Tag: NXT

WWE Match of the Year 2019

As we close out another year, it’s always fun to look back at what some of the best stuff we got to see from the previous year was. The world of wrestling had no shortage of great stuff this year, both inside and outside the ring, so I can’t wait to run down these matches that I loved the most.

A quick disclaimer, while I do talk a bit about matches outside of WWE I liked, I didn’t watch enough non-WWE wrestling this year to make a full list, although I intend to broaden my horizons as much as possible next year, so hopefully, that will change in time for next years list.

11 – Tag Team Gauntlet Match – Smackdown 3/26

Perhaps the biggest storyline to come out of this year is Kofi Kingston’s ascension to the WWE Championship for the first time in his career and, trust me, this isn’t going to be the last time we talk about it on this list.

This was a match that came towards the end of his storyline, but is one of the most important and one of the best, which is weird when you consider that Kofi wasn’t even in it. Vince had declared that just two weeks out from Wrestlemania, Kofi had been given more than enough chances to earn himself a title opportunity, so the onus was now on his partners in The New Day, Big E & Xavier Woods to do it for him. They had to face off against Gallows & Anderson, Nakamura & Rusev, The Bar, The Usos and Bryan & Rowan in a gauntlet match and if they won, Kofi would go to Wrestlemania.

The action in the ring was great stuff, but it’s the story and the way it was told that makes this great. Big E & Woods gave the impression that they were fighting with all their hearts and souls in order to give their best friend the opportunity he deserves, amplified by Kofi watching from the back, with a slowly growing number of Smackdown wrestlers joining him to cheer E & Woods on to victory.

The pacing was perfectly done, with New Day getting solid victories early on in the match until disaster struck when The Bar put Big E through a table following their elimination. This led to what may very well be my favourite storyline moment from the whole year as The Usos came out, as Big E laid there and Xavier Woods stood ready to fight alone, before The Usos told them that Kofi had already earned their respect and refused to fight, forfeiting their spot in the match.

The whole final sequence of that match was nailbiting, after being disappointed so many times over the past couple of months it still felt like Kofi getting his shot was impossible, but when it finally happened it was wonderful. The celebration after the fact with The New Day and most of the locker room was one of the most feel-good moments of the year, but it wouldn’t be the biggest for Kofi, that was still to come.

10 – Women’s Royal Rumble Match – Royal Rumble

As a whole, this wasn’t one of the best Rumble matches and it certainly won’t go down as one of the greats, but I still get choked up at Lynch’s insertion into the match and eventual victory, so it’s earned a spot on this list.

The space between Survivor Series and Wrestlemania 35 this year was a very tense time for any Becky Lynch fans. Everyone knew that Lynch was such a huge star by this point that her spotlight at Wrestlemania should’ve been undeniable, but this is WWE and they’ve disappointed us plenty of times before, however, this was the night where it became clear that we were going to be getting what we wanted and it felt amazing.

After putting on a fantastic match against Asuka earlier in the night, Lynch wasn’t originally given a spot in the Rumble match, however, an injury sustained by Lana on the pre-show gave her an opening. I remember being on the absolute edge of my seat as she stood there, desperately pleading her case to Finlay and the moment where she gets the green light and her music hits is the kind of moment in wrestling that’s going to stay with me for a very long time.

The final 10 minutes of that match told a fantastic story that kept the emotional moments coming. There were plenty of tense “almost” eliminations as the match entered its final moments, including a potential injury from Becky that threatened to hand Charlotte the victory, which led to the fantastic line as Becky pushed the doctors away and got back in the ring and screamed at Charlotte, “You’ve taken enough from me, you’re not taking this”.

Everything Becky did in this match was the perfect encapsulation of why we all fell in love with her as a performer mid-way through 2018 and why she’s still THE biggest star in all of the wrestling industry to this day.

9 – Velveteen Dream(c) vs Roderick Strong vs Pete Dunne – NXT Takeover: Toronto
(North American Championship)

Unsurprisingly, this won’t be the last NXT match on this list.

NXT Takeover events are shows that usually only feature one on one (or two on two, in the case of tag teams) matches and it’s understandable why. The kinds of stories NXT tells only tend to work with two people and these singles matches tend to be the overall highest in quality. So a triple threat in this era of NXT in quite a rarity. However, after seeing this match I’d love to see a lot more in future.

The three men in the match are easily among the best pure wrestlers in WWE today and both Dream & Strong have very clear and powerful characters to them as well, so a clash like this was always going to be amazing. This match had everything you’d expect from it, a lot of quick action early on with all three men jockeying for position before things began to focus on technical prowess and great look dives.

The match as a whole was paced to perfection, there was very seldom a moment where nothing was happening as all three men seemed to appear in just the right place at just the right time. There wasn’t a great deal of the classic triple threat trope where one man peters out while the other two fight, instead, all three men were more or less constantly involved in the action that made for a fast-paced match that built and built all the way to the finish.

Speaking of the finish, it was rather shocking and great fun. The camera work was spot on to make me believe that Strong was about to win before Dream quite literally dropped out of the sky to break it up and steal the victory. While this match didn’t tell any kind of revolutionary story, it’s been an absolute blast to watch every time I’ve gone back to it.

8 – Kofi Kingston vs Daniel Bryan vs  Jeff Hardy vs
Samoa Joe vs AJ Styles vs Randy Orton – Smackdown 12th February
(Gauntlet Match)

We’ve already spoken a bit about Kofi’s story and now it’s time to go back to when it started.

This was a gauntlet match that took place just 5 days before the Elimination Chamber match between all 6 participants and it’s incredible to think that Kofi wasn’t even supposed to be a part of it. Mustafa Ali was originally set to take the final spot in the match but suffered an unfortunate injury the week prior to this match taking place, so Kofi was brought in as a reliable performer who could get the job done. Little did WWE know what would happen next.

What happened next was Kofi went out to the ring and put on the performance of a lifetime. The match opened with a 25-minute back-and-forth between Kingston and Daniel Bryan, during which Bryan pulled out every little bit of skill and knowledge he had in his body to make Kofi look like an absolute superhero, climaxing when Kofi pinned Daniel Bryan – The WWE Champion – clean. Kofi wasn’t done.

Kofi continued his roll, putting on three more great matches against Jeff Hardy, Samoa Joe and AJ Styles, falling at the final hurdle to Styles after a star-making showing. People had always thought Kofi was deserving of recognition for his 11 years of hard work for WWE, but it was this match that made the fanbase put it’s foot down and DEMAND it. Without this match, Kofi never would’ve had the amazing year that he did and it was an absolutely fantastic bout bell-to-bell to boot.

7 – Shayna Baszler(c) vs Rhea Ripley – NXT 18th December
(NXT Women’s Championship)

A late addition to this list, but a worthy one nonetheless, it’s time to talk about Rhea Ripley.

When Rhea Ripley showed up on US NXT in the summer, it was quite exciting, I wasn’t massively familiar with her stuff in NXT UK but I’d liked what little I’d seen, then not a lot happened with her for a few months. It seemed like she was going to be Shayna’s next big challenger but plans changed and Mia Yim got that spot instead. However, eventually, November came around and more or less overnight turned Rhea into an absolute star.

