10 Things You Learn Binge Watching Every WWE NXT TakeOver
2. How Gradually It Ate Itself Alive
There was a point halfway through the stodgy main event of TakeOver: Toronto in August 2019 where Adam Cole and Johnny Gargano no longer knew what to do to one another, and on commentary Mauro Ranallo put this over as being the result of their many titanic struggles.
It was more a case of fact bleeding over into fiction.
The need for critically acclaimed classics grew more pronounced as Triple H tried to hide that he was running out of ideas. TakeOver: WarGames in 2019 offered scintillating titular battles, but they came at the expense of the performers' well-being. Adam Cole worked so much around this time that he looked like he'd been repackaged as an Egyptian mummy for 2.0 thanks to all the bandages.
There was no escaping the problem at the last TakeOver before the pandemic, and last of its kind before much of NXT's hardcore ticket-buying base migrated to AEW. It was fabulous by formula, with all the right moments making all the right noises but there was a frustrating sense of familiarity and excess in just about every match. Chesney Hawkes played "One & Only" twice in a 7-song set when he played the Unis after his brief peak. That looked disciplined compared to what became of the Factory Settings TakeOver show. Portland concluding with the setup to another Gargano/Ciampa showdown put too fine a point on that.
Obviously, none of that could go to plan, but March 2020's global shutdown at least squeezed some impressive ingenuity out of All Elite Wrestling. How would things go on the other side of the Wednesday Night War?