10 Greatest Wrestling Matches In Halloween Havoc History
7. Johnny Gargano Vs Damian Priest (2020)
NXT’s Halloween Havoc revamp was pretty great on the whole. Yes, it came in the middle of the pandemic, meaning the audience was in the double figures, but they made that work, upping the production values and gimmickry but finding plenty of room for quality wrestling.
The opening bout for the North American Championship hit the sweet spot perfectly. It was a Devil’s Playground Match, meaning the competitors scrapped through the graveyard set and a typically sparse WWE backstage area (with mid-'90s boiler room brawl vibes); it wasn’t exactly a hardcore affair, but there were enough creative weapons spots and utilisation of the surroundings to keep us happy.
More importantly, we had two workers in Damian Priest and Johnny Gargano who were actively elevating NXT’s midcard. Their secondary strap meant a lot more than either of the main roster’s, and this was a great way of illustrating this, with the pair pulling out innovative offense - Gargano’s tornado DDT kicking off the Spin The Wheel set benign a highlight - and having the room to make everything they could out of a fundamentally quite silly match.