8 HUGE WWE NXT TakeOver: Vengeance Day Predictions You Need To Know
On this day, a WWE megastar will see clearly, and bring this show to life. Edge will be there too...
Regular readers of this piece (and to the scant few of you, hello, thank you, and apologies, in that order) will know that the pay-per-view card itself remains the bedrock of the list, even if we're here to have fun offering up the wildest possibles or darkest probables any given Sunday.
Typically, TakeOver are tight five/six match cards that offer very little filler and fat and - for better and worse - less of the frivolities you'd expect from a night at the ThunderDome or one day back in front of the perpetually punished WWE Universe. Even after an objectively dodgy year for NXT, the brand carries the weight and prestige from years of events that instantly entered themselves in WWE's best-ever archive.
TakeOver: Vengeance Day, tragically, needs more of the former to even stand a chance of being considered amongst the latter.
It is a show full of good-to-great matches on paper, but that paper is completely blank and not even the sort the Michael Scott Paper Company would flog, let alone Dunder Mifflin. It's been blank since New Year's Evil, and that's felt by frustrating design. This article will aim to scrawl over it in luminous pen, but the chaos comes from a good place - an over-delivery here could course-correct a shoddy start to the year for the black-and-gold brand.
Let's go all cupid on this the most romantic of days and try and fire some arrows through a barely-beating heart...
8. The Famous (?) Vengeance Theme
Seems best to get this one out of the way now.
When NXT used the old In Your House branding to the orgasmic joy of every New Generation truther, it was more than just a cute gag about the f*cking awful situation we found ourselves in. It reached deep into the recesses of their ageing demographic, lovingly serviced with some fantastic aesthetic attention paid to the presentation.
By having to so much to lean on from its history, it proved there was history to mine in the first place. Likewise when they presented the deliriously entertaining Halloween Havoc show in October. But Vengeance? Vengeance?
It's an atrocious pun/bit of wordplay for starters, not least considering that Valentine's Day Massacre exists in WWE lore and could probably be used again without accusations of tastelessness. But without many matches even about the act of vengeance, nor any fond memories for the original shows themselves, what will the company even do to meet the theme half way?
Giant f*cking V it is then, right at the top of the ramp for somebody to bump off. The Ruthless Aggression Era fans would be thrilled, but most of them watch AEW on Wednesdays sooo...