silver fox wrestling has seen. Dude was owning the silver and I thought he came off with actual star appeal. O'Reilly had a real nice very fast kick combo, that didn't actually look like he was just thinking about the next step, it really just came off like he was winging kicks. Sure he had some silly wobbly legs down the stretch, but there were a lot of things O'Reilly did great in this one. My one hang up is that I don't really think the Riddle/Dunne team works as well as I thought it would. There's something missing and they just aren't as complementary as I thought they'd be. I like both of them, Riddle especially, but the team just keeps coming up lesser than sum for me. Riddle is always going to do things I like, and here he's hitting sentons and taking big bumps barefoot and tossing out Germans and I'm just going to like that. I don't think this reached the kind of fluidity that some of the best of these NXT go go go tags can hit, and of course doesn't touch the same kind of match from To Infnity and Beyond or Philly-Marino, but this was very fun and part of a really enjoyable 1-2 with Ripley/Belair.

Adam Cole vs. Tommaso Ciampa

ER: Nope.

Read more!

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.

Read more!

NXT TakeOver: New York 4/5/19

Didn't actually get to see or watch this show live, but I also don't actually know anything that happened on the show, so I'm back home and figured why not watch some TakeOver?

War Raiders vs. Aleister Black/Ricochet

ER: So this is one way to open up a TakeOver! This starts as very much a sexy dance fight learned behavior match, that I was ready to dislike for being too dance-y but then they just kept going and pulling out bigger and wilder things, and by the end I thought this was a fantastically paced out tag. We had some early tape studying spots, fun stuff like Black anticipating a Rowe knee, or Rowe anticipating a Black kick by catching it with his head and neck. And as the train really starts leaving the station the match's charms become a bit impossible to ignore. There were still some silly dance fighting spots - namely Ricochet running 4 steps across the ring to leap into getting handspring elbowed by Hanson - but this was some well done go go go. The dives we built to were great, with Rowe hitting a tope, Ricochet naturally flipping in several ways, and peaking with Hanson flying off the top like a falling piano. This whole tag had a ton of moving parts and the pace they kept was really impressive. We got smart use of saves, with Rowe certainly getting beat before Hanson crashes everybody into them to break up the pin, and Black getting an awesome surprise pinfall save by landing a double stomp off the top. Ricochet was a fun ham throughout, getting knocked around plenty of times by the Raiders, but also hitting all of his stuff tighter than he's looked ever since getting called up to Raw. And the chained spots can be a real impressive thing when they're done as fluidly as they did here. Everything was mapped out and executed at high speeds, so that you feel like you're seeing a lot, while also feeling like a big Hanson tope is still treated as a big deal. Not many events will be able to start off this hot.

Matt Riddle vs. Velveteen Dream

ER: I really liked this, with Riddle going on dominant runs, catching Dream in submissions and nasty throws, with Dream scrambling just to keep up. Riddle broke out some increasingly brutal stuff: rolling gutwrenches, exploder, building up to Riddle catching Dream on an axe handle to the floor and dropping him with a slow German, and then going beyond that to Riddle dragging Dream up over the ropes and hitting a suplex into the ring from he middle rope. All of these were awesome visuals. Dream looked like he was scrambling the whole time, even when he was in control. He was still cucumber cool, but Riddle was going for constant strikes and submissions, and even when Dream would counter one it would end with Riddle elbowing him as punishment. I like the Riddle match structure where he is dominating but kind of cockily distracts himself thinking things should be over. I love moments like Riddle catching Dream's big elbow or Riddle breaking out a new twisting moonsault, the latter really helped give this a bigger match feel. The finishing stretch is real quality, with cool trading, Dream stunning Riddle out of the triangle but getting hit with another knee and German. I'm not sure how I feel about the finish, I liked that Dream flipped his desperation switch into panic mode and went for the last pinfall he could get, but also think Dream should have controlled for a bit more earlier in the match. When this was all over it practically felt like Riddle bullied him around at every turn of the match. I loved the personality in this and the work looked spectacular, would love to see this run back again. I'll have to watch it again to see how much Riddle dominating affects that for me. Still, these two matched up great together and I dug it.

[sorry, started writing up NXT and then got incredibly sleepy and zonked out AT the computer. Writing up the rest of this before Mania]

WALTER vs. Pete Dunne

ER: Rachel, wholly unfamiliar with WALTER, looks up as he's walking to the ring and asks, "Did they give someone an SS officer gimmick??" She's not wrong. Also, it appears referee Drake Younger is working a full blackface ref gimmick. This match was kind of weird for me, as Dunne has had this belt 700 odd days, and I don't think he ever looked like he really belonged with WALTER in there. This match got a ton of time 25 minutes, and at no point did it look like Dunne should be hanging with WALTER. And really, he didn't. Any time he did start to pull away from WALTER, he would do a light enziguiri or something that looked like it shouldn't be sold that much by WALTER. I liked stuff with Dunne avoiding the big chops, and his only chance looked to be targetting WALTER's fingers (and smashing his hand on the ringpost was a good moment), but I don't think any of the finger work went anywhere exciting. I don't think it ever even slowed WALTER down outside of the precise second it was happening. This felt like a similarly structured match to Dream/Riddle, only those two looked like they belong in the ring against each other. By the time they got to the inevitable strike exchanges it kind of felt ridiculous. WALTER just crushed Dunne the whole match, big kicks, nasty sleeper suplex off the top that felt like something you end a match on (but instead leads directly to Dunne doing a German and crucifix bomb that felt entirely like WALTER doing the moves to himself), big lariats, and of course that superbomb/splash combo to finish it. WALTER came in and definitely, the whole match, looked like a guy who should be the champ. So I'm glad they gave him the belt. If/when they do the rematch, I'm interested in seeing how they actually make Dunne look on WALTER's level.

