NXT JUNE 6TH 2018
Shayna came out to start the show and she had her belt back. She talked up beating Kai last week and sending a message to the locker room, before addressing Nikki, warning her that if she ever got in her face again it’d be the last thing she does. Nikki promptly interrupted and the two squared off. Shayna said the stunt she pulled last week was a joke and the only place Nikki was better than her was in her whacked out brain. Nikki dared her to do something and then made Shayna jump, before attacking when an embarrassed Shayna shoved her. When Nikki tried to grab the title Shayna hit a right hand, but Nikki recovered to hit a crossbody off the top and sent Shayna scurrying. Shayna did well as a promo, I thought.
TM61 vs. Mike Hughley and Robbie Brand
Squash win for TM61. Thorne won with a clothesline to the back of the head to Brand, after a little bit of minor cheating to help them along the way.
TM61 cut a promo afterwards saying they’d proven they were the best team in NXT, having beaten Street Profits and Heavy Machinery. They said this was all about winning and if War Raiders, Oney and Danny or Undisputed Era were man enough, they’d beat them too and everyone should kneel down and call them The Mighty, which may or may not be their new team name judging by how Mauro sold it. Still not fully convinced about these two as heels yet. I get why they’ve turned them, but the big takeaway from that video feature from when they returned was how they tried being somebody they weren’t when they first came to NXT and it didn’t work. I’m not sure this is who they are either.
Recap of Lars taking out Black with a Freak Accident last week. Footage was then shown of Lars training at the Performance Center and running through five other trainees who were in there with him. I do love this, for lack of a better term, kayfabed version of the Performance Center and what people do there. This was described as a ‘training exercise’ and I hope they don’t put this one in the brochure. It ended with Lars hitting one poor guy with crossface strikes, while the women in a second ring looked on and TM61 could be seen arriving, seeing this and promptly leaving shaking their heads.
Roderick Strong vs. Danny Burch
Good, competitive match. Crowd seemed to be beginning to get a bit tired by this point in the taping, which didn’t really help the match, but they worked at a hard, fast pace as you’d expect, particularly from Roddy who may work faster than anyone in wrestling. Cole and O’Reilly ran out with Burch getting the advantage, but Oney and Dunne pulled them off the apron. Burch then got Strong in a crossface but was distracted again by Cole, allowing Strong to hit a backbreaker for the win.
As Strong celebrated, he turned around into Dunne, who got the better of Strong but had his knee clipped with the Tag Title by O’Reilly as he went for the Bitter End. Strong laid out Dunne with the End Of Heartache and Undisputed Era left the other three laying.
Ohno was shown at a photoshoot, which was interrupted by EC3. They exchanged words to set up a match for next week.
Promo, in the form of a hype video, from Black on Lars.
Hype video for Ricochet and Velveteen Dream. This included sitdown interviews with both Ricochet and Dream, as well as footage from Ricochet in EVOLVE. Interestingly, they also showed footage of Dream on Tough Enough, with Dream claiming he didn’t remember that. This is definitely my most anticipated match at Takeover.
Lacey Evans vs. Kairi Sane
Evans’s Woman’s Right hand, literally, had Kairi’s name on it. I’ve got to say, I’m into all these puns and literal metaphors. This was the rubber match between these two. They delivered again, after a strong second match. Evans put in another really good showing and has really developed into someone NXT can run with when they’re ready. They weaved the Woman’s Right into the story a bit, mostly early in the match. Sane would make a comeback though and got a fairly decisive win in the end, following an alabama slam with the InSane Elbow for the pin. Presumably Sane will move on to Baszler after this. Hopefully Lacey gets a good opponent as well, because she’s earned it.
They closed the show with Ciampa coming out to address the crowd. They did the usual thing of Ciampa milking the reaction for a long while, which is fair enough. If you’re getting the reaction, milk it. Ciampa criticised Gargano for interrupting a match last week and making everything about him and said what happened with Candice two weeks ago was all on Johnny. He warned to listen to him, like he should have listened to his wife and told him not to show up at Takeover, because the Gargano fairytale was coming to an end and it wouldn’t be a happy ending. His wife was broken and he would be broken.
Gargano appeared, fighting off security and the two brawled, with Gargano continually having to get by security and officials to do so. The two fought into the crowd where Gargano hit a dive from the bleachers onto Ciampa and security. Ciampa eventually managed to get a clothesline on Gargano as he was dealing with security and put him in the Gargano Escape in the ring, with referees having to pull Ciampa off of him. As Ciampa left, Gargano recovered and attacked him on the stage, with Ciampa getting busted open from being thrown into the LED screen. Gargano then put Ciampa in the Gargano Escape and Ciampa tapped, while referees struggled to pull Johnny off to close the show. These segments are all strong, but hopefully Chicago is the blow-off, because they surely can’t do many more of them.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING: Evans and Sane was another strong match between the two. The Takeover build was generally good, with the Ricochet/Dream video package, Ciampa and Gargano’s latest brawl and Lars beating people up at the Performance Center being the stand-outs. Having assumed until right near the end that this was the go-home show, this would have been a perfectly acceptable go-home show.
NXT WEEK: EC3 versus Kassius Ohno and comments from Aleister Black.