8 WWE NXT TakeOver: WarGames 2020 Impulse Reactions
Chaos in the cages as The Undisputed Era take back the NXT throne and Io Shirai takes out the trash.
WarGames 2019 feels like so much more than 12 months ago, and not just because the ongoing global b*stard you're sick of reading, hearing and thinking about continues to turn seconds into minutes into hours into days into weeks into months into please-let-the-vaccines-work-before-this-joke-adds-the-next-unit-of-time.
Taking place on Survivor Series weekend, the event was yet another triumph for the brand during a relatively prosperous period for NXT at large. The television between September and December was excellent, with expressive and absorbing matches and angles taking place in frantic fashion due ton panicked counter-programming against the incumbent AEW Dynamite. The group "won" the Survivor Series brand battle, then proceeded to score strong ratings wins over the competition including one (one) victory in the vaunted key demographic.
The good times couldn't last - they weren't built to - but NXT's projected mini-implosion was expedited by 2020's own collapse. It took a long time for the show to get out of the black and back into the gold, but a seemingly concious back to basics effort since August's TakeOver: XXX has done the trick.
TakeOver: 31 was as much an understated announcement of this new era as it was an advertisement for it. Could WarGames - with major stipulations and ramifications afoot - supply the peace of mind that more of this sort of thing was to come?
8. We Are At War
An introduction for the ages kicked off NXT's final TakeOver of the year, and f*cking good too.
Thanks to the ongoing global b*stard and the angle around Shotzi Blackheart's tank, the black-and-gold brand steered into the campy aesthetic more than ever before. It benefitted the hype for the event right up to showtime, when the company produced one of the best video packages in TakeOver history.
Getting every last penny from the Black Sabbath deal ('War Pigs' has been a hugely memorable fixture in this year's build), the package paid tribute to a superb build with a gripping rundown of every major angle and the inherent danger of the titular stipulation.
NXT has taken its lumps regarding how it's embraced one too many main roster ills, but the video production will never not be one of the welcome upsides of that. WWE's become the company that can do epic wrestling presentation, even when it can't do half-decent wrestling.