2021 Ongoing MOTY List: WALTER vs. Dragunov

7. WALTER vs. Ilja Dragunov NXT TakeOver 8/22

ER: This was a really great 2007 NOAH throwback. At its best it felt like Morishima vs. McGuinness, or even Morishima vs. Kobashi. It had a big Kings Road feel, with chops that caused major blood blisters and elbows to brainstems that looked life shortening. You really have to buy into Ilja Dragunov's facials, and there are some bad ones. He's the worst version of early 90s goofball Kobashi, with some offense that approaches Kobashi at his most punishing. WALTER is the very very important Morishima. You needed somebody in there grounding things and keeping this from becoming Funny Face theater. WALTER just brought 20 minutes of punishment, coloring up Dragunov's body with welts and bruises while ramping up the body impact the whole time. WALTER threw two back to back lariats that were among the best lariats of the year, knocking Ilja out of the sky with the first one, and then out of his boots with the next one. When you buy into Dragunov as an energizer bunny who needs to be dismantled to quit, it adds to WALTER's beating. 

The beating grows as the frustration grows, but the presence of the frustration is important. Ilja is aggravating, as he leans into the Backlund dorkiness, but he also leans into a beating, and that's easy to like. WALTER destroys him on offense, and not all of Ilja's hits the same, but he has moments where he steps to the plate and crushes it. His senton really pops WALTER's guts, and down the stretch he hits WALTER just about as hard as someone can hit a man in the cerebellum. WALTER hits some of his nastiest ever stuff, like a shotgun dropkick that had to have left Dragunov with a flared ribcage and a release powerbomb that was cruel. I love WALTER's top rope splash. It's one of the great He Doesn't Belong Up There splashes with the unsteady takeoff but heavy landing. I didn't fully buy into Ilja absorbing ALL of that damage, but he is good at withstanding a beating, and when it's time for the finish he makes everything look finisher worthy. His shots to the back of WALTER's head were sick, and I loved the quick tap when Dragunov yanked WALTER to his feet by the neck. This was one of the best WALTER performances we've seen in WWE, maybe one of his best ever. 

PAS: I think Eric is being hard on Dragunov, this was a great WALTER performance, but it was Dragunov's match. I am normally down on wild Nic Cage wrestling performances but, I thought his drooling, spitting, screaming descent into hell really worked for this match. I really dug all of his judo throws and takedowns, felt like credible impactful offense using WALTER's size against him. This had to be one of the most violent WWE matches ever. Dragunov took an ungodly beating, and laid into WALTER as hard as he could back, by the end of this match his entire body was a bruise. WALTER had been champion for so long, that if you were going to take him out, he had to be taken out, and obliterating the back of his neck and head with elbows and yanking back his head like that felt like an appropriate end. It really did look like he could have paralyzed WALTER with those shots, and I loved how WALTER tapped quickly. I wasn't coming in expecting to love this. NXT epics usually leave me wanting, but this was awesome stuff. 

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2021 Ongoing MOTY List: Raquel vs. Ember

35. Raquel Gonzalez vs. Ember Moon NXT TakeOver In Your House 6/13 

ER: Raquel has been such a wonderful presence in the NXT women's division this year. It was a role that seemed like she could have been rushed into and yet if she was rushed all it did was make her immediately grow into the role. She is so good at selling for smaller opponents and is so good at pacing out matches. She knows how to be dominant while leaving openings, and her selling during those openings is so good that she seems actually beatable, before she slams the doors shut again. She uses her long limbs very effectively, lashing out with big clubbing shots and reaching out with kicks to the stomach to slow an opponent, but when she's in close she unleashes different attacks. Her elbows really rock Moon, and she does this awesome over shoulder backbreaker while bending at Moon's neck and chin (then flipping her hard to get her back to the mat), and when Moon makes her big press back I loved how she paid Raquel back for all of the specific things she did.

Moon hits a fantastic running clothesline, and Moon must love Raquel as an opponent as you can always tell she throws her offense even harder than usual and Raquel just leans right into it. Moon kicked things up a level when she locked in a deathlock variation and yanked Raquel by the ponytail, mouth, and throat to pull her deeper into the submission. Moon has complicated offense and I'm impressed she almost always manages to pull it off better than it should be pulled off, but Gonzalez is again someone who has an uncanny ability to take complicated offense. Ember Moon got to hang with Gonzalez and look like she belonged, Dakota Kai was a treat at ringside (I love the dynamic of the Raquel/Kai partnership), and I love how Raquel's wins are always big exclamation marks. Dominant champ who can sell, then wins definitively, is a simple formula that Raquel is doing better than any male WWE character has done recently. Raquel is progressing as a worker in a way that is rivaling (on a smaller scale) Brock Lesnar's initial rise. Brock turned into one of the 5 best wrestlers in the world within his first year on the main brand, and while I don't think Raquel is progressing as fast as Brock the potential is now clearly there. 

PAS: This was a very good version of the WWE big match formula, which is a formula I am pretty tired of. It was pretty stiff, and they set up the big move moments really well. The nearfall on the Eclipse was really well done, and I really dug the nastiness of Raquel's match ending powerbomb. Still it felt like this match was worked the same way all of the WWE matches are worked, with everything being a set up into a big move and then moving into another set up into a big move. I really liked the couple of submissions, but I need more stuff that feels like a struggle rather than just hitting each big mark, that was especially obvious in the final run. The big marks were cool, and I agree Gonzalez has a bunch of promise, but I am not sure she can achieve it in the WWE. 

