Reviews by Dave
Show air date: September 30, 2020
Not a great go-home show for a pay-per-view this week on NXT on USA but when it was good, it was great, particularly with the two main interview/promo segments.
Shotzi Blackheart defeated Dakota Kai with Raquel Gonzalez
In what turned out to be the best match of the night, Shotzi Blackheart beat Dakota Kai (with Raquel Gonzalez). A couple of spots and sequences I could have lived without but an overall very good match that got a lot of time and gave Blackheart a much-needed win.
Escobar, Swerve Split-Screen Face-Off
Cruiserweight champion Santos Escobar and his Takeover challenger Swerve Scott has a split-screen face off. It was okay. Often, WWE faces sound like they all have the exact same promo coach, and Swerve sounded like every other face that ever talked on a WWE mic.
Kyle O’Reilly Vignette
Great vignette package on NXT title challenger Kyle O’Reilly.
Cameron Grimes Open Challenge
Cameron Grimes decides to have an open challenge, where he just blows up young guys. This might have been better but after he wipes out the first guy (Ariel Dominguez, fresh off his GRINDHOUSE performance and thankfully not going by his usual name), Ridge Holland comes out and mauls Grimes They should have given this more time to develop.
KUSHIDA defeated Tony Nese
KUSHIDA taps out Tony Nese in a nice tv match, with his hoverboard lock. His Takeover opponent, Velveteen Dream, pops up on the TitanTron and cuts a decent promo on him.
Adam Cole defeated Austin Theory
Adam Cole beat Austin Theory, giving him a receipt for some slick talk about the Undisputed Era and Kyle O’Reilly last week. Cole’s promo before the match–which was good but not great–was better than this match. If a match is going to be this one-sided, it doesn’t need to be this long. It started to look like Cole was out of moves.
Kayden Carter defeated Xia Li
Kayden Carter, sugar-free chocolate ice cream to her tag partner–Kacy Catanzaro–sugar-free vanilla, got a win over Xia Li in a nice match. Then they wanted to shake hands. Xia was fun GTFOMF. I’m sure the goal is to make Li the villain here, but it was them being obnoxious.
Balor, OReilly Sit Down Face Off
In the best part of the show, NXT champion “The Prinxe” Finn Balor and his challenger at Takeover, Kyle O’Reilly faced off in a sit-down face-off with Shawn Michaels as useless moderator. I guess someone there remembers when HBO used to do these for big boxing events. Balor was not only great here when O’Reilly started being basic, but he also cut him off and from there, O’Reilly tightened up and matches his intensity. Great segment.
Main Event: Johnny Gargano and Candice LeRae defeated Damian Priest and Io Shirai
North American champion Damian Priest and Women’s champion Io Shirai were beaten by their respective TakeOver title match opponents, the NXT Power Couple, Johnny Gargano, and Candice LeRae in a pretty standard WWE intergender match. Nothing special here. Decent enough match but fairly weak for a main event.
Not a great show at all but it had some great moments.