For one thing, she kicked ass in the build to WarGames & Survivor Series, being put over as the strongest women’s wrestler in NXT time and time again, even beating both Charlotte & Sasha on Smackdown one Friday. Then WarGames came about and she more or less carried the match for her team and came out victorious, the roll continued into Sunday where she put on an excellent showing and won the elimination tag match for her team, the crowd were so into everything she did it was wonderful.

Then this match came about and after spending most of the year feeling like Shayna could never lose that title, I could not think of a better successor to that throne. The Full Sail crowd were white-hot for this match and both competitors made sure to play up to it as much as possible. Shayna is one of the best heels in all of wrestling at the best of times, but when she’s got a crowd like this to play to her performance is transcendent.

The action was a lot of fun too, with both women going back and forth at such a nice pace and the overall flow of the match came together so nicely to form one of smoothest matches I’ve seen in quite a while. Like I’ve said though, what really made this match something worthy of this list was the atmosphere around it, this feeling that a champion who has seemed invincible for so long could finally have met her match created such a tense and exciting feeling to every moment of this match.

It all paid off too, with Ripley getting the win and taking her place at the top of NXT’s women’s division. The celebration after the match with all of the fans in the ring was a nice touch too and it elevated Ripley from a star to a mega-star as far as I’m concerned and I can’t wait to see where she goes from here.

6 – Adam Cole(c) vs Johnny Gargano – NXT Takeover: Toronto
(3 Stages of Hell)

Look, I know it wasn’t branded as 3 stages of hell, but that’s literally what the match was, so I’m sticking with it.

Gargano and Cole had arguably one of the best feuds of the year when it comes to match quality, so I don’t think it’ll surprise anyone when I say that there’s one more match between these two later on the list. This match was designed to be the climax of the feud, so it had a lot to live up to, especially when a large portion of the audience was getting a little bit tired of the feud by this point.

The key to what made this match so great was it’s pacing. In a heavily weapons-based match like this, it would’ve been so easy to go too big too soon and the whole thing would’ve fallen apart, but each stage of the match was filled with callbacks to earlier points in their feud and some great character work. You could feel the energy in the ring as both wrestlers knew they were more or less evenly matched and watching these two brilliant wrestlers trying to outthink each other was such a joy to watch.

The first two stages kept me on the jook just long enough so that by the time the ridiculous cage filled with weapons lowered, I was all in and hyped to see how things ended. From there onwards, things went crazy in just the right way, as each new weapon upped the intensity just enough to that it didn’t kill the pace, meaning I didn’t even notice the slightly slower action and spot set-ups, which are normally the main things that totally kill any weapons match for me.

It was a match that managed to capture all the elements of the Gargano/Cole feud that came before it while still adding to the story in its own right, making for an extremely satisfying conclusion to one of the best feuds of the year.

5 – Daniel Bryan(c) vs Kofi Kingston – Wrestlemania 35
(WWE Championship)

I’ve talked about the beginning, I’ve talked about the middle, now let’s talk about the end.

Personally, this was the match I was the most excited for going into Wrestlemania 35, with the fantastic build and quality of the wrestlers involved – not to mention the fact that I genuinely had no idea who was going to win – I just knew this one was going to be a killer match.

I’ve mentioned it once or twice already, but Daniel Bryan worked his ass off in this match to make Kofi look like the most worthy champion WWE’s ever seen. The two men gelled so well in the ring and it made for an extremely tense match, where Bryan was pulling out everything he could to keep Kofi grounded but Kofi kept pushing back and breaking free.

I was hooked on absolutely every near-fall, desperate to see Kofi win the title, despite the fact that I’m a die-hard Daniel Bryan fan. This was one of those matches where everything came together exactly how I’d hoped it would as all of the story elements came to a head in a technical masterpiece of a match that gave the saga of Kofi’s rise to the top the conclusion it absolutely needed.

I was on the edge of my seat all the way up until the final moment and the celebration after the match was over was perhaps the greatest feel-good moment of the entire year. No matter what happens to Kofi in the remaining years of his career, we’ll always have this moment to remind us that he’s absolutely one of the best of this era and he got his due in the end.

4 – Seth Rollins(c) vs AJ Styles – Money in the Bank
(Universal Championship)

With all of the problems Rollins has had this year, it’s easy to forget that he’s an incredible wrestler, so this match served as a wonderful reminder of that match.

As I talked about during my predictions for Money in the Bank, Seth Rollins vs AJ Styles was the one match that I’d desperately wanted ever since AJ first showed up in WWE and the two men had always managed to just miss each other whenever they came close to facing off. It’s safe to say I was very excited for this match and I was very happy with what I got.

There’s no special story or atmosphere to this match, the story going into it was basically non-existent, this match was just two of the best wrestlers doing some of the best wrestling. Both men were face at the time which meant they held nothing back in terms of speed & offence and that made for a match that was so much fun to watch from start to finish. Neither man stayed on offence for too long and the whole match just kept on rolling through at the kind of pace that I adore from my wrestling.

This was Rollins’ first title defence after winning it at Wrestlemania and it set the idea that this is exactly what his title reign was going to be full of. Unfortunately, he then faced Baron Corbin for 3 months straight, but let’s not focus on that. Let’s instead focus on the fact that one of my personal dream matches happened this year and it was everything I’d hoped it would be and more.

3 – Johnny Gargano(c) vs Adam Cole – NXT Takeover: XXV
(NXT Championship)

That’s right, my favourite match from this trilogy is the only normal singles match of the bunch, I’m sure that’s a real surprise.

While I do think the first encounter between these two at Takeover New York was brilliant, it had some pretty big pacing issues that ultimately meant it dropped off of the end of this list; this match, however, had no such issue.

Much like the previous match, the main reason I like it is very simple it’s just fast-paced pure wrestling from bell-to-bell. What elevated this above Rollins vs Styles though is that there was a substantial amount of story going into this match and with it being the mid-point of the feud, it was able to start taking their story in a new direction.

Cole knew that he and Gargano were equally matched, however, he also knew that getting the Undisputed Era involved only ruined things for him last time around. So instead he had to find a different way to out-think Gargano. This came in the form of Adam Cole seemingly doing what Gargano was expecting him to do and very obviously calling out the Undisputed Era to come and help him, only for it to turn out to be a bait and he stole the title from Gargano.

This was such a clever wrinkle to add to the story and one that saved Gargano for looking like a chump in losing to a guy he’d already beaten once before. Not only was it an excellent match but it allowed Adam Cole to win the NXT title in the most Adam Cole way possible and built the story and spectacle to its peak for their final encounter.

2 – WALTER(c) vs Tyler Bate – NXT UK Takeover: Cardiff
(United Kingdom Championship)

Forty-Two goddamned minutes of top-level wrestling. Amazing.

WWE has told the “David vs Goliath” story many, MANY times before, but I honestly don’t think it’s ever been done quite as well as it was in this match. After Tyler Bate lost the UK titles in 2017, I feel like the fanbase at large generally forgot about just how amazing of a wrestler he was. Thanks to the UK division’s relative lack of exposure for the better part of a year and a half, Tyler Bate seemed to be one of those performers who faded into the background slightly in favour of guys like Pete Dunne and Trent Seven.

