6 Ups & 0 Downs From Last Night's WWE NXT (Mar 21)
Sign Of The Times
Is it the best angle in WWE history?
The current plight of Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa began not with Ciampa's vile turn at TakeOver: Chicago in last summer, nor even with their Tag Team Title loss to the Authors Of Pain earlier that year. It pre-dated even the moment of tension between them after Gargano sneaked a victory over his then-partner in 2016's Cruiserweight Classic. Their war started on the day they arrived.
Gargano and Ciampa arrived separately on NXT. Individuals, charting a course to make it to the top of a company many presumably pegged them to never even get an opportunity to work for. They were doing it by themselves - something they inadvertently acknowledged when they were unified enough to brand themselves as a team. 'Do It Yourself - Nobody Will Do It For You' yelled their one only t-shirt as a tandem, foreshadowing Tommaso's drawn-out and devastating assault on his former friend. The same shirt that was once thrown back in Gargano's face as he lost the first of three career-defining contests to Andrade 'Cien' Almas. The second of those earned him a place in wrestling royalty with a five-star rating, but the third lost him his job.
He'd lost his latest battle, and was now losing the war. Ciampa's chasing of 'Johnny Wrestling' away from the thing he loved was another cynical intrusion on his former partner's life and career. Their war may never be over, but NXT's biggest underdog has never been so up against it. How on earth could he fight back, if he wasn't even permitted to fight?