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NXT TakeOver: In Your House 6/13/21

We still can't rewind or start from beginning on Peacock, and I had Sunday errands. Why is Peacock this bad? Remember when we complained about the Network? Nobody wants to talk about it but this is clearly digital pro wrestling slowly turning into the lamest I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. I'll go back and pick up the stuff I missed once it's actually online. It's going to be really nice watching one of these with a decent crowd. There are so many of these acts who have barely played in front of people, and right on first sight this show has a great "packed local indy" energy to it. [Edit: Was I actually on time for this? I assumed it was 4:00 PM but if it's 5:00 then I guess I made it?]

Legado Del Fantasma vs. Bronson Reed/MSK

ER: I came into this one an unsure number of minutes, but it's one I was excited about on this card. Wilde and Mendoza are a pair of underrated in ring players right now, and you could say the same but lesser for MSK. The Dusty Classic was the best TV period for WWE this year and the energy hasn't been as good since that ended. The whole thing was great, and nearly every single participant has felt lost since. This whole thing is really great, as even when WWE has matches with actual luchadors in it, they don't always connect as actual lucha matches. But this really had the feel of a really strong lucha trios, and it's a shame we don't get more TV matches with the Legado del Fantasma trio. This is the best I've seen Reed look all year, a guy who appeared to be suffering from New Keith Lee syndrome. Here he was the great lucha wrecking ball, a large presence that could flattens someone to peak a sequence, like big Super Porky spots without any jokes attached. MSK were really fun getting set up over and over but LdF, and LdF's timing and rhythm were firing hard here. Reed acting as the big cut off to LdF's runs was a good way to lay this out, and I have no doubts that they could have worked a really good 2/3 Falls match (and there's no reason they still can't, ehhhhh?). Wes Lee is a good FIP and I just love Wilde and Mendoza do their thing. Mendoza was great at taking everyone's offense, getting just leveled by a Reed avalanche and having some great vocals and facials after getting flattened with more. Reed crashing Escobar through the hockey barricade looked like convenience store footage of a compact car crashing into the front beer display. Great moment. This match is literally only the 2nd time this year we've gotten the full trios version of Legado del Fantasma, and that needs to change, because this quality can't be denied. 

Mercedes Martinez vs. Xia Li

ER: I'm probably 2-3 months behind on NXT TV so I always see TakeOvers way before the set up, so I don't know how we got here, but I really like the energy that they take into it. Pretty early we settle into Li convincingly bullying Martinez around the ring and ringside, and you need a lot of ring confidence to bully Martinez. I'm a fan of Li's current thing, a little more Lucha Underground than the typical NXT gimmick. She runs Martinez into the ringpost and the turnbuckles, bends her around the post, and eventually throws a nasty high kick right into that same damn post in a great spot. Not only does the spot look great, but it changes the total energy of the match in a cool way, as now Li is the underdog babyface and Martinez is never more interesting than when she's stalking prey. Li is compelling when desperately fighting out of slams, and Martinez drops her with some nasty suplexes and slams. I like Li as a brow furrowed ass kicker, and I like her as a big bumping babyface. If you're taking a high backdrop on the floor on a show I watch? I am into you. I love how they had Li's big spinkick be the clean finish, made it feel like a huge singles win. This went the exact right length, and this is probably the best we've seen look in a longer match. Martinez gets a lot of credit, but Li now looks like a super confident performer who can work face or heel, and her look is excellent. Really loved the energy they sustained. 

LA Knight vs. Cameron Grimes

ER: I cannot help to love how Grimes moves to his To The Moon entrance song, it just fits. I'm pretty over ladder matches at this point, but I liked what these two did with the played out ladder match. Knight especially was great at turning non-spots into big moments, with strong stuff like trying to slam the ladder on Grimes and missing. To the Moon is a great way to get fans into it, and Knight was an old indy pro at keeping it a strong rallying cry. The build was really good and they knew how to start with bullshit, build to fighting around the ladder, then throw in your painful bumps. Knight has been at this game practically as long as AJ Styles, and he felt like a great AJ Styles heel here. Knight had a killer backdrop bump onto the ladder, and a Lawler level face first run into the top of a ladder. He was great at stooging to set up all of Grimes' comebacks, snapping over on Grimes' ranas (in ring and to the floor), and fed perfectly into two nice Grimes punts. Grimes gets crazier the longer the match goes, scaling a ringside ladder and escaping to ringside rigging, then does a sheer drop onto Knight with a crossbody. He tops that with a crazy CZW type spill, getting tipped in gross fashion from the top into the entrance ramp. I liked the Knight win, but that might be just because I really liked Knight in this match. Definitely exceeded my expectations. 

 

Raquel Gonzalez vs. Ember Moon

ER: Raquel has been such a wonderful presence in the women's division, a role that seemed like she might have been rushed into and yet all it did was make her immediately grow into the role. She is so good at selling for smaller opponents and is so good at pacing things out. She knows how to be dominant while leaving openings, and then her selling during those openings is so good that she seems actually beatable, before she slams the doors shut again. She uses her long limbs very effectively, lashing out with big clubbing shots and reaching out with kicks to the stomach, but when she's in close she unleashes different attacks. Her elbows really rock Moon, and she does this awesome over shoulder backbreaker while bending at Moon's neck and chin (then flipping her hard to get her back to the mat), and when Moon makes her big press back I loved how she paid Raquel back for all of the specific things she did. Moon hits a fantastic running clothesline, and Moon must love Raquel as an opponent as you can always tell she throws her offense even harder than usual and Raquel just leans right into it. Moon kicked things up a level when she locked in a deathlock variation and yanked Raquel by the ponytail, mouth, and throat to pull her deeper into the submission. Moon has complicated offense and I'm impressed she almost always manages to pull it off better than it could be pulled off, but Gonzalez is again someone who has an uncanny ability to take complicated offense, so, well. Ember Moon got to hang with Gonzalez and look like she belonged, Dakota Kai was a treat at ringside (I love the dynamic of the Raquel/Kai partnership), and I love how Raquel's wins are always big exclamation marks. Dominant champ who can sell, then wins definitively, is a simple formula. This could be absurd hype with a year of hindsight, and I wouldn't expect him to touch his peak, but she's progressing in a way that could be as impressive as Brock's initial rise. The potential is right there. 

