5 Ups & 5 Downs From NXT TakeOver 31
A new home, some old faces and a typically solid show, but did NXT make Capitol gains at TakeOver?
You need to feel wrestling rather than thinking about feeling wrestling.
This very mindset was something Triple H acutely assessed when he began elevating the status and stories of NXT substantially in late-2013. In the likes of Sami Zayn and inaugural Women's Champion Paige, for example, he had two babyfaces that the localised Full Sail University audience felt a great deal for. In his other job Pedirgreeing Daniel Bryan on Raw, he noticed how much audiences felt Bryan's struggle, rather than having to think about an imagined one for John Cena.
2020 NXT has been 2013 John Cena.
Ongoing global crisis issues aside (though the weekly show struggled terribly with that transition too), the show has invited criticism this year thanks to counter-programming and counter-intuitive booking. The verve has been there in flashes but not in comfortable bulk of old. The over stars are becoming the exception rather than the rule, while the storylines have less meat on the bone during the journey and have had a tendency to lose all their flavour entirely by the destination.
October's TakeOver made for a shorter gap from the last show in August too - there was very little time to build a major-sounding card, but how would it all translate on the night? To the "CWC", (as we're all now calling it) to find out...