So... NXT TakeOver is upon us once again, but this is supposed to be the really big one because it's the Wrestlemania weekend TakeOver, so this will have all the super-big matches with all the best people, right? Well, to be fair, that tends to be the case with almost every TakeOver. And having been in attendance at TakeOver Phoenix, I can tell you that this is easily the best event that WWE does from a live perspective, a fan perspective and from a performance perspective. TakeOver is always magical, but some of them have more to offer than others. And TakeOver New York has everything to offer. All of the matches are title matches, and all of them have marquee names. But there is one issue that I have with this TakeOver that has it lacking a bit of that "big match" feel that all the other TakeOvers have had.
Generally, there's one or two big overarching stories that are being told at a TakeOver. For the last year, we've been treated to the rise and fall and rise again of Johnny Gargano and his increasingly unstable mental attitude toward his rivalry with Tommaso Ciampa. This has led to near instant classics with him going up against Aleister Black in a grudge match and then Ricochet for the North American title. But now Johnny Wrestling is back full babyface and he should be challenging Blackheart for the NXT title!
Or at least it would be if Ciampa hadn't needed Cervical Fusion surgery and could be out for a very very long time. Again, I wish Ciampa a quick and strong recovery for himself and his beautiful family (and if you haven't seen the fantastic and heart-wrenching YouTube video that the Performance Center put up about this whole ordeal, please take 13 minutes and watch it here and then come back so you can read the rest of this!), but goddammit, I wish this could be the match. This is years worth of storytelling and this was to be the show that essentially wrapped the story up. But the show must go on and the NXT Championship must have a champion to carry it around. And thanks to an extremely well-booked Fatal 5-Way for the #1 Contender spot to challenge Gargano for the vacant title, it's going to be Johnny vs Adam Cole (BAY BAY), and that's the best outcome they could have booked going into this weekend with Ciampa absent from the card. A solid white-meat babyface vs one of the most conniving heels in the biz. But that isn't the first match I want to talk about as far as Hopes and Predictions!
Okay, quick primer for those of you who haven't read one of my Hopes and Predictions columns: for each match, I will give you my Hopes for the booking and my Predictions for the booking. They are not always the same. Sometimes, the two are radically different. This is usually more often the case with the main roster PPVs, but TakeOvers can be hard to get a solid read on as well, because this is a show that isn't as much about signaling a significant change in the landscape as it is about telling a good story. So now that you're all caught up, let's kick it off!
The first match we're going to talk about here is the NXT Tag Team Championship match between Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic winners Aleister Black and Ricochet (affectionately referred to here on my blog as Kicks and Flips) and champs War Raiders. Now, NXT is not a place where we see a lot of "fighting champions". As a matter of fact, War Raiders hadn't had a single match since they won the titles at TakeOver Phoenix until this last episode of NXT (where they had two!), and Kicks and Flips have been on a tear on all the WWE shows. They won the Dusty Cup, they were undefeated in both singles and tag competition until this last Monday on Raw where they lost their match for the Raw Tag titles against The Revival in a very dubious manner, and they're going to challenge for the Smackdown Tag titles this Sunday at Mania in a 4-Way tag match. So they've been getting it done everywhere while War Raiders have likely been "defending" their titles at house shows. But hey, house show defenses aren't a guarantee since Triple H geeked out a few years back and had Finn Balor lose the title to Samoa Joe at a house show. Anyway, all the momentum is clearly on the side of Kicks and Flips, but I just don't see them winning these titles. They're probably going to continue on the main roster as a tag team for a while until they start getting it right and putting them up as singles competitors, but even if they were to remain in NXT after this weekend, I just don't see them picking up these titles. This is going to be a terrific match, but it's not going to go the way of Kicks and Flips.
Hope: War Raiders retain and Kicks and Flips go to the main roster as solo acts
Prediction: War Raiders retain
Now let's get into another one that feels like an easy call, and that's the match for the NXT North American Championship with Matt Riddle vs champ Velveteen Dream. Riddle has a lot of charisma, but he's still relatively new to NXT. And Dream, who oozes charisma and star power out of every pore, just won the title. Again, this is going to be a really fun match to watch, and we're definitely going to see Dream fight heel in this match, but this is Velveteen all the way.