Kyle O'Reilly vs. Johnny Gargano vs. Pete Dunne vs. Adam Cole vs. Karrion Kross

ER: Here's the one on paper landmine on the show, and the way they start does not make me optimistic that they'll escape landmine status. I think it will all depend on the runtime. But I did not need to see Kross work his Karate Rockette routine while everyone else busies themselves on the floor, really not liking how Kross is the denominator for all the early stretches. Everyone else waits their turn to go one on one or two on one with Kross and the Kross show is the weakest routine in the match. And you know what? This match wasn't totally for me, and it almost surely wasn't ever going to be. So, knowing that, you go in hoping that it will at least be good for what it is, and it was. If you are the kind of person who sees these 5 names in a main event and assume it's going at least 30, and you are EXCITED for it, then this definitely gave you every single thing you could have wanted. It went too long (obviously it was going to go too long) but was laid out well once they moved past the Kross one on ones. 

This is modern wrestling based around constant counters, constant commentary talking about the counters, and constant guys looking over the shoulder waiting for the timing to be right. It's distracting, but it's tough to time things perfectly with an odd number of guys, and if you were a fan of late 2000s PWG main events then I'd be surprised if you didn't enjoy this. I have no interest in going through 30 minutes of spots, but O'Reilly and Gargano took some heavy bumps (loved O'Reilly getting shoved off the top to the floor and basically cannonballing to the floor), Gargano got powerbombed into the edge of the apron by Kross in what looked like the worst possible landing, both guys really kept this pumping. Gargano went really wild here, my favorite stretch of the match was when he was flying all over the place. He hit a fast bullet tope that almost sent him straight into the announce table, and his tope tornado DDT on Dunne was a real feat for both. I also found myself rooting for O'Reilly when he had that sick Volk Han leg lock sunk in. Also a big fan of the timing it took for the double superkick to actually look good on Dunne's moonsault. This spots are an inch either way from either murdering a man or looking awful, and this one looked great. I think anyone would have taken that over a continued Reign of Kross. But hey, if you already wanted to see this match, you are happy, and that is what's most important. This is about the best this style can get for me, which means it was technically my least favorite match on the show, but it didn't tank the show at all. 

ER: This was a great show, every match delivered what people excited for that match would want. Seeing  Legado del Fantasma as a trio was a treat, Xia Li stepped up into the spotlight nicely, Raquel and Ember tore it down (Raquel has delivered on big NXT shows this year like literally no other person on the roster), and the ladder match was strong. Great show, kept a great pace, only really felt like it was dragging during some stretches of the main. Highly recommended show. 

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2021 Ongoing MOTY List: Gonzalez vs. Shirai

5. Raquel Gonzalez vs. Io Shirai NXT TakeOver 4/7

ER: This was the complete opposite of what I thought it was going to be, worked totally different from what I was expecting, and I loved it. I thought this would be Gonzalez dominating, with Shirai coming back in not believable ways and pinning Raquel with a bad moonsault. Instead, it was somehow Shirai taking 90% of the match, which on paper sounds preposterous to me. But Raquel Gonzalez is getting really good, and it kind of snuck up on me. She is a really strong base, and not just in the kind of way that someone so much larger and taller than their opponents should be. She was so good at taking Shirai's offense and so great at setting all of it up, all of it building nicely to each stage of the match, that it felt like Shirai was organically keeping not just one step ahead of Gonzalez, but believably dominating her. They were really smart about how much offense Gonzalez took, having her block several ranas, avoid Shirai's rope feint kicks, and it was the only way this was going to work. Shirai just doing nothing but offense for 90% of the match would have come off brainless, but with Gonzalez fending off much of it, it just made Shirai come off as relentless. 

Dakota Kai's interference and immediate dismissal came at a good time, and I like how all it did was stop a Shirai moonsault, not turn the tide for Gonzalez. It was super impressive how they kept Shirai in control and Gonzalez staggering, but I really got into it. Gonzalez kicking out of the moonsault felt like a big deal, and the crossbody off the entrance ramp looked like a deranged Shirai throwing her body harder and harder into the monster that won't stay down. I thought it was great how suddenly Gonzalez took over, nailing Shirai with a great low cut clothesline that resulted in Shirai hitting one of her best moonsaults (this clothesline could not have flipped her over harder on her stomach). I'm really happy for Raquel's title win. There really wasn't anything left for Shirai to do as champ, and Gonzalez is someone intriguing to have on top against a bunch of interesting babyface contenders. I had this match in my head as something very different than what we got, and I'm glad, because I loved what we got here. 

PAS: You don't normally see David vs. Goliath matches where the David dominates the match (I guess the real Davi pretty much dominated the match against the real Goliath so it makes some sense). Shirai had held the belt so long, and Gonzalez is still a little green, so it makes sense. It almost felt like a super skilled point guard getting a big alone after a switch, Shirai had Gonzalez on a string the whole match, countering, spinning her around, even hitting her with a big moonsault to the ramp and dive off of the skull. I liked how sudden the finish came, Shirai got a bit over confident and paid dearly. The giant is still a giant, and the clothesline/powerbomb combo was devastating stuff. I like Gonzalez (as a wrestler, don't look at her Twitter) and I am interested to see what she does with the belt, a Mercedes match is pretty exciting.

