Monday 21 November 2016

The Revival/#DIY and Lesnar/Goldberg

The Revival v Johnny Gargano & Tommaso Ciampa (2/3 Falls) (NXT Takeover: Toronto, 11/19/16)

This might've been even better than their previous Takeover match. I said that one was like a hybrid of a traditional southern tag with modern day workrate, and this was that again, but they turned it up another notch. The Revival are the best tag team in wrestling right now. All of the cutoffs, the heat-garnering, the way they work the heat segment -- that all ruled as usual, but this time they seemed even more surly, especially Dawson. He was adding some awesome little nasty touches to this, like stomping on Gargano's fingers, Regal-style grating his forearm across Gargano's face while he held him in place with a bodyscissors, and my favourite of all was when he picked Ciampa up off the mat by his beard! I really liked the layout of this as well. There wasn't really a babyface shine segment in the traditional sense to start, but they went back and forth for control until the Revival eventually took it, and that kept going all the way into the second fall (with an awesome finish to the first). The hot tag in the second led to the score being tied up, and the third fall was one extended stretch to the finish with tonnes of heat and great moments. I was pretty sure on who was winning this, but I wasn't ALL the way sure and they had me biting on a handful of nearfalls towards the end. They played off Gargano's leg injury and the subsequent finish from the first match, with Dawson first using a title belt to block a kick (awesome), applying the inverted figure-four to huge heat, then Dash coming in from the blind side and fucking obliterating Gargano with a chop block to the OTHER leg. So by the end you had Gargano on two bad legs trying to hang in there, and "hang in there" was about all he managed as Dash and Dawson got too cocky going for the double superkick. I assume the Revival are heading to the main roster after this, but as someone who only watches WWE/NXT once every other month I would be more than happy for these teams to have another few go-arounds.


Brock Lesnar v Goldberg (Survivor Series, 11/20/16)

For a match that went about two and a half minutes bell to bell, I thought this was pretty much perfect. I get that people were annoyed by the length and felt that they were shortchanged or whatever, but I watched this after already knowing what went down and I don't follow WWE enough to really be bothered about it and I just use my brother's Network subscription so I basically got this for free and fuck it, I loved it. It felt massive pre-match, then Goldberg came out and people were way into it, then Lesnar got shoved on his butt and it was such a great "fuck outta here with that" moment. The first spear was amazing, the way Lesnar got up laughing only to be mowed down out of nowhere. The pops for Goldberg's three offensive moves - and that was all he did - were huge, then you had all these camera shots of fans in disbelief that Brock Lesnar got squashed in three minutes. For what they were going for, I don't think this possibly could've come off much better.

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