February 16, 2020 – Portland, Oregon
Keith Lee def. Dominik Dijakovic {NXT North American Championship Match}
I’ll start by saying I’ve never been as high on this match-up as everyone else seems to be. I think their matches in and out of NXT have been largely overrated. Mostly, I find Dijakovic’s mannerisms overdone and fake-looking. That was an issue in the first five minutes of this match. On the bright side, this was more the energy of their fourth TV match (where they tried something different) than it was the first three (which I thought were good, not great at all). I give them a ton of credit for effort here too, as Dijakovic’s dives and attempted feats of strength were wild. I liked the finish too, as Dijakovic had the match wrapped up, but went to lift Lee over his head to put an exclamation mark on the match, failed, and got caught with the Supernova at 20:22. I absolutely refuse to call that move the Big Bang Catastrophe (pick one!) just because there’s another guy on a different brand whose nickname is Supernova. ***¾
Dakota Kai def. Tegan Nox {Street Fight}
These two tend to be injury prone, so I was nervous throughout this violent match. Kai’s facial expressions rule. Every time she takes a hit to the head or face you wonder if she’s knocked out. I thought this used the stipulation really well. It was an ECW-style brawl (fun, violent spots, not a lot of long-term selling) done as well as it could be done without ECW blood. I also liked that when Nox got cute with her tributes to Kane and Molly Holly it didn’t put Kai away because that would have been far too silly. I don’t so much love the finish, where Raquel (what was wrong with the name Reina) Gonzalez came out, kind of screwed up an avalanche chokeslam through a table on Nox, and gave Kai a lame win at 13:27. Looks like they’re going to try to do the Jazzy Gabert & Jinny thing with Kai and Gonzales and see if it works better stateside. ***½
Looks like they’re doing more than two NXT UK Takeovers this year, and one in Ireland in April is announced. I’ll take it, and expect Jordan Devlin to be a big part of it.
Finn Balor def. Johnny Gargano
They took their sweet ass time getting this into a high-gear. It was a really long match, perhaps the longest singles match outside of a main event in Takeover history, so I’m not too mad at the pacing. I was surprised by it though. If they were going for epic I’d say they fell a little short, but they certainly delivered a great match that played well into the story of these guys being very similar but from different NXT generations. In the end, Evil Gargano came out to play and as always that cost him and gave Balor the edge he needed to win. I loved the finish, as Balor hit a giant Jon Woo into the barricade, then the Coup de Gras, then the 1917 for the win at 27:25. To date, only Ricochet has lost a match when Gargano let his demons get the better of him, and I like that running theme. ****
Cathy Kelly’s final WWE interview is with Roderick Strong, who says Velveteen Dream is a dead man on Wednesday. He pumps up his teammates and then Adam Cole tells Kelly she can leave. Kind of a harsh way to send her out the door.
Rhea Ripley def. Bianca Belair {NXT Women’s Championship Match}
Now they’re back to explicitly calling it the Women’s Championship. Never rely on WWE to do the progressive thing. What you can rely on, apparently, is these two women to put on the best match for this title in the last 18 months. They beat the crap out of each other, took insane bumps, and got the crowd freaking out in the face of the Charlotte Flair storyline completely overshadowing Belair. My only complaint is that Ripley didn’t sell her spill to the floor a little more, but that’s just wrestling in 2020 I guess. One thing I absolutelyl love is that Ripley goes for the Riptide every single time she sees a dangling arm. It didn’t work in the middle of the match, but when she couldn’t hit the sunset bomb she was able to reposition and hit it for the win at 13:33. Flair attacked Ripley after the match and accepted her challenge for WrestleMania. Then she attacks Belair for good measure. I wonder what they’ll fill Ripley’s spot with at Takeover: Tampa. ****
Matt Riddle & Pete Dunne def. Bobby Fish & Kyle O’Reilly {NXT Tag Team Championship Match}
The Broserweights wear t-shirts with the Fish Fry bit on it, so I’m glad that’s not dead. There really hasn’t been a sub-terrific tag title match on a Takeover (or Worlds Collide) since Takeover: Philadelphia. I guess the ladder matches have been a bit disappointing but I just don’t like multi-man ladder matches that much. The point is that this match also didn’t disappoint, as everyone got to do the thing that makes NXT fans love them. The nuance in this tag title match that the others on Takeovers haven’t had was the inexperience of the Broserweights being the thing that almost cost them the match, as they bounced into each other near the end and nearly lost. But the power of friendship compelled them and they got the win and the titles with the Bro 2 Sleep/enziguiri combo at 17:00. ****¼
Adam Cole def. Tommaso Ciampa {NXT Championship Match}
Ciampa thankfully ditched the camp pants for this important match. After Ciampa’s disappointing TV match against Balor, I was worried that a post-surgery Ciampa didn’t have the goods to deliver the way he did in 2018. I was all the way wrong. He killed it in this. Cole zeroed in on the neck from minute one, and Ciampa hit the mat as if he’d been hit by a bullet every time Cole hit a move like that. I could have done with a smidge less no-selling, but like most Cole main events everything moved so quickly that it was hard to get caught up in the super moves being shuffled brushed off too soon. The Undisputed Era interfered as they usually do, but were thwarted by Ciampa’s resolve. I loved that because it mirrored Gargano overcoming the entire Undisputed Era at Takeover: New York. Gargano’s interference at the end made me appreciate the foreshadowing he showed during his match earlier in the night. The finish was wild, but tarnished by an extended ref bump and having to swallow Ciampa getting pinned after a Gargano belt shot at 33:24. That’s after he no-sold a Panama Sunrise on the floor. That bit didn’t work for me, but the rest of the match mega-did. ****¼
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