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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. 

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NXT TakeOver: Stand and Deliver Night One 4/7/21

NXT has been my favorite mainstream wrestling program of 2021, so I figured why not check out their two night TakeOver special, despite being a few weeks behind on programming and not actually knowing anything that is on the card. Will I be rewarded for going into this blind? We'll see!

Pete Dunne vs. Kushida

ER: This was a real nice fast pace for a show opener, and also, I hated most of it! I really, really hated most of the offense that made up this entire match, a match filled with arm break and finger break spots without a single moment of somebody selling an arm or finger injury. Dunne tossed out so many finger break spots that were used to transition Kushida immediately back to offense, just an incredibly stupid usage of an already stupidly used spot. They traded arm break spots, and every time they did, all that happened was the other one would then do their own arm break spot right after. The match threatened a few times to go to interesting places, but since no move in the match was ever sold seriously, those interesting places became only "what ifs". Kushida was really good at setting up Dunne's offense, took a big suplex on the apron too, but it's like they had some odd agreement that once one got to do a move, then the other could get up and immediately take back over with his own move. There was one compelling nearfall, where I thought a Kushida small package might have ended it early, but maybe that was me in hindsight just wishing that had ended things early. This was a lot of fast movement that lead absolutely nowhere, and everything was run through so quickly that I guarantee none of it will be remembered in a day. 

Gauntlet Match

ER: I don't really like gauntlet matches where guys enter on a time limit rather than after an elimination. It never plays to anyone's strengths, too many guys have to disappear when things get too clogged, and they're never as satisfying as just a trios match would have been. Hell, give me a couple of singles matches between any of these guys, guarantee it will be better than a timed gauntlet match. Nobody in this got much time to map out anything interesting, as a Ruff/Scott singles match could have been a really cool 8 minutes, as soon enough it was two guys bumping for Bronson Reed and ignoring everything that had happened in their own match, and that's how these things go. Pretty soon you have guys no selling spots because they need to be in position for the next chain spot, so Isaiah Scott gets flipped inside out with a Reed clothesline, but is back hitting a meh superkick on Grimes 4 seconds later because that's how the move chaining works. A gauntlet match like this is really great at making six guys all come out looking worse, either by getting pinned way earlier than they should have been (Grimes, Lumis), or having to rush through your routine because everyone else is fighting for attention. Even a silly 6 man multiman would have worked better than a new guy awkwardly integrating himself into the match every few minutes, but the format we got is not conducive to a good match for anyone involved. Did LA Knight need to be in this? Did Lumis? Just a poorly laid out idea all around. 

7. Tommaso Ciampa vs. WALTER

ER: THIS was more like it, just a big throwing bomb fest that was more than just bombs. This never felt like two guys out there trying to get This Is Awesome chants, it felt like an actual big main event title match, with one guy the clear underdog who was going to take as much punishment for as long as he possibly could. WALTER and Ciampa both turned in great performances, with WALTER turning in a ton of appropriate selling and Ciampa actually working like a guy with a size disadvantage, always feeling like a guy hanging on who MAYBE had an outside chance of winning the belt. I loved how the worked in some vulnerabilities for WALTER, and having him hurt his hand by overhand chopping the announce table in half is a great way to set up a hand injury. WALTER was super punishing with his offense, all of his kicks really found their way right underneath Ciampa's chin, and he was able to be punishing while not forgetting about what happened to his hand (something that nobody else on TakeOver has been able to do). 

WALTER's best bit of selling was when he was taking a dozen lariats from Ciampa, as it's incredibly difficult to sell on your feet while waiting for someone to hit you repeatedly, yet I thought he made it look fantastic. Ciampa's lariats weren't strong enough to put the big man down, but I liked how they knocked him into the ropes, loved how he stumbled before getting turned around, loved how the next one hit him in the back of the head and made him fall into the ropes for a bit, thought he turned what could have been an extended silly moment into an excellent stubborn refusal to go down and save himself from more punishment. Ciampa is a real hard chopper, and WALTER's chest was getting nicely purple by the end of this, and the harder Ciampa hit, the harder it made WALTER come at him with full force lariats and straight kicks. WALTER's powerbombs looked great too, and I loved how he was using his weight and size to just try to hold Ciampa to the mat. I loved the spot where WALTER hopped onto Ciampa and almost tricked Ciampa into bridging up on his neck, that extra bit of temerity that seemed immediately like a bad idea, and lead directly to WALTER crushing him back on their feet. Ciampa's selling down the stretch was great too, barely escaping out of a rolling powerbomb, dead man walking getting back to his feet when he clearly shouldn't have been standing, only to be put down for good with one last chop. Several guys on NXT have really taken a lot of the stupid melodrama out of their selling and it has only made these title match epics sing. With no bullshit morality acting or shocked kickout faces, the matches seem far more streamlined and intense. 

PAS: I thought this was a good stiff match, which flirted with great, but didn't get there. I thought the spot with WALTER smashing the table with a chop was a clever idea, executed well and really gave the match some structure. WALTER did a great job of selling constantly trying to adjust his attack with that probably broken hand. I also thought the multiple lariat spot was clever, although I really wish they looked better. It would have been a bigger deal if WALTER had kept standing with a dozen hard lariats, rather then just standing through a dozen B- ones. I thought the finish run had the problems that these matches often have, where they ended a couple of beats too late. The actual finishing spot looked way less nasty than the couple that proceeded it, and it came off flat. I would have liked the match a lot more if it ended on the powerbomb. Still for this style of match it had some real highs, and I enjoyed lots of it. 