Hope: Velveteen Dream retains by placing Riddle on a couch and hitting Purple Rainmaker for the finish
Prediction: Velveteen Dream retains via DQ to keep Riddle undefeated
Now let's move onto the NXT UK Championship match between WALTER and champ Pete Dunne. This was obviously a change that was made after the Keith Lee injury since NXT UK is now its own pretty big deal now. So this is kind of another no-brainer. Pete Dunne has been the UK champ for, like, 17,842 days. It's time for a regime change. This is going to be a punishing match. Dunne is going to leave with a massive welt from some of those open hand palm strikes of WALTER's (because calling them "open hand palm strikes" sounds a lot more butch than "slaps"), but he's also going to leave without that UK Championship belt, because Der Ring General is getting that title.
Hope: WALTER wins the NXT UK title by putting a welt so deep in Dunne's chest, it leaves a permanent indentation like hands in wet cement
Prediction: WALTER wins the title
Now things get a little tougher as far as the card is concerned. So let's start with the harder of the two and that's the NXT Women's Championship where we have a Fatal 4-Way between Kairi Sane, Io Shirai, Bianca Belair, and champ Shayna Bazsler. So we have a No DQ match on tap. I don't know if there are going to be a lot of kendo sticks or chair shots, but there's definitely going to be interference by Horsewomen Jessamyn Duke and Marina Shafir. But they're going to get slaughtered when they attempt to interfere. The most obvious pick is Io because she's very over, and frankly, I want Shayna to go up to the main roster so she can challenge Becky for one of the titles she's going to win on Sunday, and she can be the new MMA badass on the main roster; I don't want to see Kairi win again because she's already had the title, but I can totally see it happening because she was NXT Performer of 2018 (which, come on... she's incredibly entertaining, but that's such a stretch that it seems like there were bots voting for her), and I don't want to see Belair win because I just don't think she's ready yet. That would be a case of the title making the talent rather than the opposite. So Shirai seems like the natural choice, but this is honestly a match I could see going in almost any direction. Belair is home-grown talent, but that's more Vince's thing. Shayna might still feel too "unconventional" for the main roster (that's a nice way of saying Vince won't like her because she's not "pretty") so she could stay in NXT for a while yet. Io is very new, but is super over. Kairi is also potentially headed for the main roster. So it's almost rolling a 4-sided die for this one, but I'mma call it:
Hope: Io Shirai wins the title by hitting a moonsault on all three competitors at the same time
Prediction: Kairi Sane wins the title
And let's get to the match that is giving me the most heart palpitations, and that's the match for the vacant NXT Championship with Johnny Gargano and Adam Cole (BAY BAY). This is a Two Out of Three Falls match, and if there's one thing that Johnny can pull out all the stops for, it's a big match with a stipulation. That's not to say that Johnny doesn't regularly pull out all the stops for all his other TakeOver matches, but this gives both competitors a lot to work with. I know that the rest of Undisputed Era is going to make their presence known at least once during this match, and the thing is, I can easily see that being the deciding factor. The problem here is that both Cole and Johnny are so fucking over with the NXT fans right now, it's impossible to call it from a fan-favorite perspective. But here's the scientific way I'm going to try to use to break it down: Johnny won the North American title and dropped it on his first defense. What fucking reason would they have for doing that unless he was going to win the Championship at the Mania weekend TakeOver? This is a man who, in my opinion, is the best male talent that WWE has right now and absolutely deserves this title.
But.
Cole has, aside from winning the Fatal 5-Way to put himself in this match, been taking a lot of losses this year. Aside from this same time last year, he hasn't had a win in a TakeOver match since then. And having Undisputed Era being on top of NXT feels like a fun idea. Hell, I'm wearing an Undisputed Era t-shirt as I'm writing this! I love these guys! They're fun, self-aware, and they can all go like maniacs in the ring. Even The Manager wanted Adam to win when he made it in the match. And then she realized that Johnny is in the match also. So I'm still going to operate on the assumption that heels don't need always need belts, and frankly, I'm sick of Johnny being the underdog in perpetuity as far as NXT is concerned. But there is the idea of getting Johnny on the main roster, but frankly I don't know if that's the best thing yet.
Hope: Johnny Gargano wins the NXT Championship by putting each member of the Undisputed Era in a submission with both arms and legs
Prediction: Adam Cole wins the NXT Championship
Well, that's it for my Hopes and Predictions for TakeOver New York, and I'll be happy to wrong about pretty much any of these predictions because all of these competitors are pretty much the best the company has to offer! Check out this spot on Saturday for a recap/review/reaction column for this same event, and of course, on Monday, there will be the same for Wrestlemania! And of course, my standard recaps of Raw and Smackdown Live (which will hopefully be very exciting post-Mania) and the recap of NXT, which will be the TakeOver pre-show matches between Candace LeRae vs Aliyah and Street Profits vs Fabian Aichner and Marcel Barthel.
