I may have missed the show live (I caught it on catch up about an hour after it finished - it started at 3am UK time, I'm not a robot), but I'm still physically and emotionally drained after watching what will be counted as one of the Shows of the Year. NXT TakeOver Dallas outshone most of what WWE and the main roster put on (up to and including SummerSlam) and may have given Vince McMahon the headache of "how do we follow this?"
Firstly, American Alpha beating The Revival for the NXT Tag Team Championships was both my only wrong prediction of the night and the best tag team match on a WWE card for ages. The flow between all four men was fantastic, especially when AA went mirror image to punish Dash and Dawson, capping it with stereo German suplexes that Brock Lesnar would be proud of. The tag team psychology was spot on and the blind tag to set up Gable and Jordon's finish was a great sequence. Not the result I would have had (I would have liked the greener challengers to chase into the summer before winning) but definitely a match that got the crowd hyped.
Austin Aries then beat Baron Corbin in what was the weakest match of the night, reversing the End of Days into a roll up for the pin. Don't get me wrong, when I say it was the weakest match, it would have shone on a main roster card - it was a serviceable match. It was underwhelming given the immensity of the rest of the card but still managed to pull out a match that Triple H's pet project can be happy with. Two things were accomplished here. First, this match showed the progress that the Lone Wolf has made in the past year - he was cocky and dominant against proven competition and showed he could put the work in against world class talent. Second, it gave the WWE Universe a nice taster of what A Double is capable of - there's a reason he has a legion of fans who consider him "The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived" and has won championships where ever he has went. Aries has the ability to take most to a great match, this was the entrée to what he could do in an NXT ring.
Then... Urgh, gimmie a moment, I'm still in ecstasy over this one...
Then, we had the match not just of the night but possibly the match of the year as the debuting Shinsuke Nakamura defeated the (likely) leaving Sami Zayn. I wish that was hyperbole, but those in the know were salivating at the prospect of this when the King of Strong Style was signed from NJPW back in January.
The match was phenomenal from bell to bell and personally, I think this match topped what Nakamura accomplished against AJ Styles back in January. Never mind the idea of "Swagsuke" and his hard hitting style in a WWE ring (and kudos to Corey Graves acknowledging that nickname as well on commentary!) but when Zayn was going for one-upsmanship, adding a brilliant striking game to his usual skillset, it lit a fire under the crowd. We knew they'd tear the building down but, when the two warriors were trading forearms back and forth for a good two minutes, they went and razed Dallas to the ground. "Fight Forever" indeed.
The full match was magical in its own, but the respect shown by Nakamura to Zayn had the fans up together to give both men the plaudits they deserved. If this is the future, as NXT likes to put it, then by God is it in good hands.
Christ, I feel like I need a cigarette just writing up that match, but HHH and his crew had to answer the question - "How on Earth do we follow up that match?" Their answer? Put out the most over wrestler in WWE (male or female) and the most vicious female wrestler on the planet and make them duke it out for the NXT Women's Championship. It was a good reply given that Asuka beating Bayley for the title didn't just keep up with the previous bout, it kept the momentum going for a crowd that should have been spent.
As a point, that's now 4 consecutive NXT specials, against 3 very different characters, that Bayley has went out and told very different stories in very different styles. In this case, after the emotion and technical ability of Sasha Banks and the power of Nia Jax, we had Bayley bringing aggression against the dangerous "Emperess of Tomorrow". And at times, the crowd believed that she could retain. It was a fight in a similar vein to Nakamura vs Zayn, but with a very different mindset. Even when Bayley finally lost, it showed yet another facet of her character - she wasn't pinned, she didn't give up, she was too spent to survive the Asuka Lock. She proved herself as a warrior and in the process, NXT has a womens champion to be feared and WWE has a competitor that could change the "Divas" division for years to come.
And so the "main" main event (let's be fair, this was a 2 hour card with a Triple Main Event, no sugar coating) and the Demon Finn Bálor retained his NXT Championship against a monstrous Samoa Joe. I felt sorry for these two guys having to follow what they did, but they did manage to provide a war on par with their spectacle in London. Don't me wrong, this was a match fitting the main event but it was marred by circumstance. Namely, Joe getting cut under his eye within the first exchanges.
The multiple medical stoppages to tend to Joe's eye didn't help the flow of the contest, not that the two men didn't try to keep the fans in it - at one point, Joe catapulted the Champion into the crowd and wiped out a security guard in the process, just to give the medical team a chance to work on him. For all the "f*** PG" and "Let Joe bleed " chants, I can see the reasoning to get the Samoan Monster cleaned up. Even if it did give a brilliant visual.
The end was interesting as well as it was unique, with the Demon being funneled by Bálor in order to counter the Coquina Clutch into a pinning situation. It gave the idea once again that Finn survived, rather than ended the war. It was also cleaner than what could have happened with Machine Gun Karl Anderson and Doc Gallows pretty close to debuting and bring together Bulletproof/Bálor Club/whatever.
At the end of the day, this two hour card was one that could have kept the 100,000 expected in AT&T Stadium enthralled. It then begs the question - although we all know WWE can bring the entertainment side of things for WrestleMania 32 on Sunday, can they really top the pure adrenaline and atmosphere that the "small" crowd NXT provided? I'm intrigued to see.
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