MSK vs. Raul Mendoza/Joaquin Wilde vs. Grizzled Young Veterans

ER: I thought the Dusty Classic (Men's and Women's) was really good, tons of memorable matches and really made me want a legit focused tag division. This tag three way was everything the earlier match with six people wasn't, a super fun tag with a few surprising spots and a quick pace, felt more like a tag you'd see on early 2000s Jersey All Pro, and I can't think of a bigger wrestling compliment I could give over the past 20 years. Just like on those old JAPW tapes, I'd spend entire matches constantly switching who my favorite was, made me just root for all of them and seek out more. You'd flip for a big Ghost Shadow bump, then flip for the Hit Squad crushing Azrieal, then lose it for Rainchild. It was a roster I loved through and through, and everyone worked well together. I have a feeling this would have played well at the Bayonne Charity Hall. Wes Lee had this section where he was throwing out spin kick combos and leg sweeps as everyone in the match attacked like a ninja, then he pasted Gibson with a hard hitting tope, and followed that up with a huge tope con giro on Legado del Fantasma. Mendoza and Wilde are great at getting into position for things like that, and I like how they played kind of a lower key highspot role so MSK could shine with their cool double teams. Wilde stuck to hard corner clotheslines, Mendoza stuck to high dropkicks, a missile dropkick to break up a submission, and both took crazy spots on the floor to help get over the other teams. Wilde took a flat out insane looking Doomsday Device, with Drake running off the ramp to send Wilde to the floor, and Mendoza took basically a safer Burning Hammer on the floor with a slingshot double stomp from Lee to kick it off. The MSK "best buds stuff fighting for their dream" stuff can get a little hammy (though it would probably be fine if only they weren't constantly talking about it on commentary, but this is the kind of tag match you put on to show off that your tag division is really cool right now. 

Raquel Gonzalez vs. Io Shirai

ER: This was the complete opposite of what I thought it was going to be, worked totally different from what I was expecting, and I loved it. I thought this would be Gonzalez dominating, with Shirai coming back in not belieavable ways and pinning Raquel with a bad moonsault. Instead, it was somehow Shirai taking 90% of the match, which on paper sounds preposterous to me. But Raquel Gonzalez is getting really good, and it kind of snuck up on me. She is a really strong base, and not just in the kind of way that someone so much larger and taller than their opponents should be. She was so good at taking Shirai's offense and so great at setting all of it up, all of it building nicely to each stage of the match, that it felt like Shirai was organically keeping not just one step ahead of Gonzalez, but believably dominating her. They were really smart about how much offense Gonzalez took, having her block several ranas, avoid Shirai's rope feint kicks, and it was the only way this was going to work. Shirai just doing nothing but offense for 90% of the match would have come off brainless, but with Gonzalez fending off much of it, it just made Shirai come off as relentless. Dakota Kai's interference and immediate dismissal came at a good time, and I like how all it did was stop a Shirai moonsault, not turn the tide for Gonzalez. It was super impressive how they kept Shirai in control and Gonzalez staggering, but I really got into it. Gonzalez kicking out of the moonsault felt like a big deal, and the crossbody off the entrance ramp looked like a deranged Shirai throwing her body harder and harder into the monster that won't stay down. I thought it was great how suddenly Gonzalez took over, nailing Shirai with a great low cut clothesline that resulted in Shirai hitting one of her best moonsaults (this clothesline could not have flipped her over harder on her stomach). I'm really happy for Raquel's title win. There really wasn't anything left for Shirai to do as champ, and Gonzalez is someone intriguing to have on top against a bunch of interesting babyface contenders. I had this match in my head as something very different than what we got, and I'm glad, because I loved what we got here. 

ER: Those first two matches really stunk, and I was starting to regret the idea of doing this show the night of. But WALTER/Ciampa (it landed on our 2021 Ongoing MOTY List) was great and the show never slowed down from there, thought the last three matches of the night stand up next to any three match run from any TakeOver. 

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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. 

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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.

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NXT TakeOver: XXX 8/22/20 Better Late Than Never Blog

Breezango vs. Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch vs. Raul Mendoza/Joaquin Wilde

ER: A match that had some of the typical problems of any triple threat match, meaning we got a lot of different guys lying around for far longer than they should have been. If I focused on how many guys were lying around, and the moves that caused them to stay down (often just "guy gets thrown through ropes to floor", which happened a lot) it would be a silly match. But just trying to ignore the dumb match type and there was a ton of good action. Raul Mendoza looked awesome whenever he was in, loved him slipping through the ropes to the apron to catch Fandango with an elbow, and his rope run tornillo looked insane. Wilde is a big bumper and worked that well into the match (took a big lariat on his shoulder, got dropped with a Burch/Lorcan double DDT), Burch had a decent hot tag, there were a couple of nice offense chains (dug Lorcan hitting a flying uppercut only to eat a Breeze superkick), and a decent nearfall save. I would have rather seen either team other than Breezango win, but oh well.

Finn Balor vs. Timothy Thatcher

ER: Strong match, and it was stronger the closer they were. All of the grappling was really really good, and a match focused solely on that would have been awesome. The stuff I liked less was whenever it tilted a bit more into a Balor match with move reversals and a little stand and trade. The former made up a far higher % of the match, and the latter was worked in well. But the grappling was so strong that I just wanted it to be the whole match. Thatcher went after Balor's leg, and I love how Thatcher gets a tight leveraged grip on his single leg crab, locking his elbow crook in Balor's knee pit and absorbing boots to the face just to do some more damage. I like seeing Thatcher work guys who typically don't do matwork, as it forces them out of their comfort zone and usually makes them look cooler than their normal style. Balor didn't get clowned on the mat, even while Thatcher was bending at his arm and working to lock on chokes, or stomping on inner thigh to open up the left leg to a target. And I liked how they came back to the leg when Balor missed a stomp. Thatcher smelled blood and swam in. Some of the Balor offense felt like it went away from the cooler story they were telling, and I always wish guys were better about adjusting their offense game depending on what their opponent had been working, but I still liked this alot.

