5 Positives And 5 Negatives Heading Into NXT TakeOver: Toronto

At the risk of harping on about the Dusty Classic, I wanted to highlight another positive of this year’s tournament.

It’s noticeable that both of the finalists, the Authors of Pain and TM-61, very much fit the mould of what you’d call a conventional tag team, rather than a hotchpotch pairing randomly thrown together ahead of the tournament.

Not only does this make a little more sense—after all, it seems slightly odd that a tag team with little prior experience together would suddenly be able to win an entire tag team tournament—but personally I think it adds to the prestige of the Dusty Classic itself.

Last year the tournament became something of a pawn in the eventual rivalry between Samoa Joe and Finn Bálor. It was in essence a plot device, used to get us invested in their brief alliance, which of course made their eventual break-up all the more noteworthy.

This time however, there are no such sub-plots or ulterior motives. Instead, the tournament is being used purely to decide who the greatest tag team in NXT is, and I feel like that’ll benefit the perception of the tournament overall.