NXT TakeOver: WarGames (2019) was a professional wrestling show and WWE Network event produced by WWE for their NXT brand. It took place on November 23, 2019, at the Allstate Arena in the Chicago suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. It was the third event under the WarGames chronology, and the first to have a women's WarGames match, as well as the first to have two WarGames matches on the same night; it was also the second NXT TakeOver event in history in which the NXT Championship was not defended (the first being NXT TakeOver: Respect in 2015), and was the first which saw no title defenses on the card.
Kick-Off: Angel Garza def. Isaiah "Swerve" Scott
Team Rhea (Rhea Ripley and Candice LeRae) def. Team Shayna (Bianca Belair, Io Shirai, NXT UK Women's Champion Kay Lee Ray, and NXT Women's Champion Shayna Baszler)
Mia Yim got taken out in a backstage attack at the end of the kick-off show and was replaced by Dakota Kai on Team Rhea, but if you didn't tune into the show until the main show started you wouldn't have known that at all since the commentary team failed to mention this. When it came for Dakota to enter the match, she snapped and savagely assaulted Tegan Nox to turn heel. Bayley needs to take notes from Dakota here. This is how you own a heel turn. Even though I think most people saw it coming from the moment that she was "buttering up" Mia Yim before her ladder match a few weeks ago after she wasn't picked for Team Rhea. My only problem with it was why go after Tegan? She didn't do anything. Rhea was the one who picked her last like the nerds nobody wanted on their team in gym class.
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| And it was at that moment, KLR realized she fucked up. |
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| Kay Lee Ray definitely took a beating in this match. |
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| Io Shirai with the dive of the night. |
While Rhea was unsung hero in the match while coming across as a wrecking machine, MVP award goes to Io Shirai. I'm surprised Io didn't break her legs after that Moonsault from off the top of the cage as it looked like she tried to land on her feet from the landing but her legs hit the ropes anyway in the impact. There's absolutely no way she wasn't feeling that in the morning. I'm still not too keen on Candice LeRae's bottomless amount of endurance (despite her non-disclosed history to WWE fans that she used to fight men regularly) like her husband. WWE has to be careful about how hard they push her just because she's Johnny
Finn Balor def. Matt Riddle
This match was originally set between Johnny Gargano and Finn Balor, but Gargano had to miss this TakeOver event due to an injury - first time that he's missed one of these events since debuting for the brand actually. Fortunately, Matt Riddle was able to fill in for Gargano as an impromptu replacement, but had to bow out as the original 4th man for Team Ciampa in WarGames. For Finn Balor's first TakeOver match back on the NXT brand, he had to win here. It's not like going back to the main roster to lose to the Fiend again was going to do him any favors, especially after his great heel turn a month ago. Riddle put up a good fight but like I said earlier, the right man went over in this contest.
Pete Dunne def. Damien Priest and Killian Dane to earn NXT Championship Match against Adam Cole the next night on Survivor Series
Even though this match was pulled out of their asses at the last possible second mere days before this event, I thought this was a fun match and we finally got a payoff for these feuds that Dunne has found himself in the middle of for the last few weeks. The best thing about this match for me was all of the various combinations these guys were doing on each other to hopefully bulldoze the competition. Pete Dunne (AKA NXT's Roger Klotz)
Team Ciampa (Keith Lee, Donovan Dijakovic, Tommaso Ciampa, and Kevin Owens) def. The Undisputed Era (NXT North American Champion Roderick Strong, NXT Tag Team Champions Bobby Fish and Kyle O'Reilly, and NXT Champion Adam Cole)
The kicker in this match was that everyone was wondering who the mysterious 4th man was going to be to join Team Ciampa since they came to the match without even announcing who they got to their 4th man. I knew they weren't going to rehash the Women's WarGames finish where it was the babyfaces dealing with overwhelming odds as that would have been redundant at this point and I like to think that NXT has better minds in their think tank in terms of booking and mapping out storylines. In the back of my head, I had three possible outcomes for the 4th man - John Morrison, Kevin Owens, and CM Punk. As of this posting (Dec. 4, 2019), John Morrison literally just signed his new contract with WWE, so that wasn't happening at that point. CM Punk would have driven that crowd absolutely bonkers if he was the 4th, but Kevin Owens made a lot of sense, given his ROH history with all of those involved along with the fact that he would have wanted payback for what the Undisputed Era did when they invaded Monday Night RAW.
The match ended with an insane Project Ciampa off the top of the cage through two tables. If that bump wasn't insane enough (especially for Ciampa who just came back from neck surgery and Cole who has been wrestling with a fractured wrist for the last month or two), the cameras got a reaction shot of AEW's own Britt Baker (AKA Adam Cole's girlfriend) watching from the crowd, clearly mortified from what she has seen just transpire.
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| Yep, that's Britt Baker alright. |
I don't blame WWE for doing this either as it was her own stupidity to coming to a rival promotion's PPV and sitting in the crowd. Don't show up at the show if you don't want to be shown on TV. I have to agree with Cornette on his remark about she should have been fired if she didn't clear it with AEW firsthand. Of course, AEW didn't do anything other than parody it on their own programming the following week...
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| My reaction to AEW and all of their callbacks and cheap knocks to WWE... |
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