NXT DECEMBER 26TH 2018
Women’s #1 Contendership Fatal Fourway
Io Shirai vs. Lacey Evans vs. Mia Yim vs. Bianca Belair
Winner faces Baszler at the next Takeover. Bianca took a nasty looking head first landing on the ramp from an Io dive early on that took her out of the equation for a while. Story for the most-part here was Mia and Shirai trying to work as a team, but Evans getting the better of both of them at the same time. Evans and Belair would clash over wanting to beat down the other two and it turned into a bit of a mess in the middle with everyone involved. Evans and Shirai both had the match won only to have pins broken up. Belair then cleared the ring by dropping Shirai onto Mia on the floor and hitting the KOD to Evans to get the shot at Baszler.
Jaxson Ryker vs. Mitch Taverna
Someone forgot to edit in the commentary for this match. Hey, it’s Christmas, whatever. In some ways it was more interesting for it, because that aside it was just any other squash win, with Ryker winning with a slingshot powerbomb which got an ironic pop only people in Full Sail would understand.
Promo video for Velveteen Dream, with Dream bragging about his 2018 and saying 2019 would be something else.
Recap of the ending to last week’s main event, with Ciampa and Gargano hitting the knee/superkick combo on Black. We then got a Ciampa promo, saying last week proved that somebody had been listening and Gargano pinned Black by following his lead. Ciampa suggested Gargano should get an opportunity for the North American Title, since he couldn’t have one at his and explained to Gargano that they could end Takeover with both titles, taking over like they talked about before they got signed.
NXT TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP
Roderick Strong and Kyle O’Reilly (c) vs. Heavy Machinery
Heavy Machinery have new blue and yellow gear, which makes Dozovic look like Jesse and Festus stepped into a weird machine and merged. The first part of the match was spent establishing Heavy Machinery as a threat. Tucker was then cut off, with what was supposed to be Strong’s back suplex on the apron, except they missed the apron and Tucker landed on the floor instead. Undisputed Era worked Tucker’s knee, before a Dozovic hot tag picked things up. Tucker would end up missing a moonsault, leaving Dozovic two on one. And after Undisputed Era hit a tower of doom superplex when Dozovic teased a top rope move, they finally put Dozovic away with a total elimination. The effort was certainly there from all four, but this didn’t fully click into being a great match and a tired crowd didn’t help.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING: Both of the big matches on the show were fine, but neither of them were must see by any means.
NXT WEEK: Kassius Ohno against Matt Riddle and something involving the NXT 2018 awards.