Hawke’s nXt TakeOver: WarGames II Review

Recent WWE reviews of mine:

Daniel Bryan vs. Brock Lesnar

Shawn Michaels & Triple H vs. The Undertaker & Kane

Ronda Rousey vs. Charlotte Flair

The Undertaker vs. Triple H

Daniel Bryan vs. AJ Styles

 

November 17, 2018
Los Angeles, California, USA

Commentators: Mauro Ranallo, Nigel McGuinness, & Percy Watson

 

Matt Riddle vs. Kassius Ohno

Riddle knocked him out right away with a leaping knee. They will presumably do a real match on television. It’s still pretty funny how Chris Hero was the best wrestler in the world in 2016, and WWE signed him back up again only to do nothing of note with him on screen. At least they seem to recognize that Riddle needs to pushed well. (Bro.)

 

Shayna Baszler vs. Kairi Sane

This was a 2/3 falls match for Baszler’s NXT Women’s Championship.

To what was hopefully the surprise of no one, this was fantastic. Both wrestlers proved here that they could do an overbooked match as brilliantly as their beautifully subtle matches on previous the previous big shows.

Kairi was leaving nothing to chance and took the fight to Shayna who was metaphorically on the ropes. It seemed like Kairi was well on her way to winning at least the first fall very easily.

Then the two remaining non-Ronda members of The Four Horsewomen showed up to help Shayna, and that allowed the champ to take the first fall.

The overbooking continued in the remaining falls in a way that only helped to tell the story. Kairi looked amazing fighting off everyone, and then Dakota Kai and Io Shirai showing up at the end to help only increased the excitement.

It seemed like Kairi was poised to win. She was all set up to finish Shayna off with the big elbow drop. Shayna adjusted her body though so that she could reverse the diving elbow into a crucifix to steal the victory.

A great match that seamlessly integrated in-ring storytelling and outside shenanigans to produce something dramatic and surprising. (****)

 

Johnny Gargano vs. Aleister Black

This was a weird one. They did this (let’s charitably call it) ambitious combination of a Shawn Michaels melodrama match and a US super indie match. That is a very difficult combination to make work and gave these flawed performers a nearly impossibly small margin of error to overcome.

Initially, the match started off in a very intriguing manner. Gargano used a fun strategy of trying to get under Black’s skin by basically acting like an annoying gnat. It created a good cat/mouse dynamic.

They also made the wise decision of essentially never having a real heat segment. If anything, Black dominated much longer portions of the match than Gargano ever really did.

The real issue of the match was that a lot of action had the totally wrong tone. The match became so much about movez and kickouts which really took a lot of the heart out of a match that really should have been about revenge.

Those sequences really cheapened the more melodramatic moments at the end and made them feel less earned. That was a shame as the melodrama was not really poorly executed. It just felt phony after many important sequences that were rendered meaningless.

This was FAR from a failure by any stretch of the imagination. Black’s decisive victory was well-done and much needed. The crowd, as almost always on these shows, loved it. The journey to get there though was inconsistent and left much to be desired. (**3/4)

 

Tommaso Ciampa vs. The Velveteen Dream

This was for Ciampa’s NXT Championship.

On paper, Ciampa vs. Dream seems like a potentially risky matchup. While both characters are very over and have proven that they can have strong singles matches with the right opponents, it seemed as if there was a distinct possibility that physically they could have not brought out the best in each other.

Luckily, the match layout in broad strokes carried the day just well enough so that did not matter all that much.

If Ciampa and Dream do not have that obvious physical chemistry that usually makes for the best matches, they have developed very similar instincts as overall performers. Both dudes love being broad as fuck and playing to the very last row in arenas. That makes this combo far preferable to something like the increasingly funny Gargano/Ciampa matches which don’t recognize how unintentionally funny they are.

The broadness of the match is both why the match worked and why it had a low ceiling. Sure, it feels very consistent with Dream’s character that he cosplays as Hulk Hogan and the fans loved it. Doesn’t make it overly interesting.

Sure, Dream vaguely went after Ciampa’s surgically repaired knee at one point but that does not mean it led to anything meaningful (in fact Ciampa basically ignored any meaningful side effects of the work even when he hit the Project Ciampa.)

Sure, Ciampa undid the floor mat, and then Dream accidentally dove on the floor afterwards…but a part of the floor that still had its mat on.

None of those things were really bad or match killers. But they explain how the performers are not terribly ambitious at times when it comes to creativity.

It was a crowd-pleasing romp though and Ciampa’s draping DDT on the steel was a very satisfying finish. A FINE match! (***1/4)

 

Pete Dunne, Ricochet, Raymond Rowe, & Hanson vs. The Undisputed Era (Roderick Strong, Kyle O’Reilly, Bobby Fish, & Adam Cole)

This was a war games match.

It is a real credit to the team behind NXT for how over this match was and how consistent the investment from the crowd was for the 47-minute runtime. The show tried to present this match and all of its competitors as a really big deal, and the crowd responded to them in kind without hesitation or irony. That ability to actually match the intentions of the behind-the-scenes team with what is happening in the ring is what separates NXT from the shit show that is the WWE main roster.

With that said, the story told in this match was not terribly inspired or interesting, and the work done to execute the story was not good enough to compensate for the outdated concept. There is a ton of understandable nostalgia for the WarGames match, and a number of high-profile ones in the Crockett/WCW days were undeniably fun.

The concept though has a small margin of error however, and stretching out the length of the match as the WWE has seemingly decided to do two years in a row is just making it harder for the wrestlers. As it stands now, it’s just a very prolonged tag match with a very repetitive structure throughout, and these guys were just not able to make it much beyond that. It was far from a bad match and much like last year they went above and beyond to try to make it something special. It’s being forced though as an annual concept however and really needs to be rethought. (**1/2)

 

My list of 5-Star Matches