Then he came out and had this match and reminded us all that he’s no-one to sleep on. Bate & WALTER have two very different styles but they were able to mesh them so perfectly here to create an epic-length match that never felt dull or like it dragged on at any point. The focal point being in Tyler Bate’s surprising level of strength in the face of a guy as huge as WALTER was such a great tone to set as it meant that myself and the crowd in attendance were on their feet for just about every spot where Bate looked to have hope of toppling WALTER.

WALTER got a chance to show his more brutal side here too, it’s no secret that his chops can cave a man’s ribcage in, but WOW those were some chops. The whole match flowed so perfectly for the whole length, which is something that absolutely blows my mind because it’s something we very rarely see in the modern era of wrestling.

As we’re about to discuss at even greater length, UK wrestling is better than it’s ever been this year and I would’ve loved to see this match in person, however, I was somewhere else that night…

Non-WWE Match of the Year:
Kazuchika Okada(c) vs Minoru Suzuki – NJPW Royal Quest
(IWGP Heavyweight Championship)

I’ve only been to a handful of wrestling shows in my life, but this is easily the best match I’ve ever seen live.

These two men had all the great chemistry you’d expect them to have and those feelings were amplified by the fact that I was watching from about 10 feet away from the ring in the 4th row. I’ve believed for a long time that Okada is the best in-ring storyteller in the business and I think that was absolutely on full display during this match because the two men in this match clearly identified who the crowd was siding with and played into it perfectly.

I’ve never felt more on the edge of my seat than when Suzuki kept almost getting the Piledriver off, I was able to entirely suspend my disbelief for 20 minutes and think that maybe I really was going to see Suzuki win the title right before my eyes. I’m well aware that from a pure wrestling standpoint there were plenty of better matches out there this year (Kenny Omega vs Hiroshi Tanahashi at Wrestle Kingdom 13 and Cody vs Dustin at All Out, come to mind) but nothing from this year is going to beat that amazing feeling of seeing that match happen right before my eyes.

1 – Pete Dunne(c) vs WALTER – NXT Takeover: New York
(United Kingdom Championship)

I’m telling you guys, UK wrestling was REALLY good this year.

From a technical standpoint, I’d put this match on par with WALTER vs Tyler Bate, however, the reason I’m ranking this match higher is because it opened my eyes to a style of wrestling that I previously didn’t care very much for. I’ve never been a fan of the “mat-based” style of wrestling, I’ve always thought it was quite slow, with not much happening of great interest to me. This match proved that I was an idiot for thinking that because slower, mat-based offence can be just as good as anything else that I love from wrestling

I’ve gotten so used to be being enthralled by the flashy, fast-paced style of wrestling that I didn’t realise how a slow, hard-hitting affair could be as good but the way this match played out not only gave me an enjoyable ride but gave me an understanding of what makes it so great. It built slowly, the whole way through, the whole match felt like it was this gruelling back-and-forth fight where neither man was going to let up for a second as they kept hitting each other as hard as humanly possible.

Dunne and WALTER took all of the classic, traditional tropes of these kinds of matches: Constant lock-ups, the test of strength, a big guy beatdown before the small guy comeback; and they executed all of them to perfection. They had me at home and the audience in attendance hanging on every single move, to the point where I heard several gasps from the live crowd when Dunne would suddenly have a burst of offence against the bigger WALTER.

All of this made it so that when the big spot finally came at the end, it felt like a huge deal and it just highlights the fact that throughout the whole match, ever move mattered and every move had an impact.

Not only was this match a technical masterpiece from bell to bell, but it opened my eyes to a style of wrestling that I’d never been able to appreciate before, which is why I think it’s the best of what WWE had to offer in 2019.

So there you have it! Those were my favourite WWE matches (and one from outside WWE) that took place in 2019. Thank you very much for taking the time to read this article, please let me know what some of your favourite matches from this past year were in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure you come back on Tuesday where I’ll be ending the year with my Game of the Year list for 2019!

WWE Survivor Series 2019: Every Match Ranked

I’ve mentioned before how I think that Survivor Series has been the most consistently great Pay-Per-View of the last few years and that streak certainly continued tonights. I have my gripes, as I always do, but looking through the whole show I can honestly say there wasn’t a single match I didn’t like. I was worried that having WarGames so close would potentially hamper the NXT contingent of this show, but the whole thing seemingly went off without a hitch, which is a very pleasant surprise indeed.

Still, we’ve got 10 matches to get through here and I’ve got a lot to say about some of them, so let’s get on with it.

10 – Robert Roode & Dolph Ziggler won the Tag Team Battle Royal
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)
(Kickoff Show)

Like a lot of the battle royals we’ve seen this year (because come to think of it, we’ve seen A LOT of battle royals this year) this one had no faults, but there’s also nothing in particular worth praising about it. It was a pretty standard formula, the eliminations came thick and fast in the early stages before things slowed down a bit and there was more wrestling when there we just a few teams left.

I would’ve preferred if someone other than Ziggler & Roode won, but given that this was just here as a way to pad-out the scorecard for Smackdown, then I can’t really find it in me to condemn it for being a bad decision, it’s not like anyone’s going to remember this match come Friday.

9 – Brock Lesnar(c) def. Rey Mysterio
(WWE Championship)
(No Holds Barred)

I do love a good family outing.

The layout of this match and the general pacing of it felt incredibly similar to Lesnar vs Bryan from last year’s show and, to a certain extent, it gave me the same sort of feelings, however, this was all crammed into 7 minutes instead of being given 20.

The opening 4-5 minutes were what you’d expect from a Brock Lesnar match, he was throwing Rey around and generally looking like a monster, however, that all turned around and the match got exciting once Rey’s son Dominic – of all people – showed up and turned the tides. It may have been a tad cheesy, but I enjoyed Dominic’s involvement in the match, everyone seems to be fully aware of Lesnar’s glowing weak spot that is his balls at this point and they make no bones about exploiting it. Then there was the double 619 which, once again, cheesy but fun.

I wish the match had gone a bit longer and Rey’s comeback had been given a little more time to breathe, but I still came away from this match feeling satisfied with what I watched and looking forward to this potentially going somewhere new in the near future.

8 – Team Smackdown def. Team Raw & Team NXT
(5 on 5 on 5 Men’s Elimination Tag)

The two elimination tag matches of the show are on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of what can be done with these kinds of matches and unfortunately, this was towards the low end. It had some redeeming features, which I’ll get to in a moment but it most certainly had its problems too.

First off, there were WAY too many quick eliminations, nevermind whether or not it’s someone I like, you had Riddle, Preist, WALTER, Orton, Gable and Owens all eliminated within 5 minutes of each other, which is ridiculous. I get that you’ve gotta have 14 pinfalls in a match, but there was a much better way to pace them than this, which the other elimination tag match on the show proved. My biggest gripe was the straight-up inconsistency in the rules, because in this match there were no countouts…except for when Braun Strowman got eliminated by countout; after that elimination, Ciampa, Rollins & Reigns all spent a lot of time outside of the ring while still being the legal man towards the end of the match and suddenly there was no count, which really irked me.

