ML Kennedy explains NXT WarGames!
Your guide to Saturday’s NXT: Takeover Chicago WarGames!
Currently, only four matches are listed. Survivor Series is also this weekend, which is all about (ugh) brand supremacy and hangs over everything like a wrestling Sword of Damocles. It’s Raw vs. Smackdown vs. NXT and is basically like the wrestling pro-bowl. You know, if in the NFL a team of Bears and Packers had to pretend to like each other in order to interrupt a game between the Jets and Dolphins to show the superiority of the NFC North over the AFC East?
Match one – Standard Match: Matt Riddle vs. Finn Bálor
Matt Riddle is a stoner dude-bro who wears flip flops to the ring and wrestles barefoot. Somehow he is likable enough to be the good guy here. Riddle is also a legit MMA guy who is freakishly strong and has a twitter feud where he dunks on former WCW champ Goldberg.
Finn is a skinny Irish guy who looks like he has never touched a carb in his life. He’s a former Universal Champion on the main roster who has come back to NXT to get his mojo back. Somehow, this process involves being a dickhead to everybody. You know he’s officially a bad guy because he performed the bad guy NXT ceremony (i.e. beating the shit out of Johnny Gargano.)
They are fighting because Finn says that NXT has been overrun with children since he left. Man-child Matt Riddle takes umbrage to that statement.
Match two – Triple Threat: Pete Dunne vs. Damian Priest vs. Killian Dain
Pete Dunne is an Englishman who likes nothing more than to break people’s fingers. He is a tough guy and weighs less than 15 stone, therefore he is called the Bruiserweight.
Damian Priest is a tall, tattooed, and lanky Latino. His gimmick is that he looks like a vampire and shoots invisible arrows (question mark). He’s relatively new to the brand and trying to make a name for himself despite being the oldest guy in the match.
Killian Dane is basically a human/grizzly bear hybrid from Northern Ireland. He was part of an Anarchist group called Sanity that got called up to the main roster and promptly forgotten about. He likes to hang out in dark rooms and project movies.
Priest and Dunne have had some matches where each one has won by hitting the other in the dick. Dunne passed Dain on the ramp once, didn’t like how he looked at him, and broke Dain’s fingers. Dain and Priest hate each other because each of them wants to murder Dunne and they are… bad at sharing, I guess.
Match three – WARGAMES: Rhea Ripley, Candice LeRae, Tegan Nox, and Mia Yim vs. Shayna Baszler, Io Shirai, Bianca Belair, and Kay Lee Ray
This is the first Wargames match. Wargames is like a tag team match, but with no tags. There are two rings next to each other with one oblong cage covering the whole thing.
The first team are the goodies and the second team are the baddies.
Rhea Ripley is the team captain of the goodies. She’s a badass, kinda butch lady who wears a leather jacket to the ring. She’s the tallest one of these ladies at 5’9” and has a pair of shoulders like Captain America. (It’s a trick though, she’s Australian.) She was the women’s champ on NXT UK, which is a thing, and now she is on NXT USA which is just called NXT. She wants a shot at Shayna’s NXT women’s title.
Candice LeRae is a blonde lady and a very good wrestler. She’s finally been allowed to be a character on the show aside from Johnny Gargano’s concerned wife. She’s a white meat babyface who likes to stand up to bullies or whatever. LeRae was helping out Io Shirai when Shirai was feuding with Shayne Baszler. Io lost that feud and snapped, which lead to Io beating the hell out of Candice and turn full supervillain. Candice had a shot at Shayna’s title, but came up a little short.
Tegan Nox is recently back from a long-ish injury. She’s Welsh, likes to kick, and has an infatuation with Kane. She is friends/ partners with a fellow kick enthusiast named Dakota Kai. (Kai was not invited onto the team because Shayna Baszler always eats her lunch and has done some sort of long term psychological damage to her psyche. Nox’s response to this was basically, “sorry your mom wouldn’t let you go to the prom, anyways here is my dress.”)
Mia Yim is a black and Asian lady with blue hair. She calls herself HBIC and pretends the B stands for Baddie. Yim basically took Dakota Kai’s spot by not being afraid of Shayna Baszler. Yim came close to beating Shayna a few months ago by taking every short cut in the book and basically cheating her ass off. Shayna has previously offered Yim a job as one of her flunkies. (Shayna has two flunkies, neither of which she trusts enough to put on her WarGames team.)
