10 Best Wrestling Storylines Of 2018
4. Do It Yourself
It's a story that began in 2016, continues to this day, and now stands to enter lists such as these at the end of 2019 for the fourth time. But that's not the only reason the ongoing rivalry between Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa deserves showering with yet more praise.
As of writing, the latest edition of NXT has concluded with the hated former friends delivering their famed 'Meet In The Middle' tag team finish together on Aleister Black, literally displaying how he's been caught most in the figurative crossfire of their bloody battle. It's his involvement - and the mental collapse of Johnny Gargano following a devastating TakeOver: Chicago defeat that brought him into it - that has expanded the story beyond the two key combatants and into the world around them.
April's TakeOver: New Orleans was the site of their best match - and one of the company's finest at that - but it was not a grand finale despite a cinematic conclusion. It was also literally apart from the rest of NXT. Unsanctioned by the authorities with a referee decked not in stripes but a plain black shirt and blood-proof gloves to register a fall. Their war was on an island, before it engulfed the world.
Unique now in how current redemption is sought not by the original babyface but an adversely-impacted bystander, NXT must find final vindication for Black before it fixes Gargano. To do both, it must break ultra-super-mega-indestructible villain Ciampa. The road has already been long and arduous, the destination is miles away, and a fascinating journey somehow still remains.