7 Ups And 3 Downs For NXT TakeOver XXV

by Scott Carlson

1. Adam Cole Finally Draped In Gold

Adam Cole NXT TakeOver XXV
WWE

For a while now, we’ve heard Adam Cole talk about how the Undisputed Era was going to be “draped in gold” in 2019. Five months in, and nothing.

That changed Saturday night at TakeOver XXV, when Cole made good on his promise, capturing the NXT Championship (fairly) cleanly by defeating Johnny Gargano. This kind of needed to happen, as Cole had been promising for months and months that Undisputed Era was going to run roughshod over NXT, but spent more time teasing a breakup than actually doing anything else. If they were going to be a serious stable, they needed to win at least one of the major matches Saturday.

As NXT champ, Cole can now back up his promos by holding up the title. It’ll be interesting to see if Roderick Strong targets the North American Championship, or if Kyle O’Reilly and Bobby Fish go for the tag titles in the coming weeks.

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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.