WTF, really? I only watch Takeovers, but surely there's no justification for Gargano and Ciampa being friendly right now.

Embrace the dark side. Yeah it makes sense.

All nite with this. It gets old fast. Seemed to be amped up a lot in most of the matches tonite-- so many kick outs.

I wouldn't classify it as "friendly", just that Gargano now understands what it takes to win championships and now respects Ciampa a little for it. At least that's what I think they're going for.

They've managed to create a dynamic where a person could win on one finisher and people would wonder why there was no kickout. It's a crime against the very notion of good booking.

Ciampa smiled at him and went along with the dual belt-raising. I took it as them portraying a willingness to align in the future. Crapping on relatively recent blood feuds like that is terrible.

I think this is correct also. I'm expecting them to challenge War Raiders for the tag titles sometime very soon.

Maybe Johnny will "see the light" and it will end up with Ciampa vs Gargano for the NXT championship and a vacated NA championship at Wrestlemania weekend. I wouldn't exactly be a fan of that, but it would be better than the direction I'm seeing them go now.

If they actually win the tag titles, break out the blueboy.

Yeah, herein lies the problem.

Like, if this is mid/late-90s Sting and Luger, cool. Sting was an upstanding citizen, Luger was a duplicitous piece of ****, but they had a long-term relationwhip where Sting wasn't willing to dump his friend. Luger eventually goes full heel, but not by turning on Sting. If there was a good justification for Sting to go full heel in the future also, I have no problem with them aligning; the "I see what it takes now" justification makes sense. But long-term beatdowns to end Takeovers should mean that the recipient of the beatdown just hates the guy's ****ing guts forever unless you really have an inspired stroke in creative to justify a future alignment.

They teased a handshake at the end of the go-home show on Wednesday. Candice came out and prevented it, pushing Johnny back and saying something like, "Are you kidding me? You're not doing this again!"

Struggling to think of a worse takeover ever. It wasn't that bad, but it certainly wasn't good.

It was a well-wrestled show for sure, but I found myself not really being all that invested in any of the matches. War Raiders/Bianca/Aleister Black/Ricochet/Riddle is a pretty uninspiring lineup of faces to me (not necessarily in terms of talent, but in charisma/likability) so I was mostly just watching moves happen in a detached way.

I am also getting a bit jaded at the NXT match formula where people kick out of endless ridiculous high spots and would like to see them change it up a bit. The product in general seems more about getting "this is awesome" chants than making anyone care about what is happening, even more so than the main roster.

I just finished the show and I agree with this. Between this show and WK, I feel like I no longer enjoy wrestling but just enjoy talking and reading about current and past happenings.

I still enjoy it and am weirdly more into the main roster than most. I think Becky, Ronda, Daniel Bryan, and even Lesnar when he tries are great at telling a story and can get me invested in the outcome of their matches. Kairi Sane is by far the best at this in NXT and she was sorely missed on this show. TBH, even the main roster stuff that sucks often interests me from like a creative/psychological standpoint.

We always complain about there not being long-term storytelling, so I don't want to be too critical of what they're doing with Gargano because I assume there is some endgame they have sketched out. But it is weird to me that he was this organic, mega-over babyface last year in Philly and now he's just some ******* who wrestles "great matches," but there isn't that sense of really wanting to see someone win like when he was vs. Almas (sorry, "Andrade") and Ciampa.

I was thinking about this. She's my favorite wrestler in NXT and I find that to be a problem. I've only seen her wrestle ~10 times. But I feel invested in her when I watch her. As you mention, there's no investment in seeing people wrestle great matches. Last year I wanted to see Jonny tear Ciampa's head off...now they're not even at odds. I'm hoping this is some sort of better Orton/Wyatt angle where Jonny embraces Ciampa and it culminates at NXT WM.

Funny enough, this show would've been gold on the main roster even with the poor woman's match and Ohno/Riddle but NXT has very very high standards.

They don't protect finishers or signature moves whatsoever. Signature moves literally never end a match unless it's a huge combination of them and finishers always get kicked out of unless it's some level of squash.

I think NXT is going through a bit of a transition so it's understandable it's dropped off a little. It's one of the unfortunate parts of NXT's design that every year or so it has to go through a bit of a reshuffle but at the same time that's what keeps it fresh so if they get it right that's a good thing but there is that risk they get it wrong.

It was still a very good PPV. Just more so lots of good matches than the 1-2 great matches we usually get and I missed the tag match.

I find this surprising. Ronda has absolutely sucked at this for me. She's just been so surprisingly great in the ring that it hasn't really mattered. I don't think it's hurt her that Becky has hit her stride and Charlotte is godlike.

That's because the feud with Ricochet was a bit of a non-entity. It's putting the belts on Champa and Gargano to continue that story. I'm quite enjoying the arc. They have to be trying to set up one more match for the NXT Wrestlemania event and then they can move onto other things.

Agree with the original post about the NXT kickout formula, and this post.

I was mostly bored during the show. Not really looking forward to the rumble tonite either, even though I'll watch.

Ironically, I was listening to something this week that was recorded just before Mania this past year that was raving about how Gargano and DB are two of the greatest pure babyfaces WWE has ever had.