Last Sunday on NXT TakeOver: WarGames 2020…
Io the grouch jumped on everyone, however that wasn’t enough to beat Team Candice, a possibly murderous hipster beat a smart yokel with a strap, Johnny Gargano regained the North American Championship thanks to a horror movie character with diminishing returns and The Undisputed Era took the Kings of NXT to the woodshed.
Tonight: Who’s next to face Finn Bálor for the NXT Championship? Will Raquel become the #1 Contender for the Women’s title? When will Karrion Kross return? Will someone finally file a missing persons report on Xia Li and Boa?
POP: Back To Business
Finn comes out spitting hot fire about how he’s ready to defend his Championship, which immediately signals a promo parade (small BOTCH, even Wednesdays aren’t safe from this trope) from likely contenders: Pete Dunne, Kyle O’Reilly (small POP for the mock English accent) and Damian Priest, who I guess is moving on from the North American title chase.
Those three start arguing while Finn walks back to the back saying it’s up to Regal to decide who faces him for the title at “New Year’s Evil” (hahahaha) and gets that “Finn Rub” (ew Finn don’t call it that, bruh).
All of a sudden, Karrion Kross’ music hits, smoke fills the stage and out comes Scarlett, looking like a Kingdom Hearts boss, to make sure Finn knows that Kross has his eyes on him too. Damian being Damian asks “smokeshow” (Damian making that reference is probably the closest NXT will ever come to crossing over to Impact) if she usually does all the work for her man, which definitely will not come back to bite him in the ass later in the night, no siree bob.
A solid, if somewhat familiar opening.
Mid: A Perfectly Good Match
This was one of those matches for me that didn’t really stand out from any of Swerve or Jake’s previously good matches. It isn’t a knock on either of them by any means, and both of them really showed their stuff here, but this match never really made it past “ok” for me.
Swerve seemingly teased a heel turn at the end there when he refused Jake’s handshake, so hopefully that gives him something new to do.
POP: Veteran’s Day
You know damn well what I’m gonna say about this match. It was fire. I missed the Grizzled Young Veterans like an old friend. Just watching them do their thing in the ring is fun as hell. Imperium is always excellent, so I have nothing bad to say about them here, and even Never-Rise was good here, playing their role as the team punching FAR above their weight and wrestling the match that way accordingly by playing it smart and picking their spots (if they’re not careful, they might wind up winning me over).
GYV needed another strong win to fully establish their return and they got it here. Now let’s throw them in the ring with Breezango and the UE already.
War Stories
NXT put together this little package as a way to really put over how dangerous the WarGames match is, and to let us know who’s injured and/or who will be taking some time off. Candice has a broken arm, Dakota’s hurt and is taking some time off (I still don’t know how she’s even walking after that Eclipse through those chairs), Bobby Fish’s arm is injured, and Oney’s got a swollen face courtesy of a chair and Kyle’s knee.
This is one of those ideas that WWE should think about bringing up to the main roster. There have been too many times where there was a big “dangerous” match like the Elimination Chamber or Hell In A Cell and the wrestlers aren’t really selling the night after.
POP: “I just don’t like you.”
Toni’s being asked by MacKenzie (I think) about why she turned on Ember (basically wrong place, wrong time) when Io shows up to get in her face simply because she doesn’t like her (I laughed very hard when she said that).
They take the fight out from the back to the ring, and Ember shows up to toss Toni back into the ring when she tries to make a run for it, which leads to Toni getting an Over the Moonsault for her troubles.
No shade to Raquel but I NEED Toni vs Io. I NEED IT.
POP: Cameron Grimes, or “Grimey” as He Liked To Be Called…
Earlier I mentioned Never-Rise punching above their weight in that Triple Threat Tag Team Match, and going into this, I assumed the same was going to be true for hero to this website, Cameron Grimes. Ciampa set this up earlier by talking about how much he doesn’t care much for all of Grimey’s bluster (I guess it’s only ok when he does it, huh Mr. Tommy Sports Entertainment).
Surprisingly, Grimey was actually able to hold his own here in this match, even lasting through a commercial break. I like how they have Cameron Grimes be this loud, seemingly dumb asshole, but when he’s actually in the ring, he’s a lot smarter than his mouth would lead you to believe.
Thatcher shows up early into the match to continue the beef he has with Ciampa (I guess Ciampa still isn’t worried about Kross or Goldie, for now), and like Ciampa sits in a chair and watches. Later on, *checks notes* Tyler Rust (how is that a name), who I guess is one of Thatcher’s students, darts out to the ring to distract Ciampa, but because he slept through Thatcher’s “How to Distract Your Opponent” class, he fails and Ciampa wins.
