7 Ups And 3 Downs From NXT TakeOver: WarGames

Brutal, hardhitting PPV kicks off weekend in awesome fashion.

ricochet cage dive
WWE.com

The recipe that NXT employs for its TakeOver specials is like Coca-Cola – it’s been working perfectly for what seems like forever, and you just hope they never tamper with it.

But until the equivalent of New Coke comes out, we’ll just to continue enjoying these specials, like Saturday’s TakeOver: WarGames, which delivered a hard-hitting PPV with everyone flying at each other at 100 kph. We saw some wrestlers who stole the show, and we saw others who stole matches because they aren’t as invincible as they thought they were.

We saw the TakeOver debut of another MMA star making the transition from the octagon to the squared circle, and we saw a heel faction continue to be effective in protecting its gold. We saw a star growing before our eyes, and we saw the mother of all babyfaces continue to slide further down a dark path.

We also saw WarGames, a brutal, stiff, battle of attrition take its toll on eight men, but we saw them rise to the occasion and put on a hell of a show for the crowd.

It was a great kickoff to Survivor Series weekend, but we’ll have to wait to see if WWE’s Fall Classic can stack up.

With that said, let’s get to it…

Advertisement
Contributor
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.