March 4, 2020 – Winter Park, Florida
Dakota Kai def. Tegan Nox {Steel Cage Match}
This took a while to get going, but once it came back from the commercial break they picked up the pace and got the fans on their feet. The escape teases were quite good, and the way Raquel Gonzalez was incorporated into the match was more creative than usual. I guess this feud will continue, at least into the Tampa ladder match, so both women had better be on that Takeover. Kai won when Gonzalez trapped Nox between the door and the cage, allowing Kai to escape at 12:33 (shown of 16:09). ***½
Finn Balor says that WALTER forced his hand, and he’s not going to like Balor’s reaction. He’ll see him sooner than he thinks, probably at this weekend’s NXT UK tapings. Later, we get a look at Rhea Ripley’s oldest Instagram photos while she takes a tour of the stadium that WrestleMania will be at in Tampa. She’s going to beat the best to be the best.
Chelsea Green def. Shotzi Blackheart
Have you checked out Blackheart’s pseudo Table for 3 on the WWE PC YouTube channel with Joaquin Wilde and Kayden Carter? They share Philipino food and talk about growing up as a part of that culture and it’s my favorite video on that channel in a while. This was for a spot in the Takeover: Tampa ladder match. Blackheart does the green (no pun intended) thing still where she preps her stance before rushing in for a move or running the ropes. And yet she’s incredibly over with this crowd. Green is also not bringing it quite yet. Green hair, green skills, a Green name… this match has too much green. Okay whatever, it was short and not much really went into it and Green won with the Unprettier at 2:21. *
That weird video plays again, and the fact that there hasn’t been much of a dissection of it online isn’t the best sign of NXT’s deep popularity right now. And they show it again later in the show. Still convinced it’s Killer Kross. Later, the Street Profits get congratulated for winning the Raw Tag Titles. I can’t remember another time that former NXT champs were congratulated for winning Raw or Smackdown belts.
Keith Lee comes out for a gab sesh. He acknowledges that Damian Priest and Dominik Dijakovic are coming for him. Cameron Grimes comes out to lay his claim for Lee’s title. He points out how much faster he beat Dijakovic than Lee did, and reveals that he gets a title shot next week. Lee shoves him out of the ring.
Bobby Fish & Kyle O’Reilly def. Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch
This was fun, if forgettable. Lorcan & Burch did their thing, which is to be quite entertaining in the midcard while never really becoming a threat. The former champs got the win by catching Lorcan with the Total Elimination out of nowhere at 8:17 (shown of 11:39). After the match, Fish & O’Reilly say they want the tag titles back. The Broserweights come out and say that the Undisputed Era can have their title rematch, but before they can say when they’re attacked by the Grizzled Young Veterans. Later, we learn that the UE will get a rematch next week, during which the GYV will no doubt interfere. ***
Austin Theory def. Isaiah Scott
Earlier, Austin Theory called himself the greatest in NXT already. Isaiah Scott overheard that and called him out. Is this another new theme for Scott? This match was pretty damn good, as these two complimented each other well and put on a bout full of strong effort and fun counters. It’s also notable because the fans started a “Swerves house in the middle of the street” sing song chant and that’s incredible. Theory picked up the win with a one-armed ATL (after Scott destroyed his arm moments earlier) at 7:40 (shown of 10:58). Let’s get more of these two fighting each other. ***½
Johnny Gargano sits down with Mauro Ranallo to talk about his state of mind right now. Gargano reminds Ranallo that he was the only NXT guy to show up for the premier of Ranallo’s documentary premiere. It’s not that great of a movie. He brought that up to remind everyone that he’s a good person. But then he has a hard time staying composed when he’s accused of sneak attacking Tommaso Ciampa. He says it couldn’t have been a sneak attack because he was wearing bright blue clothes. He rips on Ranallo for calling him a turncoat on the air but not calling him after Portland to actually ask him what was going on? He rips on Ranallo for praising Ciampa on commentary after his return in spite of the way Ciampa treated him before his injury. Ranallo gets uncomfortable and walks off. Gargano stares into the camera and says that next week he and Ciampa will do things Gargano’s way. I buy praise of Ciampa from everyone after his return as the reason Gargano broke bad.
Roderick Strong def. Velveteen Dream {Steel Cage Match}
The crowd chanting “asshole” when Dream pulled down Strong’s pants was pretty funny. I wonder if the Full Sail fans saw how they were getting dragged online recently and decided they needed to step up their games. Even though they’ve clearly course corrected and pulled back on referencing Dream going after Strong’s family, Strong’s wife Marina Shafir runs out to give him a kendo stick during this match. The stick came into play when Dream used it to fight off the rest of the Undisputed Era when they tried to interfere. The finish was cool, as Dream deliberately loses at 10:23 (shown of 13:03) the match by shoving Strong out because Adam Cole had come in to interfere. Dream locks himself in with Cole and beats the crap out of him. He even got to beat up Strong some more when Strong tried to come in and save his buddy. Dream ends the show by posing with the NXT Championship. This is great stuff, and will be even better if William Regal forces Dream to actually win a match to get his hands on Cole and the title. ***¾
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 
