7 Ups & 4 Downs From NXT Halloween Havoc Part Two (Results & Review)

3. Melo, Dragunov Go To War

Carmelo Hayes Ilja Dragunov
WWE.com

Setting aside the conclusion, Carmelo Hayes and Ilja Dragunov had a bone-rattling NXT Championship match to close out Halloween Havoc, playing a game that combined Simon Says and “Can You Top This?”.

The two traded kicks and German suplexes to open the match, then pasted each other with clotheslines and counters to their signature spots. Hayes had an answer to the Constantine Special, but not the H-Bomb, which Ilja used to drive Carmelo through the announce desk. He managed hit a Codebreaker, only to eat another H-Bomb for a close two count.

Given the ad break and the finish, it never was going to equal their previous matches overall, but Hayes and Dragunov packed about as much dynamite into that match as they could, and it showed.

The ending though, with Trick Williams coming out and providing a distraction to Hayes, and then the odd staredown between Trick and Melo, was an interesting cliffhanger… which was then derailed by Baron Corbin attacking Ilja backstage. Because Corbin.

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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.