10 Worst WWE Matches Of 2020
5. Johnny Gargano Vs. Tommaso Ciampa - NXT April 8 2020
Very similar to the Edge Vs. Randy Orton Last Man Standing match, this was better in some ways. The wrestling itself, when Gargano and Ciampa finally arrived at it, was far superior. In another, more definitive way, it was worse.
One Final Beat also took itself too seriously, but added a wrinkle of pretentious melodrama. Well, not so much a wrinkle as Abdullah the Butcher's f*cking forehead.
It began with Triple H, the father figure, crouching by the ropes in lieu of a chair he could sit on backwards. He told these reduced children that their war had to end there and then. Daddy knows best. Daddy knows all, except how to reach a young audience and chart inside of the top 50.
Shrouded in darkness with only ambient light illuminating the scene - that way, we'd know how f*cking serious all of this was - the former #DIY teammates pulverised one another in an excruciating - but also laughable! - echo of a rivalry that has aged about as well as Breakfast At Tiffany's.
Another absurdly self-important match - did they really need 40 minutes to grunt through such a slog? - the tone was undermined by its contrived callbacks. Have to use a crutch.
Can't not use a crutch.
The schadenfreude intensified with a very silly twist that doubled as a plot hole. Candice LeRae, just so distraught over all of this, kicked Gargano in the balls. She kicked Ciampa in the stones, too, but Johnny was OK! He wore a cup!
A cup that protected him through, by that point, almost a half hour of head trauma!
For this to have worked, Candice must have thought "It's Johnny and Tommy. These f*ckers are hardly going a tight 12 minutes, are they".