However, I still came away from this match feeling like I enjoyed the experience and that is because the closing 10 minutes of the match were great. When it was down to Rollins, Reigns, Ciampa & Lee the match really picked up in quality, the focus went away from spamming finishers and quick pins, to proper, fast-paced wrestling and it was very enjoyable. Not to mention that we got to see a star-making performance from Keith Lee, the final few minutes with him and Reigns going back and forth were something else and I’d very much like to see a full match of that in the future. Even though Lee didn’t win, he came out of this match with his stock undeniably raised which is brilliant.

As much as I loved that final segment, it was only about a third of the match and the preceding two-thirds weren’t great and, on a show with so many good-to-great matches, that unfortunately lands it down in 8th place.

7 – Lio Rush(c) def. Kalisto & Akira Tozowa
(Cruiserweight Championship)
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)
(Kickoff Show)

I think from now on, the Cruiserweight Championship should be exclusively defended in Triple Threat matches because these are always great.

Lio Rush is such a human highlight reel at this point, the stuff he is able to do when he’s let off the leash is so much fun to watch. When the pace of the match looked to be slowing slightly, Rush was ready to jump right back in and accelerate it all back up to fever pitch and keep it there pretty much the whole way.

Tozowa & Kalisto put in great performances to and I’m very pleased because it’s been so long since I’ve been able to say that about Kalisto. Kalisto specifically seemed to have really good chemistry with Rush, then I noticed that he was able to keep pace with Rush slightly better than Tozowa was and watching the pair of them go back and forth was an absolute joy.

Now 205 Live is moving to Full Sail, I’m most certainly going to get back into watching it because if we’re going to be getting stuff like this every week, it’s going to be the most must-watch show in the business.

6 – Shayna Baszler def. Becky Lynch & Bayley
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)

This was inarguably a good match, but I can’t help but feel a tad disappointed.

The pace for this one was slightly slower and I thought that was mostly to its benefit. Every move felt very deliberate and it gave the impression that each woman had really done their homework on their opponents. It was also a pace that let Baszler absolutely shine, she was effortlessly taking control of the match the whole way through and it made things all the more exciting when Becky or Bayley suddenly got a burst of offence.

The disappointment I was referring to comes from the finish because I feel like the match ended a few minutes too soon. When Shayna locked in that Kirifuda Clutch on Bayley it felt to me like the final act of the match was just getting going, I didn’t think that the fairly naff looking table spot would’ve been enough to keep Becky down and we’d get a final burst of back and forth between the three women before the match ended. Instead, Bayley just tapped out and that was that. Then there was what happened after the bell where Becky put Shayna through a table, which achieved nothing. It didn’t send the crowd home happy because the Chicago crowd were VERY happy about Baszler’s win, it didn’t help Becky because she just looked like a sore loser and it definitely didn’t help Shayna because she got her victory undercut and that was how the show ended, it was a tad deflating.

However, I’m not going to let a relatively minor complaint takeaway too much from the fact that this was a really good match overall. The pacing was spot on, every woman got a chance to shine and ultimately, I’d say the right woman came out the victor.

5 – Roderick Strong(c) def. Shinsuke Nakamura & AJ Styles
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)

This is the point in the list where we get to the matches that I have little-to-none in terms of complaints and how I rank them comes down purely to personal preference.

I don’t think there was any ever doubt about how good this match was going to be, you’ve got three pure wrestlers who are very good at what they do and they used the triple threat formula to great advantage in this instance. To say that everyone got a chance to shine is somewhat of an understatement, whether it was intentional or not, all three of these men looked like staunch equals the whole way through the match and a lot of that was thanks to the balance that was struck between each of their times on offence.

All three men had great chemistry when the match broke down into one on one fights and it made the occasional periods where all three of them were in the ring at once feel all the more hectic and fun. I wasn’t expecting Roddy to win at all but I thought how this went down worked for both Strong’s character and the running theme throughout the night of NXT winning their matches by being intelligent and tactical.

Nothing more to say really, this was just a really great triple threat match.

4 – The Fiend Bray Wyatt(c) def. Daniel Bryan
(WWE Championship)

Ok, the red lighting worked for Hell in a Cell, but it’s gotten pretty old now.

This match wasn’t the wrestling clinic that we got between these two in 2014, but that’s because it’s not what this match was meant to be. The more I think about it, the weirder it would be for The Fiend to put on a tense, back and forth 20 minute clinic, instead The Fiend just needs to go in and execute his unique style and it’s how the opponent responds and adapts to it that makes for both an interesting match and an interesting story. Enter Daniel Bryan.

I know the story beats in the lead up to this match were minimal at best, but Bryan did everything in his power to make them feel like a big deal in this match and at least somewhat succeeded. Bryan did a fantastic job of selling the beating he was taking from The Fiend and things got even better when he started to mount his comeback, seeing Bryan go back to wrestling a full face style after so long was a joy to watch, including the biggest Yes! chant we’ve seen since Bryan’s return last year.

It would’ve been nice if this match had got a bit more time, but I’m not entirely sure it needed it. I think it got in, told its story very efficiently and hit all the right beats to be exciting and got out before it started to drag on.

3 – Team NXT def. Team Raw & Team Smackdown
(5 on 5 on 5 Women’s Elimination Tag)

This match was the polar opposite of the men’s elimination tag match. While the men’s match had way too many quick eliminations and basically no wrestling until the final segment, this match paced all of its eliminations really well, leveraging the story points it had to great effect, and built to a great climax.

What I loved about this match is that, even though there were 15 competitors, everyone got a chance to look good and have some sort of spot in the match. Be it, Sarah Logan, looking like a legit beast for the first time ever, Io Shirai & Kairi Sane having a face-off that makes me to incredibly sad we never got that match in NXT like we were supposed to, or even Carmella leaping around trying to get attention; everyone got a chance to stand out.

The eliminations felt earned instead of being quick and cheap, it avoided annoying everyone because they weren’t “out of nowhere”. It also meant that a match-long story was able to build itself up, with NXT going two down early on and being forced to pick their spots until by the end they had the numbers advantage. I liked Asuka’s role in the match, going absolutely ape-shit after Kairi got eliminated, culminating in causing Charlotte to get eliminated with the mist.

If we’re talking about individual performances though, we’ve got to talk about Rhea Ripley. If we look at Smackdown on Friday, WarGames on Saturday and now the match last night, Ripley has gone from “sort of popular babyface, but it’s probably just a flash in the pan” to “This woman is a made star”. The pop when she first got tagged into the match and eventually won was huge and when it comes to having their stock elevated, no-one has done better for themselves this weekend than Rhea Ripley, I cannot wait to see her and Baszler go at it for the title.

2 – The Viking Raiders def. The New Day & The Undisputed Era
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)
(Kickoff Show)

To sum up my thoughts on this match in a single character: !

Viking Raiders & Undisputed Era have always had great chemistry from their time together in NXT, so this match takes those two teams and throw in The New Day a team who can have a top-quality tag team match with damn-near anyone, this thing was an absolute blast from start to finish.

The Viking Raiders were seemingly always in the mix during the match and quite frankly this match has done more favour for them than all of their previous RAW matches combined. Watching Erik(or Ivar, I honestly have no idea) facing down Big E was an absolute joy, only heightened with how sneaky and opportunistic Undisputed Era played it. The psychology was there too, with UE spending the whole match targeting all their opponent’s leg.

