6 Ups And 5 Downs From WWE NXT 2.0 (Dec 14)

Your writer has a confession to make. I was absolutely sold on the idea of Johnny Gargano's emotional farewell seven days ago being a complete and utter work, designed to add the extra emotional weight needed to really get Grayson Waller over as a volatile piece of sh*t once he pulled the trigger on his beatdown. One glance on social media and at Johnny Gargano's Twitch and PWTees collection seems to suggest otherwise, however... Or this is merely another fine layer being added to perhaps the greatest work of our time?!

Wherever you sit on the will he won't he Johnny Wrestling scenario, though, there's no doubting the fact that said show-closing angle was felt all the way through this week's show. Waller played up to his character-making moment from start to finish on the two hour chunk of mayhem and may just have positioned himself as the most hated man on the roster in the process. Not too shabby.

Elsewhere, the other most hated (for all the wrong reasons) face of 2.0 watched on as his bald partner in crime made his long-awaited in-ring debut. And the most disheartening division in WWE added country music festivals and more distraction finishes to its increasingly painful web of title contention.

For everything NXT is consistently getting wrong throughout this 2.0 era, though, there are still moments of genuinely quality creeping through on a weekly basis. So, long live the Wise Guys, Steiners, Dogefathers, and Diamonds who still make Tuesday nights worth watching...