Damian Priest vs. Johnny Gargano vs. Bronson Reed vs. Cameron Grimes vs. Velveteen Dream

ER: Not only does Dream get to talk about "getting a second chance" during the pre match video and gets the last entrance, looks like the books are closed on that one. Bronson Reed is wearing a rad Bam Bam Bigelow singlet, and I am into it. And this match was odd, as I didn't really care for the match itself, but it had some pretty spectacular crash landings. Matches with odd number participants are usually off, and a lot of the stuff based around climbing ladders here was actively dumb. There are only so many ways to climb a ladder, and we're pretty far past the point of finding clever new ways to climb ladders. The cuter they get, the lamer it gets, and almost all of the stuff revolving around guys climbing was dumb. Guys also disappeared for odd stretches of time, sometimes after a bump that should keep someone disappeared, other times not. Plus, this thing was too long. We don't need to run past 20 in these stunt shows, just makes it feel silly the longer guys go surviving these crashes. The dive train was strong, especially liked Reed's big tope and Priest's wild tope con hilo after running up a ladder. Grimes did the splits between two ladders but the payoff was kind of weak, the ladder bump crashing over the barricade was wild, and my absolute favorite thing was Bronson splashing Gargano off a ladder with Candice on his back. The rest of the Candice involvement felt way too shoehorned, too out of place and Grimes looked silly selling any kind of offense from her. But a fat man hitting a superfly splash while wearing a tiny woman as a backpack is always going to fucking rule.

Adam Cole vs. Pat McAfee

ER: I LOVE matches with non wrestlers. I always get excited for them. I watch so many damn matches with guys who are trained specifically to do professional wrestling, that it is always exciting to see what someone - especially athletes from other sports - "gets" about wrestling. Sometimes it's Jay Leno doing an arm wringer a few times, but sometimes it's fucking Floyd Mayweather! I've seen Hijo del Santo live more than once, but how cool are those people who were at one of Marcus Dupree's first indy matches? What about those people who got to see Lawler and Dundee each teaming with local Tennessee pediatricians? I love non wrestler matches. And I think this was one of the greater non wrestler performances we've seen.

Pat McAfee was a real natural, and I'm not sure what it says for NXT that he was so much better at wrestling acting than Adam Cole? The match has a weird heel vs. heel vibe to it, that kind of works for the match overall. Cole isn't the guy defending the honor of pro wrestling against an invader, and McAfee isn't the local babyface star from another walk of life playing star in another sport. They're both heels, with McAfee a deservedly cocky loudmouth, and Cole a little brat who feels like the worst guy to be a public face of pro wrestling. The heel vs. heel vibe got me into it, something more fun about two unlikeable guys hurting each other (though I was rooting for McAfee obviously, who wouldn't root for him over Cole). They're smart with smoke and mirrors, and McAfee ramps things up appropriately, showing more and more athleticism and grasp of wrestling. He hits a dropkick, has a nice grounded chinlock, and then takes things to the next level with a tope con hilo into a crowd of plants and wrestlers. McAfee keeps looking more and more like a natural, and by the time McAfee did a backflip off the top, then leaping back to the top with no hands, to superplex Cole off. It was a great superplex, too. But once they start working the match around McAfee being an actual high level punter, this goes from a great non wrestler performance to a great match.

McAfee goes to punt Cole on the apron, Cole moves, and McAfee boots the ring steps. It looked great, and I love the idea about the great distance punter injuring his foot. We get a great moment of Cole kicking out his kicking leg on a charge, playing up the hurt foot and knee that he's had a few surgeries on. McAfee punts Cole in the balls and honestly, the McAfee punting Cole right in the chest and yelping at his hurt foot was one of my favorite wrestling moments of the year. Cole is a little too Edge Acting for the finish - again, McAfee shouldn't be able to play his character than Cole - but McAfee taking the flipping piledriver is a bonkers thing for a new wrestler to be taking. I am always going to be excited for a non wrestler match, and this one was one to seek out.

PAS:  I thought McAfee was incredible in this match and Cole was awful. If you showed someone this match in a vacuum, and asked which one of these guys was an untrained amateur there is no way they would pick McAfee. Everything cool in this match was on him, the tope con hilo, the backflip into the high jump superplex, and everything around his punt of death totally ruled. Meanwhile Cole is making dramatic acting faces and did maybe the worst hockey fight in the history of wrestling, swinging his tiny little T-Rex arms into something resembling a punch. Cole has to be 5'6 with a 4'11 wingspan. I am not sure how he wipes his own ass. That dramatic teased removal of the knee pad was embarrassing. There is a reason I don't watch this community college Death of a Salesman shit anymore.