A little upset that Kofi Kingston has gone from 180 days as WWE Champion to the least important man in this 6 man tag on the pre-show, but that fact doesn’t take away from how great this thing was.

The pacing was spot-on the whole way through this thing too, it started off quite fast and tense, before slowing it down around the middle with UE and Viking Raiders having an extended sequence together, it lengthened out the build to the inevitable breakdown towards the end, making it all the most exciting when it finally hit. The whole finishing sequence was great fun, I loved UE going hell-for-leather taking out The New Day only to have to suddenly stop in order to not get flatted by The Viking Raiders, even if they ended up being unsuccessful.

This is how good tag team wrestling can be in WWE, I would very much like more of it.

1 – Adam Cole(c) def. Pete Dunne
(NXT Championship)

No points for guessing this match would top the list.

Despite both of these men (especially Cole) going through long and gruelling matches last night, this match didn’t feel like it suffered from that one bit. Cole has undeniably been the MVP of this whole “NXT Invasion” angle and this match only solidified that statement as, not only did he make sure that WarGames the previous night didn’t drag him down, he worked it to his advantage and made it add something to the match.

These two guys were always going to have fantastic chemistry in this match and they did not disappoint in the slightest, both men made sure to show the effects the WarGames match had on their bodies and it made for a match where every move felt very hard-hitting and the way both would sell every little injury like a big deal did so much to elevate this match to the fantastic bout it was.

It wasn’t fast and furious because it didn’t need to be, instead it focused on moves that gave the highest impact possible, including a God-damned Panama Sunrise on the God-damned ring apron, that looked brutal. The whole finishing sequence damn near blew my mind with how it turned out, I’ve watched it over ten times now and I still can’t work out how the two of them managed to pull off the Bitter End into Panama Sunrise spot, it was certainly something too behold and was a fantastically exciting way to end the match.

So there you have it! Those are my thoughts on Survivor Series! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this review, please let me know what you thought of the show, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Finally, make sure to come back on Saturday where I’ll be running down my favourite new Pokemon from Sword & Shield!

NXT Takeover: WarGames III: Every Match Ranked

So that’s another NXT Takeover in the bag! As always, it was a great show with some fantastic wrestling, but it felt a little weird compared to other Takeovers. The pacing of the show was a bit off, which is probably due to having two WarGames matches so it meant that the two pure wrestling matches in the middle got a little buried. It seemed to me like the crowd was noticeably quieter than usual for the non-WarGames matches, so I think in future, having two of that match on a single show might be a bit much.

That said, the show was still a quality night of wrestling, so let’s not waste any more time and get to talking about it!

5 – Angel Garza def. Isaiah “Swerve” Scott
(Kickoff Show)

Despite the fact I’ve been making an effort to watch NXT TV (almost) every week, both of these are guys who have managed to largely slip under my radar. I know who Isaiah was, but I didn’t know much about his wrestling ability and I didn’t even know what Angel Garza looked like until he showed up to wrestle here.

So as it stands, this was a good first impression for me of both of these guys. Like most people from the Performance Center, I thought they had great chemistry, carried the time they got really well and I felt that if they had the opportunity, then they could’ve carried another 10 minutes or so without breaking much of a sweat. Unfortunately, it was still a pre-show match which meant that it didn’t get the time it needed to be a truly excellent match – hence it’s placement in last – but that shouldn’t take away anything from how enjoyable this was to watch.

4 – Rhea Ripley & Candice LaRae def. Shayna Baszler & Io Shirai & Bianca Belair & Kay Lee Ray
(WarGames)

A lot was going on in this match.

First off, there was Dakota Kai’s sudden insertion into the match and subsequent heel turn, which was great, but also not in some ways. For one thing, the turn itself was really obvious, so obvious in fact, that I convinced myself there’s no way it could happen because it was just too damn obvious. That said, I’m glad to see that Dakota Kai is finally getting a sense of character to her, because until now she’s been a very generic babyface that’s a good wrestler, which is great, but not very interesting compared to the character-filled roster that is the NXT Women’s division and it should help boost Tegan Nox’s stock as a face going forward. My only worry is that being a heel not named Shayna Baszler in the NXT Women’s division right now generally means you’ve got somewhat of a low ceiling for your character because you can’t exactly challenge for the title.

Speaking of character development though, if you had told me earlier this year that Rhea Ripley, a woman who felt so damn natural as a heel would become the coolest and most believable face woman in NXT I never would’ve believed it, but here we are. Since showing up and getting in Baszler’s face, she’s been pretty good as a babyface but this match put that stock through the roof, I found it so easy to root for her throughout this whole thing and her general demeanour gives off these really cool vibes that I can totally get behind.

The match itself was ok. I felt that the earlier segments weren’t carried as well as they probably could’ve and even once the pace built up, it ground to a halt when every woman in the ring had to spend about 5 minutes staring at what Dakota Kai was doing. However, once that was over and done with, it recovered quite nicely, the huge spots weren’t there, but I think that just let the women be a bit more creative with their offence and I absolutely loved the finish.

The multiple high spots just before it were a great way to make things at a fever pitch going into the finish and having Rhea Ripley outsmart the wrestler who has been consistently presented as the most intelligent wrestler in all of WWE was fantastic. I love the way Rhea basically just called Shayna’s bluff and used the handcuffs – something Shayna intended to hamper Rhea – as the key to her victory; it was such a clever finish and only added to what I talked about regarding Rhea’s face persona. When Shayna & Rhea inevitably have their singles feud, I want more of this.

3 – Finn Balor def. Matt Riddle

Wow, Finn Balor’s actually a great heel wrestler, who knew?…hmm? Everyone who ever saw him wrestle in Japan? Oh, well alright then.

This match was pretty much what I expected it to be, it was two high-quality, pure wrestlers doing some high-quality pure wrestling. The match was perhaps a little slow in pace that I would’ve liked, but it served to give everything a greater impact, which I think is quite important to Riddle’s style of offence.

This whole thing was more or less Balor re-establishing himself as the brilliant wrestler that he is, which is something that I think was sorely needed after the problematic time he had on the main roster. In that area, I think it was a success, watching Balor in this match felt refreshing and it felt like he was a new character, unlike the past year or so on Raw & Smackdown where he’s not felt the least bit important.

This won’t go down as one of the greatest one on one matches in Takeover history by any stretch, but this was a match that had a specific goal that it needed to accomplish and that’s exactly what it did.

2 – Pete Dunne def. Killian Dain & Damian Priest
(Winner gets an NXT Championship match at Survivor Series)

Well, this match had a bit of everything.

This match definitely went on a bit of a journey it started out kind of slow (not counting the opening burst of kicks) which I would normally say was a bad thing, but in this case, I think it was necessary. Even though this was only the second match on the show, the crowd were a tad tired following the opening WarGames match and it seemed like this match had been structured with the specific intention of slowly ramping things up in order to bring the crowd back into it and ensure they weren’t dead for the rest of the show. Whether that’s true or not, it’s definitely what happened.

Other than that, this was a really well balanced Triple Threat match, it felt a bit like Dunne was carrying the thing at some points, mostly down to the fact that he was almost one of the two men active in the ring, but both Priest and Dain got ample chances to show their stuff and I’m excited to see more of their stuff going forward, especially Dain.

