If you're a hardcore pro graps nerd -- if you're reading this, at best you're one degree of separation away from one -- then watching a high quality Takeover is probably similar to a foodie enjoying a Michelin starred restaurant, or a luxury enthusiast staying at some notable five star hotel. It's not just about getting your needs met, but having needs you haven't even thought of getting anticipated and suddenly seeming like the most obvious and logical thing in the world, following by you nodding sagely and murmuring.
Let's begin where the show did with the World Tag Titles match. This is a very good, highly rewatchable hard hitting match that would've turned way more heads had it not been for the miracle that was the North American championship match to come; as is I've seen plenty of support online for it being others' MOTN, so who could complain? The Raiders getting a Viking salute with a bunch of NPCs prematch (one of whom was Sarah Logan-Rowe in a very nice gesture) while some bootleg Game of Thrones music played in the background was nice. In retrospect, I really loved the red herring of Fish coming out with the champs and newly won NXT Award for tag team of 2018 then not being seen again. Act I was built on the champions trying to double team and swarm their bigger opponents, and we transition into Act II when Hanson goes for a tope con hilo between the ropes and goes splut con authoridad, drawing the night's first NXT! chants. Act II featured more double teams and swarms, then Act III started with what you would think would be the hot tag followed shortly thereafter by the real thing. Again, Hanson's freakish athleticism came through in landing a tope on and later getting superplexed by Strong. The Fight Forever chant I felt was a little generous but you can see that quality of match from where this match actually was (that makes sense, I checked). Back to Hanson, who not only kicked out of the first bootleg Total Elimination but cartwheeled into a handspring double back elbow from there (!) and since the then champs didn't get any help, they got caught in the Fallout. Such a good, good match that'll probably be in the shadow of the third match on this card forever but those are the eggs that break in an NXT omelet.
1) War Raiders d. Undisputed Era to win the NXT World Tag Team championships (Fallout --> pinfall)
The only real reason to do Riddle/Ohno III, let alone at a Takeover was so that Riddle would find a new way to win and *ahem* evolve by proving himself definitively and cleanly over Full Sail's resident gatekeeper. Ohno's Cedric Ceballos inspired gear was really cool, says the almost 40-year-old African-American lifetime NBA stan. Unlike Thursday Ohno landed his moonsault but down the stretch it was All Bro Everything: first a callback to their post second match shenanigans, with this time Riddle feinting at a fist bump to set up a short range B Trigger and then a sleeper suplex that's probably the craziest move on this show that hardly anyone will remember. Really innovative ending as Riddle just swarmed Ohno with elbows/side forearms for about half a minute until a still conscious Ohno tapped out. I've literally never seen that ending before in NXT, and maybe a handful of times on the main roster if that. So the newly monikered Original Bro wins the "worst" match of the night and settles comfortably into an overarching Stamford babyface archetype of "he likes to have fun, but when the bell rings, he's [insert whatever catchphrase and the adjective dangerous here]!"
2) Matt Riddle d. Kassius Ohno (elbows --> submission)
Meltzer has a five star system. I must have an MC5 star system, because the NA title match, well...
I could write about this match for an hour. Within it and I having shared the Earth at the same time for 18 hours, I'd already seen it three times and my esteem for it -- already high in real time -- got tropospheric when not only during my third watch I was still memorized by the fluidity and tightness of the sequences but recognizing with the benefits of slight pausing and rewinding that some of the counter's counters had counters.
This was delivering five star work in ring gear alone, honestly: Johnny comes out in Arizona State maroon and gold with the Phoenix backdrop in fire on the front of his tights, the back of which feature the words "the Johnny Takeover" with the Takeover lettering on his tights emulating Uncanny X-Men and echoing Dark Phoenix in Phoenix. (In the main event, Ciampa goes (Michigan) Wolverine with blue and yellow accented tights. These men are a) too big of nerds and b) too damn good at this for any of this to be a coincidence. He comes out to a (surprisingly?) high amount of Winkyface signs as his superhero themed gear not only evolves but gets darker. And then John Boy gets absolutely smoked by Ricochet coming out in Miles Morales Spiderman gear with a hoodie on the back of the jacket, one biracial prodigy who makes gravity look like an option nodding at another across the entertainment continuum. It's enough to make a hard rock smile.
