Tag: Unidsputed Era

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!