October 4, 2020 – Orlando, Florida
The opening video spends as much time reminding us that WWE was originally called Capitol Wrestling Corporation because now NXT has moved from Full Sail University to the Capitol Wrestling Center (the Performance Center). It looks similar, though there are fans (some aren’t wearing their masks) and a couple of Thunderdome walls (that are thankfully not as neon bright as they are on Raw and Smackdown)..
Damian Priest def. Johnny Gargano {NXT North American Championship Match}
2020 problem: I’m really distracted by the monstrous fans who aren’t wearing their masks, especially as most seem to be following the rules. This was alright, but never caught fire. They’d get a good groove going for a bit and then lose momentum, maybe because the live fans were mostly quiet. The bit where Gargano pulled the ring crew into Priest’s dive didn’t help with the flow issues either. If it happens that LeRae wins the Women’s Championship, I also feel like this match happened out of order. The Gargano Way gimmick, which is another take on the Undisputed Era Golden Prophecy, would make this match more dramatic if LeRae had already won the title and Gargano had more momentum on his side. Maybe LeRae isn’t winning either. Priest hit a hanging Reckoning for the win at 18:32. ***½
Kushida def. Velveteen Dream
Dream is dressed as Doc Brown to contrast Kushida’s Marty McFly gimmick, but he got a little carried away with the hairspray and also has a silver face. Halfway through the match, WWE starts piping in extra crowd noise because the fans aren’t interested enough in the match. It’s weird. The last five minutes of this were quite good. Kushida destroyed Dream’s arm, which neutralized the Purple Rainmaker and allowed him to hold on through the Dream Valley Driver and put on the Hoverboard Lock for the win at 13:01. Kushida going over strong was absolutely the right move. He kept attacking Dream after the match. ***
Shotzi Blackheart legit gets me with a jump scare in an advertisement for Halloween Havoc. I hate jump scares, but I like Halloween Havoc.
Santos Escobar def. Isaiah Scott {NXT Cruiserweight Championship Match}
This is the first time this title has ever been defended on a Takeover. This turned into a hell of a bop. I really liked the way things escalated as the match wore on. Legado del Fantasma came out to help Escobar, but Ashante Adonis ran out to fight them to the back. I don’t watch 205 Live, and he’s always been a jobber on NXT, so it felt a little bit out of place for him to be there. But he’s been a part of the cruiserweight division for a while so I’m willing to go with it. Escobar and Scott started dropping the big bombs at this point. Escobar got the win by sending Scott into the post and then hitting a double underhook gutbuster at 15:40. ***¾
Candice LeRae def. Io Shirai {NXT Women’s Championship Match}
They did a nice job connecting this to their Takeover match from Toronto and the would-be Takeover ladder match they were both in. LeRae says the word “again” weird. I just realized that I haven’t really noticed the commentary team at all. I like that and it makes me think that it was right for NXT and Mauro Ranallo to part ways. This was pretty damn good. They worked a solid match, reversing the face/heel dynamic of their Toronto match. After a ref bump, Gargano ran out in a referee shirt but could only fast-count to two. I like that in the magic world of wrestling, even the husband of one of the wrestlers has to stop counting if a wrestler’s shoulder comes off the mat. Shirai survived a belt shot from LeRae to hit a Spanish Fly and the moonsault for the win at 16:44. My only problem with this match is that a lot of big spots were just no-sold and moved on from. Other than that, this was a good time. ***¾
After the match, Toni Storm shows up on Thunderdome wall to let us know that she’s back in NXT. Rhea Ripley showed up during the pre-show to say she was coming after the title, and I really don’t need another Ripley vs. Storm match. Hopefully they have something else in mind. And then we see the night vision video again, and the biker comes to the ramp and reveals herself to be Ember Moon. Lots going on in the women’s division. Later, Adonis gets a promo to let us get a sense of his character.
Finn Balor def. Kyle O’Reilly {NXT Championship Match}
They hyped this as the match of the year before it happened, which is often a recipe for disappointment. They’ve also pushed Adam Cole’s support of O’Reilly so hard that his turn would be boring. They almost have to do Roderick Strong & Bobby Fish vs. O’Reilly & Cole now. So was this the match of the year (in NXT)? I don’t know, probably; it’s been a weird ass year. They spent the first ten minutes beating each other up on the mat, looking for a weakness. Balor found it first, injuring O’Reilly’s midsection and then zeroing in on it. O’Reilly didn’t just take it though; he avoided abdominal stretches at every turn and tried to attack Balor’s leg. His mouth got busted open, which allowed for you to believe that something was going wrong in his body if you were so inclined. I wasn’t, but it was still an intense visual. I’ve actually never been as high on Balor as many, but this was easily one of his best matches in my eyes. Near the end where Balor asked for mercy and O’Reilly briefly gave it to him. And though O’Reilly quickly learned from his mistake and went for a relentless flurry of offense, the momentum was in Balor’s favor and he hit the Coup de Gras for the win at 28:31. ****½
After the match, Balor & O’Reilly shake hands. They’re distracted when Ridge Holland shows up with Cole draped over his shoulder, badly beaten. He dumps Cole at ringside and walks off as Strong & Fish come out and ask what happened. Tune in Wednesday to find out!
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 
