6 Ups And 5 Downs From NXT TakeOver: Chicago

2. ‘F*** You Ciampa!’

ciampa heel
WWE.com

When you can get that kind of reaction from fans, you know you nailed your heel turn.

Tommaso Ciampa ended his longtime friendship with tag team partner Johnny Gargano Saturday night after DIY lost their NXT Tag Team Championship ladder match to the Authors of Pain. The beaten duo was making their way up the ramp at the end of the PPV when Ciampa turned and slammed Gargano into the lightboard, then proceeded to repeatedly hit running knee-strikes on him.

Ciampa capped it off with a White Noise off the announce table through several tables below, forcing Gargano to be stretchered out of the arena. The turn unfortunately ends one of the best tag teams in all of WWE/NXT, but it sets the stage for an awesome series of matches between the two men.

And putting aside the horrid shots of fans laughing, this turn was almost perfectly executed.

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Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.