Shayna Baszler is the captain of the baddies. She’s a badass, kinda butch lady who wears a leather jacket to the ring. Shayna is Ronda Rousey’s friend and basically better than her. She has been champion forever now, and hasn’t really lost a match to anybody that is still in NXT. Shayna is my birthday twin and sounds like Binky Barnes (1) when she talks. She’s the best.
Io Shirai, the genius of the sky, is a tiny Japanese lady who is basically the most dangerous person on the show. She will murder you. She hates Candice LeRae because Candice tried to be her friend. She recently busted up Mia Yim’s nose with a ladder. She and Rhea have been in each other’s faces a lot as both think they deserve to be number one contender to Shayna’s title. I would not expect her to work well with others.
Bianca Belair is the E S T of NXT. She calls herself this as she proclaims to be the greatest, strongest and other words that end with those three letters. She is incredibly strong and athletic, and she will whip you with her long ass braid if you get on her nerves. She also thinks she should be the number one contender to Shayna’s title and came as close to beating Shayna as anybody not named Kairi Sane. She’s egotistical but not really malicious.
Kay Lee Ray is the NXT UK women’s champ. She doesn’t even go to this school. She is Scottish, skinny and a third thing. She wants to be on the baddies team for reasons.
Match four – Men’s WarGames: The Undisputed Era (Adam Cole, Bobby Fish, Kyle O'Reilly and Roderick Strong) vs. Tommaso Ciampa, Keith Lee, Dominik Dijakovic, and TBA
Individually, the second team (the goodies) would seem to have the advantage. However, the Undisputed Era (the baddies) have an edge due to the power of scumbag friendship. (Friendship is a bad guy quality in WWE for some reason.)
The Undisputed Era is a team of 4 different kinds of douchebags. They currently have all the men’s championships in NXT. I’ve heard them described as Millennial nWo. But unlike the original, each member of the Undisputed Era seems to both enjoy wrestling and be good at it.
Adam Cole is their leader and the heavyweight champion. He’s skinny, has long hair, and says “baby.” He’s the sort of guy who would bring a signed photo of himself to the Christmas party’s pirate exchange.
Fish and O’Reilly are the tag champs. O’Reilly is basically a white version of Genan Shiranui (2) from Samurai Shodown minus the Freddy Kreuger glove. He likes to strum his belt like an air guitar and is affectionately (?) referred to as Scumbag Kyle. Fish has a hipster mustache… and… is also a member of Undisputed Era.
Roderick Strong has the look and personality of a K-mart ripoff version of a 1980s action figure, and is almost as tall. He wrestles like an annoying AI in a WWE video game. He does 100 different versions of a backbreaker and is thus called the “Messiah of the Backbreaker” which is a nickname that I think is part of the war on Christmas.
Leading the good guy team is Tommaso Ciampa, evil made flesh. But, he’s recently back from an injury and is thus a good guy. He’s bald, has a beard, and loves violence more than god, family or country. I believe if you shot him with a cannon, he would still kick out at 2.
Keith Lee used to play defensive end for Texas A&M. Picture a guy who used to play defensive end for Texas A&M, not make no changes to that image. He’s 6’2” over 300lbs, can do just about anything in a wrestling ring, and by all rights should be able to toss any member of the Undisputed Era into the upper balcony any time he wants.
Dominik Dijakovic is Keith Lee’s blood rival. He’s 6’7” 270lbs and is basically Sagat (3) from Street Fighter if Sagat from Street Fighter was from Worcester, Massachusetts.
The fourth member of the team is as yet unannounced.
There you have it! No titles are on the line, every match is people who dislike each other are going to settle their differences through violence, even if they have to team up with people they hate.
Also, there are two other rosters worth of wrestlers in town ready to fuck shit up for no reason other than brand supremacy.
1. https://arthur.fandom.com/wiki/Binky_Barnes
2. https://snk.fandom.com/wiki/Genan_Shiranui
3. https://streetfighter.fandom.com/wiki/Sagat
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