Grimey, who just can’t help himself, tries to mouth off to Thatcher and almost gets his ankle broken for his troubles.
Thatcher claims he had nothing to do with Rust showing up, and later backstage, Malcolm Bivens (YEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAH WOO), last seen managing the Not Authors of Pain, offers his services to Tyler Rust (take them you fool).
I’m for anything that puts more Malcolm Bivens on my TV screen.
— Malcolm (@Malcolmvelli) December 5, 2020
???: “STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!” – Randy Orton
This week on The Xia & Boa show, they’re training and getting hit with Kendo sticks while Shifu yells at them. That’s pretty much it.
Also apparently Xia and Boa are 60% Corn Syrup.
The commentators acknowledging the…clips but also kinda just rushing past was funny but also bring up even more questions like, why is no one helping their missing co-workers and why is production airing this? Who is giving production these clips?
POPBOTCH: This Is The Way
The Garganos and their adopted daughter Indi Hartwell show up to brag about their wins at WarGames (with Candice sporting a cast for her broken arm). The Garganos are at their most dorkiest here. Johnny is literally thrusting his hips at the camera, how am I supposed to boo these hilarious lameos?
Granted, my enjoyment of this segment is hampered by a specific presence, which also means this presence is gonna be a part of one of my favorite acts on NXT for a while so I have that to look forward to.
Johnny gifts Candice probably the scariest trophy I have ever seen in my life that looks like he got it for like $6 (“Imported from Italy”) with a hideous doll head on top, made to look like Shotzi.
Damian doesn’t approve of any of this and is pretty upset about getting hit with a pipe so he comes down to the ring to kick Johnny’s ass about it, but gets intercepted by Karrion Kross for his comments at the top of the show. Kross puts him through a table and then promptly leaves with Scarlett. Kross’ new “Wreck Damian & Leave” shirt can be purchased now at WWEShop.com.
POP: Divided Kingdom
If you’ll remember, a handful of weeks ago, Pete Dunne slammed Killian Dain’s face with a car door and he’s still pretty pissed off about that weirdly enough. So, Regal puts them in a match so they can work out their small personal issues.
This match really reminded me that SAnitY era Killian Dain was damn near bulletproof and was a straight up monster in the ring, and we really needed that Killian Dain back. Dude’s a monster and should be booked as such. His nickname is “The Beast of Belfast” for a reason, show it more often.
While Pete is on a higher tier than Killian on the NXT totem pole, it makes sense that he would have a little more trouble with a larger opponent like Dain, and again, this match is booked accordingly. Oney & Danny show up to interfere, which is then answered by Drake Maverick with a chair.
Dain has to save him, which distracts him long enough for Pete to hit him with The Bitter End and get the win. Really good and smartly booked match.
Look To The Future
Priest was supposed to be Leon’s partner next week to face Johnny Gargano in a Tag match, but that appears to be out of the question now. So Johnny shows up to rub it in his face, but thankfully, Kushida happens to be within earshot and agrees to tag with him next week.
Hey, it’s something to do I guess.
POP: Texas Battle
The main event is Raquel Gonzalez vs. Ember Moon, and the big wigs at NXT are very clearly high on Raquel. She continues to be booked like a star lately. She got the win for her team at WarGames (even pinning the Champion to do so), is running over damn near every woman on the roster (except for Rhea), and is now again, main eventing NXT.
It’s your classic matchup here, the scrappy, smaller babyface facing off against their larger, imposing opponent and the match flows like you would expect it to. Ember bravely fights her off, but any time she gets some momentum, Raquel is there to cut her off with a big power move or a submission.
At one point, Ember climbs some conspicuously placed scaffolding (…that wasn’t there before, right) in order to do…something, but Raquel just snatches her off of it. Ember goes for the Eclipse, but again, Raquel blocks it by snatching her out of the air, and follows it up with a huge clothesline. One One-Armed Powerbomb later after an attempted roll up, and the match goes to Raquel.
Post-match, Toni shows up to get some revenge on Ember for earlier, but “THIS IS MY BRUTALITY” plays from the speakers (causing a Scooby-Doo and Shaggy-like scared reaction from Toni) and Rhea shows up to keep that from happening (Toni clearly hasn’t forgotten their time at NXT UK). She stares down Raquel to close out the show.
This episode was a great follow up to an amazing WarGames, and did a great job of laying out new rivalries and setting up for NXT New Year’s Evil (lol).
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Peace.
Next Week:
Leon Ruff & Kushida vs. Johnny Gargano & Oh, let’s say, Moe