Dakota Kai vs. Io Shirai

ER: I liked a lot of this, and yet a lot of it left me hollow? Even the stuff I liked kind of felt hollow as it never felt like it had grave consequences. Example: I thought Shirai's double knees and knee strikes  looked uniformly great throughout...and yet she did SO MANY of them to Kai that she made her own offense look ineffective. If something looks like a kill shot, but is sold similarly to a hard bodyslam, by the end of the match I don't care about it. The match was filled with hard knees and double stomps, but the only thing really sold as damaging was a so so moonsault. I liked Kai's work on Shirai's arm, and really thought the struggle by Shirai to get to the ropes made it even better. Shirai was good at selling her arm, and it slowed her down an appropriate amount while not getting too in the way. Kai's strength is stringing together semi-complicated sequences and making them turn out plausible, like when she slid to the floor, spun Shirai out onto the apron, and delivered a yakuza kick. Those kinds of sequences can come off too dance-y but Kai actually makes them look as intended. I think it went too long and they went back to certain things too many times. You cut this 16 minute match down to 10, thus cutting out some of the move spamming, and I think it hits.

Karrion Kross vs. Keith Lee

ER: This didn't work for me. It felt like they were moving in slow motion right out the gate. I'll take this kind of match over the Lee/Dijakovic style of main event, but this was not a match with 20+ minutes of material, and didn't need to be. Lee is bizarre to me. He is an incredible athlete who almost always plays against his strengths. He should be doing things to maximize his size and speed, and yet ever since joining NXT he almost always just comes off as everyone's equal. He's not a good striker, and yet he always does these stand and trade sections that remove any wonder. It would be like Vader working an equal strike exchange with someone 50 lb. (or more) smaller than him, it would look odd and make Vader look far less impressive. Imagine if Lee worked more like a larger, more spry Masa Saito?? Instead he's someone who works to minimize his size, and I don't get it. I was a big fan of Kross vs. Ciampa on the last TakeOver, and that match was worked with an immediacy that made Kross look like a killer without hurting Ciampa. This match had none of that immediacy, and instead was worked like at a slogging pace. I get they are saying that Keith Lee is a big man and takes a long beating to wear him down, but I don't think this did either man any favors. Keith Lee just got slowly worn down over a too long match, and he kept striking to comeback, which paints him in the least favorable light. He needed to just slam his body into Kross on every comeback, and that just didn't happen. I did like the Kross suplexes, and the whipping Saito suplex off the top was a cool finish, but even with the title win this match felt like a step back for Kross, and Lee has felt like he's been spinning his wheels on NXT all year.


ER: Weird show, my feelings for this one are a real rollercoaster. The show felt like a solid TakeOver show, but I really didn't like any of the matches other than the McAfee show. The pre-show match was fun but too short (considering every other match on the show got way too much time, they really could have used more balance), and Thatcher/Balor approached being a really good match but I didn't like the ways Balor took away from their own narrative. Ladder matches don't really move my needle any longer, they just happen far too frequently. The main event didn't work for me, and I was left with a former NFL punter carrying this entire show for me. And yet it felt like an overall good show? And yet it also felt like it went way way way longer than its actual run time. I'm torn on this one. But of one thing I am certain: Pat McAfee rules, and is a far more interesting performer than a large % of the NXT roster. That should be a major look in the mirror moment for the NXT brand. It likely won't be, but it should be.

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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.

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Much Later Than Live NXT TakeOver: WarGames 11/23/19

I had a co-worker's 50th birthday party to attend earlier in the evening, so couldn't get a reasonable start to this one. But it's not tooooo late and I'm all partied out, so let's see if this WarGames is going to be decent.


Rhea Ripley/Candice LeRae/Tegan Nox/Dakota Kai vs. Bianca Belair/Kay Lee Ray/Io Shirai/Shayna Baszler

ER: I really was not feeling Candice in the opening minutes of this, didn't think most of her offense looked good; but I really enjoyed everything being done to Candice, and that's important. Shirai boots her with a big missile dropkick, Belair cracks her with an elbow, powerbombs her several times, throws her into the cage with LeRae sliding uncomfortably down the metal, really everything done to punish LeRae works. But once Ripley gets in, takes a long time grabbing the same exact weapons you've seen for decades now, we build to several dumb uses of them. I think your work should be able to stand alone in a match like War Games, and going to trash can shots and propping up chairs and having everybody make increasingly stupid decisions to get into a big tower in the corner, just comes off lazy. Even when the end result is LeRae getting the back of her head whipped into a pile of chairs,  it still feels like they spent way too much time on dumb bullshit. I didn't anticipate the Kai turn, but I also am not an avid TV follower and Kai has never done much for me anyway. I do like how Kai kept running back to repeatedly attack Nox. Belair is I think the only person making strikes and weapon shots mean something. There has been a comical amount of bad hockey fight spots in the match, and here's Belair finding three different cool ways to make a trashcan look dangerous. Belair is really the mega star of this match, and it's kind of crazy how much of a non-factor Shayna was after getting into the ring. Shayna is in the ring for 2 minutes and then sells on the mat for the next 10. But Belair just won't quit, she's whipping the hell out of Ripley, jumping around like she's getting swarmed by ants at a picnic when LeRae is whipping her, in with a great nearfall save, tasked with catching Shirai on an ill-advised top of cage moonsault, Belair was just EVERYTHING in this match. Mauro Ranallo was expectedly unbearable, and my least favorite Mauro moment is when he described a "top rope avalanche poison rana" by LeRae as "desperate". I will not be able to understand how doing a move that you have done before, here performing it when your opponent gave you the opening and it could lead to a win, is "desperate". Shitting your pants and smearing Kay Lee Ray with your own shit would be a desperate move. That is the move of someone with zero options left. But performing a complicated reverse rana? That seems like someone very much in control of things. Shayna stopped selling long enough to lose the match, just a bizarre misuse of her, but Belair's performance made me overall like this match despite not liking a TON of directions this mess went.