This is such a good weekend to be a wrestling fan! Hell, I might even sign up for NJPW World again so I can watch the G1 Supercard! So all of you have fun and be safe and enjoy this weekend in all its heartache and glory!
Generally, there's one or two big overarching stories that are being told at a TakeOver. For the last year, we've been treated to the rise and fall and rise again of Johnny Gargano and his increasingly unstable mental attitude toward his rivalry with Tommaso Ciampa. This has led to near instant classics with him going up against Aleister Black in a grudge match and then Ricochet for the North American title. But now Johnny Wrestling is back full babyface and he should be challenging Blackheart for the NXT title!
Or at least it would be if Ciampa hadn't needed Cervical Fusion surgery and could be out for a very very long time. Again, I wish Ciampa a quick and strong recovery for himself and his beautiful family (and if you haven't seen the fantastic and heart-wrenching YouTube video that the Performance Center put up about this whole ordeal, please take 13 minutes and watch it here and then come back so you can read the rest of this!), but goddammit, I wish this could be the match. This is years worth of storytelling and this was to be the show that essentially wrapped the story up. But the show must go on and the NXT Championship must have a champion to carry it around. And thanks to an extremely well-booked Fatal 5-Way for the #1 Contender spot to challenge Gargano for the vacant title, it's going to be Johnny vs Adam Cole (BAY BAY), and that's the best outcome they could have booked going into this weekend with Ciampa absent from the card. A solid white-meat babyface vs one of the most conniving heels in the biz. But that isn't the first match I want to talk about as far as Hopes and Predictions!
Okay, quick primer for those of you who haven't read one of my Hopes and Predictions columns: for each match, I will give you my Hopes for the booking and my Predictions for the booking. They are not always the same. Sometimes, the two are radically different. This is usually more often the case with the main roster PPVs, but TakeOvers can be hard to get a solid read on as well, because this is a show that isn't as much about signaling a significant change in the landscape as it is about telling a good story. So now that you're all caught up, let's kick it off!
The first match we're going to talk about here is the NXT Tag Team Championship match between Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic winners Aleister Black and Ricochet (affectionately referred to here on my blog as Kicks and Flips) and champs War Raiders. Now, NXT is not a place where we see a lot of "fighting champions". As a matter of fact, War Raiders hadn't had a single match since they won the titles at TakeOver Phoenix until this last episode of NXT (where they had two!), and Kicks and Flips have been on a tear on all the WWE shows. They won the Dusty Cup, they were undefeated in both singles and tag competition until this last Monday on Raw where they lost their match for the Raw Tag titles against The Revival in a very dubious manner, and they're going to challenge for the Smackdown Tag titles this Sunday at Mania in a 4-Way tag match. So they've been getting it done everywhere while War Raiders have likely been "defending" their titles at house shows. But hey, house show defenses aren't a guarantee since Triple H geeked out a few years back and had Finn Balor lose the title to Samoa Joe at a house show. Anyway, all the momentum is clearly on the side of Kicks and Flips, but I just don't see them winning these titles. They're probably going to continue on the main roster as a tag team for a while until they start getting it right and putting them up as singles competitors, but even if they were to remain in NXT after this weekend, I just don't see them picking up these titles. This is going to be a terrific match, but it's not going to go the way of Kicks and Flips.
Hope: War Raiders retain and Kicks and Flips go to the main roster as solo acts
Prediction: War Raiders retain
Now let's get into another one that feels like an easy call, and that's the match for the NXT North American Championship with Matt Riddle vs champ Velveteen Dream. Riddle has a lot of charisma, but he's still relatively new to NXT. And Dream, who oozes charisma and star power out of every pore, just won the title. Again, this is going to be a really fun match to watch, and we're definitely going to see Dream fight heel in this match, but this is Velveteen all the way.
Hope: Velveteen Dream retains by placing Riddle on a couch and hitting Purple Rainmaker for the finish
Prediction: Velveteen Dream retains via DQ to keep Riddle undefeated
Now let's move onto the NXT UK Championship match between WALTER and champ Pete Dunne. This was obviously a change that was made after the Keith Lee injury since NXT UK is now its own pretty big deal now. So this is kind of another no-brainer. Pete Dunne has been the UK champ for, like, 17,842 days. It's time for a regime change. This is going to be a punishing match. Dunne is going to leave with a massive welt from some of those open hand palm strikes of WALTER's (because calling them "open hand palm strikes" sounds a lot more butch than "slaps"), but he's also going to leave without that UK Championship belt, because Der Ring General is getting that title.
