10 Wrestlers Who Reward You For Paying Attention
9. Johnny Gargano
Johnny Gargano hates wheels.
I know that.
You know that.
Everybody knows that.
What began as a beautifully absurd gag that underscored Gargano's new, ultra-deluded character - why would anybody, much less everybody, know this incredibly specific information? - was actually paid off by stunning professional wrestling. Gargano expressed his disdain not towards the circumstances but the vehicle behind those circumstances: spin the wheel, make the deal was the cause of his torment, not the actual physical prop.
Great heel pouting, but also something more: Gargano sprang around the actual wheel to drop Damien Priest with a DDT and capture the NXT North American Title at his expense. Suddenly, Gargano loved wheels. He was all about wheels. Wheels have so many uses. They're actually very important, when you come to think of it.
In words your writer never, ever expected to pen - Gargano took part in the positively laughable One Final Beat this year, the most po-faced f*cking bore pro wrestling has ever yielded - Gargano made a mundane word really, really funny, in a way not unlike that of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.
This Gargano run is a relentlessly funny and thoughtful formula of mundane detail/rip-roaring payoff. He has contrived to elevate the barely episodic NXT show into something endlessly rewarding and legitimately amusing.
He has made the inessential almost essential by, and imagine this, not just desperately thinking of match graphics that might deliver a ***3/4 affair.