This match is everything that I hate about the WWE. It will slide by for its offenses by having a decent crowd that bought into the shtick and hiding behind the good will that the letters NXT bring but at its core, it is the perfect display of all things wrong about WWE’s stylistic shift in the last few years.
Take four talents that I’ve genuinely enjoyed watching even into their time in NXT. Then you throw them together into a match that looks good on paper and on paper alone. Now that the match is penciled in with zero story to work with, the competitors involved have a singular purpose to their ringwork: have a “great match.” That’s all you can do when nothing else about this contest is meaningful in the slightest.
On its own, this is not innately a bad thing. Hundreds of matches all over the world are booked simply because they look good on paper. Because those involved believe that what will result will be a “great match.”
But then you start to think about it a bit more. This isn’t just any other wrestling company trying to put on a crowd pleaser. This is the WWE. More than telling organic stories and piecing together cohesive matches, their goals are far more opportunistic. Creating “moments” that can be GIF-ed to death on Twitter. Commodifying anything that works, packaging it, and mass producing it ad nauseum until it becomes a copy of a copy of a copy of the original.
Already, before the bell has even rung, the match’s main problem is on display: a sense of artificiality, of being manufactured. It’s a match booked by an algorithm.
It becomes even more painful because these are four talents I genuinely enjoyed. I thought that Moustache Mountain were a great addition to the tag scene in NXT with Tyler Bate having some of my favorite matches from NXT since his arrival. Ciampa & Gargano had the feud of the year in 2018, one of the most heated and emotionally investing stories to come out of the WWE all decade with the matches to boot.
Those figures I loved are not present in this match. These are facsimiles. Parodic imitations of what a multibillion dollar company with ties to the Trump administration and a bloody Middle Eastern regime believes the ideas of “#DIY” and “Moustache Mountain” are meant to be.
Some might argue that I’m late to this party, that any talent that makes the choice to sign with the WWE makes this choice from the get go. That’s a fair point too. While I’m not typically that cynical about pro wrestlers, this was the match that laid it bare for me more than anything else they’ve done.
The moment that embodied this cynical epiphany comes late in the match. #DIY hit a flurry of offense and Ciampa sits on the apron, patting himself on the back and applauding himself. Johnny Gargano sits down next to him to imitate the taunt. That moment upsets me so deeply. What started as an organic moment, a reviled act of arrogance from one of the most despicable heels in WWE, has now been packaged and reproduced and stripped of meaning. It’s no longer the actions of a real human engaged in physical combat. It’s a clip copy pasted to get a pop.
Mechanically? Nothing truly wrong with it. They clearly achieve everything with their usual crispness. But the way it progresses, the thoughtless structuring, the reliance on a PWG-style spotfest structure to manufacture pops without any of the atmosphere and independent charm that makes those matches worth seeing.
I hate this match. It’s the worst I’ve seen all year.
I disagree with the idea that a math needs a story going into it at all times. I think a story can be created through the interactions and clash between two, or in this case four, characters. But even then, NXT posed the question “Can Gargano and Ciampa still have as much magic as a team as they used to”. Bare and Seven have been a tag team far more recently than DIY so there is somewhat of a story going into it. I also thought the spot where Johnny patted his shoulder, although a little corny, was not manufactured by this big machine. I don’t think the fed had too much of a hand in creating this match other than who is going to win, and how long it’d go. This is speculation, but I feel like NXT talent has more of a hand in the matches they produce and to be perfectly honest, it seems like a silly spot Gargano would think is cooler than it actually is. It is a “cute” little character moment where Johnny embraces the cockiness of Ciampa, which has been a story told between Ciampa and Gargano. Gargano, whenever intertwined with Ciampa, begins to become a little bit more like him with every interaction. (I.E Gargano attacking Black before their triple threat match and going to lengths he normally wouldn’t to prove he’s the “chosen one”). It also services the story that they two former partners can still work together despite the time spent apart. That being said, the match does have some other story beats to it. The two babyface teams try to one-up each other through technical wrestling with Bate/Gargano and some showing off of their bodies with Ciampa/Seven. It’s lighthearted fun that is expected when two “good guy” teams face off. Ciampa and Bate having a test of strength where Ciampa obviously looks larger than Tyler, but Bate gets the one up in that as a surprise to everyone was fun. It’s all about little interactions between the characters in the beginning because although they need to feel each other out, they respect one another. There’s also a hot tag spot with Seven which is classic tag team match storytelling. There’s spots where we see the question of will diy work well together when Ciampa tells Gargano to go for a tope and Gargano being instantly on the same page. They also reference this with dual submissions that they used to beat the revival to win the tag straps in 2016, which again proves they can be on the same page even with the distance that was created between them for almost a year now. I really enjoyed this match personally. Hopefully you can see it from a different perspective now. Not saying you have to like it or change your mind but that’s just how I viewed it.