Hope: WALTER wins the NXT UK title by putting a welt so deep in Dunne's chest, it leaves a permanent indentation like hands in wet cement
Prediction: WALTER wins the title
Now things get a little tougher as far as the card is concerned. So let's start with the harder of the two and that's the NXT Women's Championship where we have a Fatal 4-Way between Kairi Sane, Io Shirai, Bianca Belair, and champ Shayna Bazsler. So we have a No DQ match on tap. I don't know if there are going to be a lot of kendo sticks or chair shots, but there's definitely going to be interference by Horsewomen Jessamyn Duke and Marina Shafir. But they're going to get slaughtered when they attempt to interfere. The most obvious pick is Io because she's very over, and frankly, I want Shayna to go up to the main roster so she can challenge Becky for one of the titles she's going to win on Sunday, and she can be the new MMA badass on the main roster; I don't want to see Kairi win again because she's already had the title, but I can totally see it happening because she was NXT Performer of 2018 (which, come on... she's incredibly entertaining, but that's such a stretch that it seems like there were bots voting for her), and I don't want to see Belair win because I just don't think she's ready yet. That would be a case of the title making the talent rather than the opposite. So Shirai seems like the natural choice, but this is honestly a match I could see going in almost any direction. Belair is home-grown talent, but that's more Vince's thing. Shayna might still feel too "unconventional" for the main roster (that's a nice way of saying Vince won't like her because she's not "pretty") so she could stay in NXT for a while yet. Io is very new, but is super over. Kairi is also potentially headed for the main roster. So it's almost rolling a 4-sided die for this one, but I'mma call it:
Hope: Io Shirai wins the title by hitting a moonsault on all three competitors at the same time
Prediction: Kairi Sane wins the title
And let's get to the match that is giving me the most heart palpitations, and that's the match for the vacant NXT Championship with Johnny Gargano and Adam Cole (BAY BAY). This is a Two Out of Three Falls match, and if there's one thing that Johnny can pull out all the stops for, it's a big match with a stipulation. That's not to say that Johnny doesn't regularly pull out all the stops for all his other TakeOver matches, but this gives both competitors a lot to work with. I know that the rest of Undisputed Era is going to make their presence known at least once during this match, and the thing is, I can easily see that being the deciding factor. The problem here is that both Cole and Johnny are so fucking over with the NXT fans right now, it's impossible to call it from a fan-favorite perspective. But here's the scientific way I'm going to try to use to break it down: Johnny won the North American title and dropped it on his first defense. What fucking reason would they have for doing that unless he was going to win the Championship at the Mania weekend TakeOver? This is a man who, in my opinion, is the best male talent that WWE has right now and absolutely deserves this title.
But.
Cole has, aside from winning the Fatal 5-Way to put himself in this match, been taking a lot of losses this year. Aside from this same time last year, he hasn't had a win in a TakeOver match since then. And having Undisputed Era being on top of NXT feels like a fun idea. Hell, I'm wearing an Undisputed Era t-shirt as I'm writing this! I love these guys! They're fun, self-aware, and they can all go like maniacs in the ring. Even The Manager wanted Adam to win when he made it in the match. And then she realized that Johnny is in the match also. So I'm still going to operate on the assumption that heels don't need always need belts, and frankly, I'm sick of Johnny being the underdog in perpetuity as far as NXT is concerned. But there is the idea of getting Johnny on the main roster, but frankly I don't know if that's the best thing yet.
Hope: Johnny Gargano wins the NXT Championship by putting each member of the Undisputed Era in a submission with both arms and legs
Prediction: Adam Cole wins the NXT Championship
Well, that's it for my Hopes and Predictions for TakeOver New York, and I'll be happy to wrong about pretty much any of these predictions because all of these competitors are pretty much the best the company has to offer! Check out this spot on Saturday for a recap/review/reaction column for this same event, and of course, on Monday, there will be the same for Wrestlemania! And of course, my standard recaps of Raw and Smackdown Live (which will hopefully be very exciting post-Mania) and the recap of NXT, which will be the TakeOver pre-show matches between Candace LeRae vs Aliyah and Street Profits vs Fabian Aichner and Marcel Barthel.
This is such a good weekend to be a wrestling fan! Hell, I might even sign up for NJPW World again so I can watch the G1 Supercard! So all of you have fun and be safe and enjoy this weekend in all its heartache and glory!
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