Damian Priest vs. Killian Dain vs. Pete Dunne

ER: This was a much too long 3 way that had the problems nearly every 3 way has, and could have ended earlier after a few specific spots and been better for it. I'm a Damian Priest novice and will probably opt to stay that way. Priest feels like a better version of Matt Taven, which means he is a worse version of just about anyone else. He's not good at occupying himself, forced Dunne and Dain into unlikely scenarios just to get his shit in (most egregious is Dain having to get up way too quick so he can be ready for Priest's spinny kicks), he's the guy who is always too early or too late to his marks. Dain had a real nice match, kind of got stuck in the thankless role of getting shunted aside so we can continue to watch Dunne/Priest have zero chemistry together, or have his very good offense shrugged off early so we can get to more stupidly chained 3 way moments. But Dain had cool stuff, leveled Priest with a dive, did a bombs away on Priest while hitting a Michinoku Driver on Dunne, and was the guy who was actually bringing something a little rough edged to the dance fighting of Priest and Dunne. The finish I thought was pretty dumb, with Dunne getting Dain in a backpack choke, leading Dain to leap onto Priest while wearing Dunne...but then Dunne just shoves Dain away and gets the pin. This match was filled with moments of "Wait why is that guy selling so long...wait why is that guy selling nothing at all?" (much like that War Games we just sat through) but damn did that finish come off dumb as hell to me.

Matt Riddle vs. Finn Balor

ER: I dug a bunch of this, while this also made this the third ending of the night that I just really did not like at all. I haven't read what anyone else has said about this show, but I cannot fathom logging on tomorrow to find out the rest of the internet thought this was a night of the sickest finishes. These matches finishes have been fucking terrible to me. I liked too much of this to shit talk too much, as these two were super complementary wrestlers breaking out some wild stuff in their first ever match of any kind opposite each other. I really dug all the submission stuff, and liked how Balor was actually lacing in some nasty stuff to rub Riddle's face into it. That baseball slide dropkick was just plain mean, and we even got a very special All Japan Comm Tape slo mo shot of Riddle's mouth going all rubber face mask after eating that boot. Now, it left me a little cross when Balor sent that boot straight into Riddle's teeth, but then bumped noticeably early the first time Riddle went for a big kick. I mean you gotta give and get, and luckily Riddle made him pay with some nice throws (his early Karelin lifts will always look cool), and I like how he just showed Balor how shit his German was by hopping up, hitting that V trigger, then dumping him with his own German. Riddle catching a Pele kick was probably my favorite part of the match, as it turned into an actually good ankle lock sequence, something I could have actually bought as the finish - and would have loved for it to be the actual finish. Riddle caught that Pele kick perfectly, twisted that ankle, sent an axe kick down into Balor's kidneys, grabbed the other ankle when Balor gave it to him, and I just really wanted that to end things. Balor was actively good at selling that ankle, and I even got into all the performative shit like Balor coming up lame while getting thrown into the ropes, because Balor was actually doing it really well! Now, obviously, that ankle selling went WAY out the window when it came time for Balor to do a double stomp of the top, and...I can't speak for everyone here, but I, if I was limping badly on an ankle, unable to even run, able to put no weight on it....and then I was given the opportunity to jump as high into the air as I could, and stick a landing right on my Kerri Strug'd ankle...I probably wouldn't take it. But Balor cannot WAIT to jump as hard as he can right onto that ankle, a man literally incapable of coming up with ANY other offense to do to Riddle, a man so set in his ways that he is obviously going to just jump into the air and land upright. I don't think Balor needed to win this match, and I didn't like that he did, and I didn't like the stupid double stomp because man what the fuck.

Roderick Strong/Kyle O'Reilly/Bobby Fish/Adam Cole vs. Keith Lee/Donovan Dijakovic/Tommaso Ciampa/Kevin Owens

ER: This came off like a big, bloated, overly dangerous indy War Games, and I mean that in a good way. I like the regional indy flair it had: An oafish giant, an anti-hero team captain wearing weird facepaint, a big man taking stiff shots to the side of his cinderblock dome, guys going through tables at awkward angles, and just the way the big moments kept inching up bigger and bigger, bumps getting dumber and harder. Some of the prop set up was too focused and mapped, but at times it added to the cheap charm of them being big stage backyarders pushing their limit. I really loved the first 5 minutes, Ciampa vs. Strong. I thought the match did get weaker once we got the tables integrated, but the first 5 minutes were those two really laying in stiff strikes and constantly pushing pace. Ciampa hits a wicked kneelift after tying Strong up in the corner, and it was the start of a really great match long performance for Ciampa. Keith Lee is a super fun wrecking ball, takes a few big ass bumps, and deals with multiple moments of Undisputed teeing off on the side of his head. Lee is a great Hulk to sit there and be slowed by hard shots to the ear. Owens got a good reaction and seemed to feed off it, turning in a real spirited performance with dangerous bumps, including my actual favorite use ever of Adam Cole's bunny hop flipping piledriver. I really loved the struggle the two of them went through, fighting on the metal plate joining the two rings, like they were fighting on a stadium's catwalk in a Bond movie or something, and they way they fought over it I had no clue who was going to be dumped on their head. It went long, but it felt like it ramped nicely, felt closer to real epic than faux epic.


ER: I really didn't like the finishes of the first three matches, but the PPV ended on a decent note for me because I liked each subsequent match more than the last. I was majorly disappointed in the women's War Games - fantastic Bianca performance aside - and the three way felt clunky during all the Priest/Dunne moments. Riddle/Balor was very fun for much of the duration, and the main event delivered better than I was hoping. So it kept getting more enjoyable as it went on, which will make it seem better than it was in hindsight. But it was still one of the weaker TakeOvers I've watched.

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