7 Ups And 3 Downs From WWE NXT TakeOver: Toronto

Downs...

3. Lackluster Tournament Final

dusty tag final
WWE.com

This is more of an unfortunate side effect of the TakeOver card than anything else.

On its own, the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic finals between the Authors of Pain and TM-61 was pretty decent. It wasn’t a memorable classic, but it wasn’t bad either. However, on a five-match show where four of them were hot and entertaining as hell, this match was the odd man out. The Authors are still young and learning, and the Australians are still connecting with fans.

Last year’s tournament was won by Finn Balor and Samoa Joe, an all-star tag team. While that shouldn’t count against the Authors of Pain, it’s just a noticeable step down from last year, which was amplified by an awesome card around it.

Still, it’s great to see the tournament continuing, and it did a nice job giving a spotlight to two tag teams that should be part of the next generation of NXT tandems.

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.