You could argue that Dian or Priest winning would’ve been better in the long run, since both of them are trying to either establish or re-establish themselves, however in the short term, Pete Dunne vs Adam Cole is 100% the right match for Survivor Series, that match is going to be killer.

1 – Tommaso Ciampa & Keith Lee & Dominick Dijakovic & Kevin Owens def. The Undisputed Era
(WarGames)

The NXT Wargames matches have always had a really nice balance between ridiculous high-spots and a fast pace with a high work rate and this match was a good example of that. This match made sure to not let the pace slow down early on, a feeling that was definitely helped with Ciampa being the first man in the ring and each additional wrestler felt like it only added to the feeling of slowing increasing chaos.

I was worried going into this that Undisputed Era was going to come out of this looking a little weak ahead of Survivor Series if they lost here, however, past-me is an idiot and doesn’t understand how WarGames works. I forgot how much you get the feeling that every wrestler in the match has gone through hell by the time you get to the end, so a loss inside of it doesn’t make anyone look weak in the long-run.

Kevin Owens being the 4th man was such an awesome surprise. I know a lot of people were predicting it, but I didn’t think it was going to happen. This show has been a great look into how people moving across from Raw or Smackdown to NXT is going to really help everyone involved. Not only that, but this has now created a bunch of questions for tomorrow night at Survivor Series, as Kevin Owens is officially a member of Team Raw, so now there’s a whole world of possibilities in terms of what he could do.

The action in the final segment of this match was top-notch, I got the feeling that both teams were trying to go for as high-impact stuff as possible to end things quickly, it added a sense of urgency that was quite lacking from the women’s WarGames match earlier in the night. This made for a fun finish where every member of Undisputed Era went through tables, including, ending with Adam Cole being dropped through two tables off of the top of the cell by Ciampa.

It struck the right balance between spectacle and wrestling, the surprise entrant hit the mark and the action as a whole was really fun to watch the whole way through, that’s about all I could ask for from a match like this.

And that’s it! Those were my thoughts on NXT Takeover: WarGames III! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this review, please let me know what you thought of the show either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Finally, make sure to come back tomorrow, where we’ll be capping off this weekend of wrestling with a review of Survivor Series!

WWE Survivor Series 2019: Predictions & Analysis

As the end of the year draws near, WWE brings us another annual Survivor Series, a PPV which – for the last couple of years at least – has always been much better than it has any right to be. This year looks to be no different as there are already several matches on this show which have match of the year potential in my eyes.

Adding NXT to the mix was a stroke of genius as not only did it make TV for this month more exciting, but it finally put stock to everything WWE’s been saying this past couple of months about NXT no longer being “developmental” and being on-par with Raw & Smackdown. In addition to this, they’ve abandoned the idea of every match on the show having to be a brand vs brand match, which means there’s a couple of juicy looking title matches for us to get excited about as well.

All this means that there isn’t really a match on this show where I’m entirely certain about the winner, so let’s dig right into the predictions!

The Viking Raiders vs The New Day vs The Undisputed Era
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)

Straight out of the gate with the exciting matches.

So here we’ve got two teams that have already put on a couple of brilliant matches in NXT with Viking Raiders and Undisputed Era and then you add in one of the most consistently brilliant teams of the past decade in WWE with The New Day, how could you possibly not be excited about this match? These are three teams who know everything there is to know about having great tag team matches, my only real fear here is that there’s a chance it could get it’s time cut a little bit given some of the other matches on this show that are likely to go long.

If The Viking Raiders had won the world cup at Crown Jewel, then I would’ve picked them to continue their winning streak here, but since they now have that loss under their belt, that aura of indestructibility they had has faded a lot, especially when you consider that the Raw Tag Titles are the biggest afterthought in all of WWE right now. This leaves us with The Undisputed Era and The New Day and while I think it’s entirely possible The New Day will notch a win here, I’m going with The Undisputed Era to pick up the victory, as I feel like they have the most to lose here, in addition to the fact that I think this match will open the show, so an NXT win straight out of the gate will go a long way to shaking things up for the rest of the night.

AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura vs Roderick Strong
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)

Once again, there’s precisely 0% chance this match won’t be great, these are three of the best pure wrestlers in the world right now, even WWE will struggle to mess this one up.

Styles & Nakamura have proved time after time that they can put on solid matches with each other, so you throw in a guy like Roderick Strong, who can easily keep pace with the two of them and wrestle the exact kind of style they can and you’ve got yourself a winning formula. Then there are the standard benefits that a triple threat match provides, with the pace constantly being at a fever pitch, this should essentially be the awesome Cruiserweight Championship triple threat matches we’ve been getting all year, but turned up to eleven.

This is the only match on this show where I feel fairly confident in saying that I don’t think NXT will win. I don’t think that’s any kind of reflection on Strong, but NXT need to take a couple of losses on the night and I think Strong losing this match here will matter the least in the grand scheme of things. In fact, I can honestly say I’m pretty damn confident in picking AJ Styles to win this one. WWE has been extremely high on Styles for a good couple of years now and the past couple of months have shown that enthusiasm isn’t dying down any time soon, so a strong win for the guy here feel like the obvious choice.

Team Raw vs Team Smackdown vs Team NXT
(Women’s 5 on 5 on 5 Elimination Tag)

This is a lot of wrestlers…

The main problem I always have with Survivor Series elimination matches is how inept and weak it makes some of the wrestlers look. For the wrestlers who last in the matches for a long time, it’s great, but for the wrestlers who get eliminated in the first 10 or so minutes, it’s horrible. Generally, the first half of these matches are some very basic chain wrestling, followed by 3 or 4 wrestlers getting pinned to a single signature after about 2 minutes of time in the ring, sometimes not even that. So with 15 wrestlers in the mix instead of just 10, I can only expect this problem to be even worse.

That said, once the early eliminations are out of the way the action tends to pick up quite significantly and I almost always have a lot of fun watching the latter halves of these matches. In addition to this, there’s some great opportunities here to have some really intense confrontations between people we’ve never got a chance to see go at it, like Rhea Ripley & Nikki Cross, or Candice LaRae & Charlotte Flair, or Io Sharai & literally anyone.  The confrontation last night’s Smackdown implied that NXT’s team would be Rhea Ripley, Mia Yim, Candice LaRae, Tegan Nox & Toni Storm, but WWE has only officially announced Ripley as a participant, with the rest “TBD”, which almost certainly means they haven’t made their minds up yet whether they’ll include heels like Io or Belair yet.

This factor does make things a little harder to predict, however, I don’t think Team NXT will win this one regardless since most of them will be beaten down from WarGames the night before, but in a more general sense I think there are people on the other teams that need the wins more right now. As for the other two teams I’m quite torn. Team Smackdown has Sasha Banks who, after losing HER feud to Becky could really do with a win and Nikki Cross, who is being built up a bit more as a singles star. That said, Team Raw has Charlotte Flair, and it’s hard to bet against Charlotte Flair. When you consider this alongside the fact that the tensions between Nikki & Sasha have been played up significantly, I think everything points towards Team Raw coming out on top, most likely with Charlotte & Natalya being the survivors.

