The Day WWE NXT Died

You didn't want to laugh at it.

Cole and Gargano were working the rubber match of a trilogy that, before the third went for eight hours, was some of the best pro wrestling WWE had ever promoted. The sheer drama engineered at TakeOver: New York was so overwhelming that an arena full of Cole diehards was swept up in the comeback of a babyface they had grown tired of. All contrarian instincts were abandoned. Gargano was simply outstanding - and undeniable - on the night. The rematch, at XXV, was a worthy sequel without being quite as good. The rubber match was an overwrought joke told all too well.

The Toronto main was creative bankruptcy masquerading, as it so often does, as a deluge of old ideas. This was a match that wanted you to herald it as "Epic, bro!" with the desperation of a gelled-hair teenager looking at his first bit of cleavage in a real pub. It was a parody of intensity and conflict.

Some of it was really well-worked because Adam Cole and Johnny Gargano were in it. The first, straight singles match was a cagey affair in which the space between moves was marked with hesitation fuelled by the knowledge of the danger each man possessed. This showing of danger was exponentially more powerful than the danger itself.

You could make the argument that all wrestling, with the exception of the strictest interpretation of shoot-style, is in some way unrealistic or ridiculous. It's hard not to sigh-laugh when a wisened old WWE head, like Randy Orton, bemoans the modern style. Heels bump and immediately leap back up to get punched by him when he's playing babyface. It's silly. Wrestling is inescapably silly.

But even in its own context, in which the audience accepts multiple blows to the head as a pulsating dramatic device and not a concussive blow, this two-out-of-three-falls match was so dumb. It has to hurt at some point. The core can evolve, but it can't mean absolutely nothing. Gargano and Cole traded a million near-falls before the first of two gimmicked matches. Gargano, the babyface already struggling against Cole's cool factor, intentionally lost the first fall by assaulting Cole with a chair. He tried to shrug at the audience to get over as a rapscallion not unlike Shawn Michaels. He wasn't Shawn Michaels. Not every motherf*cker has to be Shawn f*cking Michaels for f*ck's f*cking sake.

CONT'D...(5 of 6)