Sometimes an NXT crowd will chant "both these guys!" and it is not deserved; this was not one of those times. My friend Danny Palace made the observation that Gargano had more than enough psychology for he and Ricochet, and that totally animated my thought process of why I was having so much fun in real time as well as on the rewatches since he was correct. It's a peanut butter cup of a match because their styles just match so damn well together. Ricochet is above average on the mat and can gain advantages...but he's still not Johnny Wrestling at it. Johnny can fly and do some dives and aerial stuff of his own...but Young Me isn't just the best at it, his knowledge of it rules supreme over nearly everybody and could make him numbers one, two, three, four and five.
Even between landing safely on his feet after a quartet of moves from Gargano, Ricochet takes a couple of beats to stick his tongue out in playful defiance; he's not looking at the hard camera when he does it, but he does it at an angle that you can see it if you're paying attention. And that's just one intricate thing in a match full of them that takes place in the opening five minutes. My notes for this match say fucksakes a lot. My notes for this match say #bruh a lot. Bolding, italicization, underlining and combinations thereof are all over a match that somehow didn't go 25 minutes but I -- and many hundreds of thousands of others -- would been fine if they actually had Fought Forever.
To piggyback off of a few sentences ago there's a moment pretty late in the match between when it looks like Ricochet's thwarted by Johnny bailing out to the floor and when he most hysterically, unbelievably, conclusively proves he's not where he gives a barely noticeable dismissive hand wave since Ricochet's jumping ability is like if Stephen Curry's range had a pulse. Again, this wasn't at the hard camera but one of the cameraman caught it from the floor and God's Production Team threw it up there before Ricochet launched himself into another four seconds of the credits to weekly NXTV's minute long opening "credits". He followed that tope con hilo over the fucking post with a springboard 450, Johnny survived that, and I've never seen so many happy Surrender Cobras in my life.
To the point where even though no one of significance had failed to kickout of a slingshot DDT, we all thought Johnny had it on the first one. To the Sami Zayn callback, right down to Johnny accepting his better nature and immediately walking into a small package as a result. To Mauro's voice cracking as Ricochet countered an around the world Escape attempt with an Escape of his hold, a move Johnny had to suffer through for some time before breaking the hold but only making the ropes after that'd happened. To shoving Ricochet into the post the same way he'd been shoved at last January's Takeover to him giving Ricochet a brainbuster on exposed concrete (he hesitated before he did it, but not for long) to set up his mouthing "I win" from the apron before crumpling and beating Ricochet with another floatover DDT; even to him pulling Ricochet closer to the center of the ring before the fall and Mauro successfully calling it as such while it was happening, something main roster announcers never seem to get right. It took a while for me to remember the last time I heard the words "I win": in actuality #14's said this a few times at recent Takeovers, but I was again thinking of more pop culture antiheroes and was reminded of Walter White's response to Skylar asking what happened after Gustavo Fring got blown up halfway to the great El Pollos Hermanos in the sky.
And since they added it, and GPT caught it, let's also add in the post match Ricochet doing the perfect sell from his back on the mat, feebly managing to graze the championship with only a couple fingertips before Johnny stood up to get his hand raised and hold the belt up high.
I may feel differently about this in the future, but as of now my position is this: there are matches as good as this. Not any any better. This is a $9.99/mo on its own match. This immediately goes on the shortlist to answer the question "if you could only show one match to a nonbeliever to try and get them into the tent, which one would you pick?". I don't know how many stars that is. My instinct is to say all of them.
3) Johnny Gargano d. Ricochet in the Match of the Night (hell, maybe the Match of the Year) to become the third different North American champion
You also may want to take note of this:
NXT's flow is so Reasonable Doubt that at this point they're even managing to make their pregame show mean something worth a damn in match storylines. The horrible straight white men in the preshow when it came to the Women's World championship were getting an utterance of "quick twitch muscles" away from any other veiled references to race that you'd hear on a football pregame (think of all the cliches that you've heard when it comes to guys like Brady and Rodgers v. guys like Cam Newton now and Randall Cunningham then if you're moderately aged like me and cared about pro football in the eighties). To paraphrase a 20-year-old in its own right, they're not wrong...they're just assholes, whether those sentiments came from the heart or were wired into their earbuds.