Team Raw vs Team Smackdown vs Team NXT
(Men’s 5 on 5 on 5 Elimination Tag)

I mean, if we’re looking at this from a purely kayfabe standpoint, Team Raw should walk this one.

Once again, this is a match that suffers from the WarGames problem, as they can’t announce anyone for Team NXT as there’s a good chance one or more people could get messed up by WarGames. That said, assuming no-one gets injured I’d say that Saturday’s Team Ciampa, with an added Matt Riddle seems like a pretty solid bet to me. In terms of how good I think the match is going to be, you can pretty much just copy/paste what I said about the women’s match, it’ll start off kind of boring, but become really fun by the end.

I’m struggling to determine who I think is going to win this one. My gut says that it’s definitely not going to be Team Raw, but I don’t really have any logic for that, other than they don’t exactly have anything to lose from a business standpoint. Smackdown has only just moved to FOX and I’m sure WWE would like to please FOX by making their show look like it’s better than both of USA’s shows, but at the same time, such a big deal has been made out of NXT invading and showing that they’re just as good as the other two brands that a loss here could be very damaging; and I’m sure WWE wants to do everything they can to make sure their ratings victory over AEW Dynamite on Wednesday isn’t a one-off.

I’m going to go with Team NXT to take this win, but just know that I’m not very confident in that pick at all.

Becky Lynch vs Bayley vs Shayna Baszler
(Raw vs Smackdown vs NXT)

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say this has all the potential in the world to be the match of the year. Let’s take a look at what we’ve got here. We’ve got a woman whose been the biggest star in the whole industry for the past year in Becky Lynch; A fantastic wrestler whose character has recently gotten a new burst of life in Bayley; and one of the best heel wrestlers on the planet right now in Shayna Baszler. This match is going to tear all the houses down.

These three women have dominated their respective brands for the majority of the year so this match really feels like it’s a clash of the titans. I’m expecting tonnes of exciting action all the way through this with all three competitors getting plenty of licks in and hopefully, this will get plenty of time to do it all.

This brings us to the matter of who wins because I can honestly make a pretty solid case for all three women. There’s Bayley, who hasn’t had a big opportunity to show her stuff since turning heel and for the past month, she’s been somewhat undercut by Baszler showing up, so a win here would do her the world of good. Then there’s Baszler, who is currently amidst a long-running streak of dominance that’s become the focal point of every NXT Women’s storyline, so having her lose here would certainly do significant damage to that in the short-term. Finally, there’s Becky Lynch, who’s still the biggest star in WWE, so her winning would be no surprise.

Ultimately, Becky is never going to be damaged by a loss, especially one where she probably won’t take the fall. As much as it’d suck to see Baszler lose, she’s been made out as being such a huge deal on Raw & Smackdown this past month that as long as she gets a strong showing, her losing won’t be the end of the world. Which is why I’m picking Bayley. The fact that Shayna & Becky have been treating her as an afterthought is something that’s been played up a fair bit for this whole build and I think that will be the deciding factor, allowing Bayley to sneak in at the right moment and pick up the win.

Adam Coles(c) vs TBD
(NXT Championship)

This is a fantastic decision.

For the past couple of months, we’ve heard so much from WWE about how NXT is now the equal “3rd brand” but there hasn’t been much but empty words behind it until this point. I’m very glad that Cole didn’t just get shoved in the elimination tag match and more importantly, the NXT title is being treated just as important as the other two world titles, getting it’s own featured match between two of the brand’s top stars.

While Cole could end up facing any of the three men in the triple threat match, I think it’ll probably be Pete Dunne, partly because he’s that perfect mix between someone the fans might’ve heard of, but isn’t an already established wrestler on the main roster like Killian Dain is. On top of that, I think Cole vs Dunne will be a brilliant match, even if it doesn’t get as much time as it would on a Takeover.

That said, I can’t see the title changing hands on this show. Dain & Priest definitely won’t pick up the NXT title anytime soon and while I could see Dunne potentially getting a run with the strap I highly doubt it’ll happen this soon after his mammoth UK Championship reign. Not to mention that WWE has absolutely been pushing Adam Cole & The Undisputed Era as the featured NXT stars of this whole “invasion” angle, so I’m pretty confident in picking Adam Cole for this one.

Brock Lesnar(c) vs Rey Mysterio
(WWE Championship)
(No Holds Barred)

In a strange twist, Survivor Series has become a show where we can consistently expect one thing: great Brock Lesnar matches. His matches against AJ Styles in 2017 and against Daniel Bryan in 2018 were both fantastic lengthy wrestling matches and while his 2016 match against Goldberg wasn’t a clinic it certainly blew us all away. So as we sit here in 2019, Lesnar has a title match against none other than Rey Mysterio, a wrestler who wrestles a similar, small-guy, fast-paced style to Styles & Bryan and has shown absolutely no signs of slowing down with age.

Lesnar always works best when he’s fighting guys significantly smaller than him and they don’t get much smaller than Mysterio, not to mention that these two also worked together a couple of times during Lesnar’s first run in WWE in 2002-2004, so there’s tonnes of potential here for something really great to come out of this.

This is one of the two matches on this show that I’m pretty confident about picking a winner for. While it’s true that Lesnar is no longer the indestructible monster he once was, I don’t see Mysterio picking up the WWE title any time soon. I’ve no idea what the end-game is for Lesnar in this title reign, but the fact remains that he’s still where the money is and it makes sense for him to hold on to this title until at least Wrestlemania. Although I wouldn’t consider it a major shock for Mysterio to win this one, I’m sticking to old reliable and picking Brock Lesnar to retain.

The Fiend Bray Wyatt(c) vs Daniel Bryan
(Universal Championship)

Yes!

I’ve never got much of a chance to talk about it, but one of my favourite matches from this past decade was Daniel Bryan vs Bray Wyatt at Royal Rumble 2014, it was the match that made me realise how brilliant of a wrestler Bray Wyatt really was and I’m so excited that we get to see it again, only this time for a world title and with Bray’s extremely exciting new character and style.

It’s going to be really interesting to see how The Fiend’s style meshes with Bryan’s because on the surface, it doesn’t seem like they should; but if anyone can make it work, it’s the man I constantly herald as the best wrestler in the world today. The main feeling I’ve got from all of The Fiend’s matches so far is that they’re something “different”, sometimes that’s good, sometimes that’s bad, but it’s always a really interesting thing to watch unfold.

That said, as much as I think the match will be great, I’m entirely confident in saying The Fiend Bray Wyatt will walk away as the champion. There’s a chance that this will be a non-finish so the feud can run longer, probably to a TLC match next month, but there isn’t a chance in hell that The Fiend is losing that Universal title anytime soon.

So there you have it! Those are my predictions for Survivor Series 2019, thank you very much for taking the time to read this article, please let me know what you think will happen on Sunday either on Twitter @10ryawoo or in the comments below! Finally, make sure to come back tomorrow for my review of NXT Takeover: WarGames III!

NXT Takeover: WarGames III: Predictions & Analysis

Man, it feels like forever since we’ve had one of these.