Kairi Sane vs. Bianca Belair vs. Io Shirai vs. Shayna Baszler

ER: I thought this ruled. It felt tidy and like they could have gone longer but I'm happy they did it, just kept it at 15 minutes of fast action and no overkill. A lot of this was worked as the Sky Pirates working against the other two, while Belair and Baszler were against the other three. The 4 way brawling could have been an absolute mess but I loved how the Pirates crossed up the rope running and used that misdirection to sneak in their shots. Belair's hair is such an integral part of her matches and it's great when she uses it, and great when it's used against her, like when she gets whipped into the corner by her braid. And I LOVED the early ringpost spot, Baszler tossing Belair around the post and holding her braid to pull her into it, only Belair got her boot up to block and used the power of her thick ass amazing braid to yank baszler into the post instead. Mauro says, "Bring back any memories, Nigel?" To which Nigel should have humorously replied "No...actually. None at all." Belair is great at showing her power, hard shoulderblocks and catching a crossbody for a fallaway slam, big spear right at the chest, huge press slam to the floor, she totally looks like a boss. I also thought Shirai looked more explosive and violent than I've seen from her. She usually looks flimsy and nothing connects, here she hits a missile dropkick and the corner knees land hard, and I dug the way they worked themselves into the match (their acting got a little melodramatic at points, acting like saving a pinfall was the most physically exerting thing they'd ever done, but joshi gonna joshi). The corner suplex/powerbomb spot actually looked good and they kept the set-up brisk, the flying to the floor looked cool, Shirai's moonsaults actually hit hard for once, the pinfall saves were all expertly timed, Belair's KOD on Baszler looked great, and THEN she got to plant the Sky Pirates with one, Sane's elbow slammed hard into Baszler, Baszler had a cool counter of Belair's double chickenwing into the clutch, really the whole thing was a blast.

Johnny Gargano vs. Adam Cole

ER: Totally serious here, but are these the two smallest guys to ever be fighting for a WWE World Title? Did Rey ever defend against someone similar sized? And you know, I really liked this. I was expecting to not like this very much. I figured it would go long, and figured there would be tons of wide eyed heavy breathing shocked kickout faces. Both of those things happened. The latter happened a lot. And there were little things I didn't like, such as the way Cole threw the most half-assed missed clothesline right before he hit the knee to end the first fall. It's when guys halfass their way through things like that, where you can really see they were just not focusing on step a and only thinking about step b. It's an ugly trend but it's been where we're at for awhile. I also don't think I'll ever get used to the "I'm dead, I'm dead, I can't move, also I'm up and sprinting" brand of selling, and we got plenty of that. I also will forever laugh at how outright stupid Adam Cole's finisher looks. That little bunny hop off the middle buckle never ceases to crack me up. It's so isolated and never part of a smooth turn into the flipping piledriver, possibly the dumbest and silliest any big league wrestler has ever looked setting up a move.

But again, I liked this match. This was the match where Johnny Gargano fulfills his destiny and finally pulls out the big win, overcoming the numbers, defying the odds, all things that could have been insufferable. But they built a nice match with some memorably wild moments, and I was impressed at Gargano's timing throughout. This kind of match hinges on timing, hinges on guys being in the right place at the right time, and I don't think this came off as dance-y as it could have. Gargano's big spots looked big, the spear through the ropes, the slingshot DDT, big flatliner, big Air Raid Crash, and even more importantly he helped uberwuss Cole actually look dangerous. Gargano bumped around spectacularly for Cole, especially impressing me with two consecutive ringpost bumps. He really flew into ringposts in the classic Lawler post bump style, my personal favorite post bump, running in fast with the face and throwing the legs up high on the back bump. His ringpost shots looked great and I liked that we got some Gargano color, and later on Gargano tops his ringpost bumps by flying over a table and then getting pulverized into the top of said table by the Devil's Wings (my god is anything about Adam Cole cool?). That table was the true heel of the match, as good lord that unbreaking table must have hurt like hell. The finishing run of the third fall felt like smart use of non-falls and bullshit. Gargano hitting the reverse rana and superkick only for Cole to fall out of the ring is a great way to not burn kickout, and I actually liked the involvement of UE as a way to make fans flip even harder for Gargano. Once O'Reilly was ripping at Gargano's face to break the Escape, I found myself actually annoyed in that "No! Not like this!" kind of way. Gargano fighting off UE and getting the Escape tap was very satisfying, really feels like they need to get far away from emo wrestling as there's nowhere else they can go with it.

ER: Even with Dunne's performance not resonating with me (apparently that match was called match of the weekend at one point, which never approached that for me), this was still a really great show. I loved the tag, thought Riddle/Dream was fantastic, and thought the women's match was one of the hottest women's sprints we've seen in WWE. The main event delivered the best version of what I was expecting, and there was nothing approaching "bad wrestling". TakeOver's are a thing I always look extremely forward to, and that's because they've just rarely let me down.

Read more!