NXT Takeover Toronto

I watched the Takeover specials before I watched the TV show. So I’m going to add notes to my original reviews now that I have the full context. I’ll put them in red.

November 19, 2016 – Toronto, Ontario

Bobby Roode def. Tye Dillinger
Canadians fighting in Canada is usually a recipe for success. In this case though, not so much. I’m not sold on Roode, and this match didn’t need over fifteen minutes to make the point it made. ***¼ I don’t know why I was complaining about a perfectly good match. This is also historically significant because it was Dillinger’s first foray into jobbing in relevant matches on Takeover specials. 

Akam & Rezar def. Nick Miller & Shane Thorne {Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic Tournament Finals}
Paul Ellering is stuck in a shark cage above the ring, really hammering home the Dusty era nostalgia. I don’t understand what happened here. The crowd seemed completely uninterested in both teams, and yet so many of the teams in the pre-match package that participated in the tournament seemed more interesting. Why was this the finals? The match was boring. *½ Having watched the tournament, this seems like less of a strange final match. I have a feeling that the injuries to Hideo Itami and Austin Aries factored into this being the finals, though the Authors of Pain were probably always winning. 

Tommaso Ciampa & Johnny Gargano def. Dash Wilder & Scott Dawson {NXT Tag Team Championship 2/3 Falls Match}
It’s kind of a miracle that WWE didn’t give DIY a stereotypical Italian gimmick. I have potentially unreasonable expectations for this match. Luckily, these are four of the most creative guys in wrestling and they put on a hell of a match. I might have gone even higher if the second fall wasn’t a little on the inconsequential side, especially because the finish was both something I’d never seen before and also hilarious. ****½ Had they taken a page out of the 2/3 Falls Match that the Revival had with American Alpha, this would have been one of the tippy top best matches ever for the brand. As it is it’s still one of the top 10… as of this writing anyway. 

Asuka def. Mickey James {NXT Women’s Championship Match}
This started out strong but lost steam pretty quickly. What’s going on with the women’s title matches lately? After months of all three title matches being pretty much sure thing amazing matches, Asuka’s matches have failed to capture the crowd’s attention. They’ve failed to capture my imagination, to be sure. This at least had a better story than last month, with Asuka looking thrown off her game by the veteran. But then they just couldn’t turn it into something interesting. *** This basically had no build whatsoever, so how could they expect the crowd to care?

Samoa Joe def. Shinsuke Nakamura {NXT Championship Match}
Early on in this match I was ready to complain about a fight on the floor with no count-out being applied until Corey Graves explained it away on commentary. That’s a great example of how announcers can make a match better. This was more of a heavyweight clobberfest than their previous match, but again I think it was overlong and I feel that these two have a better bout in them. Luckily it seems like there will be a rubber match. ***¾ Turns out these two didn’t have a better match in them, and this was as good as it gets in terms of Nakamura vs. Joe.