Survivor Series has come which, potentially for the last time ever, we’ve got ourselves a classic NXT Takeover! It’s no secret that Takeovers are my favourite wrestling shows in the world right now and while I’m not the biggest fan of WarGames, they’re always chaotic and fun matches, so I’m not going to complain.

The circumstances surrounding this show are a little odd since almost everyone that’s wrestling on this show is also wrestling the next night on Survivor Series, so it does make me wonder if things are going to be played a bit safer, especially when it comes to the WarGames matches.

NOTE: Just a quick bit of admin, but I’m going to have to change the days these predictions get released. Since Smackdown now airs at 1AM on Saturday in the UK, I’m going to push back the Takeover predictions to Fridays and the main roster predictions to Saturday. Hopefully, I’ll still be able to get the Takeover review up on Sunday, but it might move to Tuesday if I don’t have the time.

Still, let’s go ahead and predict the winners!

Damian Priest vs Pete Dunne vs Killian Dain
(Winner faces Adam Cole for the NXT Championship at Survivor Series)

This match is a little bit of an odd one, especially by Takeover standards.

This feud is one that’s had a very simple build by NXT standards, with Dunne & Preist trading victories on Wednesday nights and Dain forcibly inserting himself into situations at every opportunity. I think this whole show suffers from being at the whims of whatever Vince McMahon suddenly decides what he wants for Survivor Series. NXT has always had a feeling that stories were planned out at least a bit in advance, but now what happens at this show has to directly impact whatever Vince wants for Sunday.

That I said, I don’t think there’s any doubt that this will be a great match. The one on one matches that Dunne and Priest have had with each other this month have been great across the board, so adding in a big guy like Dain will only make things more exciting. Dain specifically is someone who spent a couple years on Raw & Smackdown getting no opportunities to anything noteworthy, so I’m hoping this will be when he reminds the fanbase at large that he’s a brilliant wrestler that can keep pace and match quality with NXT’s finest.

If there were no additional stipulation to this match, I would almost certainly pick Dain to win, but with the added twist that the winner of this match gets an NXT title match on Sunday (a twist I’m overjoyed about) things have to be looked at slightly differently. Ultimately, I have to look at it from the perspective of “Who will showcase the best of what NXT has to offer on a big stage?” to which the answer is 100%, Pete Dunne. Damian Priest is a fantastic wrestler, but he still needs time to establish himself as a force in NXT and the Raw & Smackdown fanbase already know Killian Dain and associate him with a jobber-level tag team that never did anything of note. On top of that Cole vs Dunne is a match I’ve desperately wanted for ages so to see it at Survivor Series should be awesome.

Matt Riddle vs Finn Balor

So this is a case of unfortunate circumstances (in this case, Johnny Gargano’s injury) taking something potentially awesome away from us, but in all honestly, I think this has just as much potential behind it.

Even during his initial run in NXT, I felt that Finn Balor never had a truly great match. He had plenty of extremely good ones, don’t get me wrong, but he never had an “above-and-beyond” kind of match that we’ve come to see from NXT in the years since. That said, I think this has all the potential in the world to be that match for Balor.

Riddle has such a unique in-ring style that it always forces his opponents to step up their game to match him, occasionally this results in a match that doesn’t quite click, but with a top-level wrestler like Balor, it should elevate the match into something special. Since the story for this match was built around Balor & Gargano, it’s a little hard to use story reasons to justify either result. Riddle suffers a little in NXT from being someone who can seemingly take loses without having it hurt his stock in any way and I don’t think it would be a good idea to have Balor lose his first big feud since returning, so I’m picking Finn Balor to come away from this one with the win.

Tommaso Ciampa & Keith Lee & Dominick Dijakovic & TBD vs The Undisputed Era
(WarGames)

This match feels really thrown together.

I know that all WarGames matches are a bit like that purely through virtue of the number of people needed in the match, but there’s usually at least some level of storyline cohesion between the participants on the teams. I’m not referring to The Undisputed Era to be clear, because Team Ciampa seems the epitome of “people who didn’t have anything else to do”.

While I’m totally fine with Ciampa gunning for The Undisputed Era at every turn, I do find it a little weird that a lone-wolf character like him is suddenly fine with working with three other guys, none of whom are named Johnny Gargano. Keith Lee backed up Ciampa once for…shits and giggles? So now they’re best friends and Dijakovic is also there for no real reason other than to fill out the numbers. Finally, there’s the mystery 4th man.

There’s plenty of theories going around as to who it could be, but I honestly don’t think it’s going to be any kind of huge shock since Riddle was originally supposed to be in that spot before Gargano got injured so it’s not like there’s some grand plan behind it. The most popular theory right now is that it will be someone from Raw or Smackdown who will turn traitor and join NXT, Kevin Owens being the prime candidate, but I think a twist like that will be on Survivor Series itself, not this show. Looking through the NXT roster, Isaiah “Swerve” Scott seems the most likely candidate, since he’s been in a couple of tag matches with some of the guys on Team Ciampa this past month, but that’s about it.

As for a winner, I don’t know, because this honestly feels like a lose-lose situation to me. At the time of release, NXT’s team for the 5 on 5 on 5 match hasn’t been announced, but I think it’s extremely likely that at the three men currently announced for Team Ciampa will be on it, so either you have UE look weak going into their champion vs champion matches, or have the elimination matches’ team look weak.

Combine that with the fact that the people in this match will have to play it slightly safer than usual so they’re not messed up for Survivor Series the next night and it really seems like this show should’ve been moved to mid-December or something because the current situation hasn’t done anyone any favours. I’m going to go with what fits NXT’s stories best for the time being and say Team Ciampa will win so Ciampa can stake a claim for Cole’s title in the coming months.

Rhea Ripley & Tegan Nox & Candice LaRae & Mia Yim vs Shayna Baszler & Bianca Belair & Io Shirai & Kay Lee Ray
(WarGames)

So you know all of the complaints I made about the men’s WarGames match, pretty much ditto for this.

The difference here is that I have more confidence that this will be a damn good match regardless of the circumstances. This is partly because I think all of the wrestlers involved in this match are brilliant, but also because whenever we get one of these “first-ever” women’s matches the wrestlers involved go all out to make sure it’s something memorable and that goes double for NXT.

Besides this, there’s a much greater sense of story to this match, the Ripley/Baszler feud is one that’s been simmering for a while now and this is a great stepping stone on the path to their eventual one-on-one match. It also works great as the ending point for the Candice/Io feud, after having two excellent matches, this feels like a good way to top it off, especially when you consider that Io’s initial turn happened in a Steel Cage. Admittedly it is a little weird that Io & Belair are teaming Baszler when you consider that they’ve pretty much exclusively been enemies in the past, but I’m slightly more forgiving of that fact here because it serves the greater story well.

I’m torn when it comes to picking a winner, much for the same reasons as I was for the men’s match, except in this instance, I think women from both sides will be in the elimination matches on Sunday. So once again, I’m going to go with what serves NXT’s stories better and say Team Ripley wins this one because otherwise, Ripley doesn’t have much of a claim for a shot at Baszler’s title going forward.

And there you have it! Those are my thoughts on NXT Takeover: Wargames III, thank you very much for taking the time to read this article, let me know what you think is going to happen either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Finally, make sure to come back tomorrow for my Survivor Series predictions!