The match itself, as it should've been, was a step up in class from what they did Thursday. The use-the-hair-to-pull-her-into-the-post spot was repeated to a bigger audience with better lighting and got an elevation in response, just as I'd hoped. Shayna later got paid back when Bianca's sole hair whip actually cut her open across the ribs. This was Bianca's "Stone Cold at WrestleMania" match: she got to fend off interference from the underlings, had a visual pinfall when the ref was down, and far and away lasted the longest in the Clutch once Shayna managed to procure it after she missed a 450. (Another great sign of her maybe cracking a little and panicking in her first Takeover match and televised title shot, as she had a .7 Christian after realizing her pinfall had lasted longer than a three count with no referee in sight.) BelAir tried and tried to power out to no avail, close as she got a handful of times and she went from being cemented as a babyface in a loss during a match where the crowd started lukewarm on her first title shot. (Why, yes, I was reminded of Becky Lynch's similar circumstance! Why do you ask?) This stands up just fine on its own, but like everything else on the card is overshadowed despite the fact they overcame what easily could've been the spot of death to get the crowd invested.
4) Shayna Baszler d. Bianca BelAir to retain the NXT Women's World championship (Kirafuda Clutch --> submission)
In addition to the Wolverine motif, Ciampa's tights had THE CHAMP on them in the same font his name's been in. NXT: Where Attention To Detail matters. The Champ couldn't get going early until he started working over a leg he'd sent into the steps. Ciampa's sotta voce but loud enough to be picked up by the camera "I'm so good." was a delight, but let's not lose fact of the sight that since he's dropped the belt Black's been asked to sell more to put some cracks in previously seemingly invincible armor and has succeeded with flying colors every time. I wonder if this Takeover had been even two years ago if the rope hung Ace Crusher (delivered into the apron for bonus ouch points) would've been called the Tower of London or dubbed so almost immediately on impact. NXT deals so well in fine minutae that a forgotten about spit sell from Ciampa taking a front kick from Black on the outside -- Nigel stressing hydration beforehand during Ciampa's No Comeuppance on the outside for his water break is hilarious and almost justifies the match's existence on its own -- that Black nearly slips on the water but doesn't, yet still manages to get back in the ring and walk right into the Fairytale Ending (the new official name of what I'd been referring to as Devil's Wings) for a fine nearfall. Conversely, a few beats later Black lands the Mass but takes too long to cover, and by the time he barely manages to put an arm over Ciampa rolls onto his side to avoid a fall in a rarely seen but greatly appreciated no-fall nearfall. Ciampa having to use the Ending four times -- essentially two in a row at the end aided and abetted by Black's bum leg not allowing him the rotation to pull off the Mass again -- is important to add to his resume. He's the 1 in Black's 7-1 Takeover now. He won the belt in a shady fashion; there was no controversy here. He took the Good Big Bad of the past couple NXT years, broke him down, executed a well-thought out gameplan successfully and got Goldie back into his greedy paws as a result.
5) Tomasso Ciampa d. Aleister Black to retain the NXT World Championship (Fairytale Ending --> pinfall)
Ciampa's exit was so prolonged you knew Something Was Up. They even put up the credits box, bless GPT's hearts. It'd almost been a year to the day since the Crutch Shot Heard Around the NXT Universe, and right on cue out came the newly minted North American champion. Johnny looked askance at Ciampa, then held up his belt. Ciampa laughed his humorless bark and put Goldie in the air next to him to ripples of applause from the audience. The thing of it was: Johnny's gaze went to Goldie real quick -- Tommy Sports Entertainment didn't notice Johnny Wrestling's noticing -- and those gazes, two seen and one missed took up maybe the last four seconds of the show, if that.
Long enough to be seen, but long enough to also be missed.
And just when you think they can't get another drop out of this years-long story, another few quarts come tumbling out.
That didn't make air, but was all over the social media. Alls I know are these two things:
1) I don't know where NXT's going from here, but I Am Here For It
2, most importantly) If Johnny Wrestling turns out to be the Donnie Brasco of Full Sail, the DIY Extended Universe officially becomes the greatest wrestling storyline of all time. (Kanye voice) OF ALL TIME!(/)
See you in a couple weeks for another NXT In 60 Seconds, and see you in a couple months where we see if the WrestleMania weekend Takeover puts on more Matches of the Year, is the Show of the Year, or both.
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