The second NXT TakeOver: In Your House was a lot like the first, a blurry vibe of bright colors and references to the 90s. The bright hues of pink and blue were welcome given NXT’s usual angry yellow vampire aesthetic, but it really needed a Bret Hart match or something to round it out.
Todd Pettengill was the host, and Todd Pettengill is still good at this!
0. Sarray & Zoey Stark vs. Aliyah & Jessie Kamea
This was a dark match uploaded to YouTube the next day, a match where Sarray and Zoey Stark proved what anyone who’s been watching already knows: they are both very good. I’m not sure either has had a bad match on TV actually. The Robert Stone Brand girls played pretty bland foils, though somewhere along the way Aliyah has picked up an edge to her. She ate Sarray’s dropkick in the ropes whole too. **3/4
1. Winner Takes All – NXT North American Title & NXT Tag Team Title: Bronson Reed [c] & MSK [c] vs. Santos Escobar, Joaquin Wilde & Raul Mendoza
Here was a fun bunch of wrestlers doing a fun bunch of wrestling, the type of match they used to rely on to open or close a show before wrestling got more complicated than it already was. MSK and Legado del Fantasma began the match with some of the finest wrestling in wrestling, a group of guys who have had good matches before but saved some of their smoothest and trickiest work together for this particular show. Raul Mendoza went immediately from that to an awesome sequence playing against a brick wall Bronson Reed; combine that and Mendoza’s new hair and this guy was just a star tonight.
There’s an especially wild dive train towards the end and despite that really goofy part where a guy had to jump on another guy to setup a double Samoan drop, the finish wrapped up as any crowd-pleasing show opener or closer should. ***1/2
2. Mercedes Martinez vs. Xia Li w/ Mei Ying & BOA
Here’s a match where they locked up and grappled to the floor right away, then over 7-and-a half minutes just threw down: strikes, suplexes, a slick jumping knee, a back body drop on the floor. They packed a ton in here and Xia Li brought both a pay-per-view performance and pay-per-view look to the dance, though the match also just couldn’t really shake those second match on a TakeOver feels. **1/2
3. Ladder Match – Million Dollar Title: Cameron Grimes vs. LA Knight
The TakeOver ladder match! A ladder match. Another ladder match. Outside of Ted DiBiase and the hilarious joys of Vic Joseph rattling off In Your House gimmick matches as if they were cherished memories of wrestling fans across the world, this was very much another ladder match.
It was Cameron Grimes and LA Knight’s biggest NXT spot yet and they absolutely bumped their heads off, especially Grimes who went extra ballsy for the final one. But that was kind of all there was. The ladder never felt necessary but without the ladder, I do not know what the match was. Either way, it was a ladder match. **3/4
4. NXT Women’s Title: Raquel Gonzalez [c] w/ Dakota Kai vs. Ember Moon
Ember Moon deserves all the stars for going at this with way more energy than WWE put into the build-up, but after it settled down it became a match more about highlights than anything that felt TakeOver caliber. Gonzalez’ Canadian backbreaker into powerbomb was something different, while highlights included Ember doing a tornado DDT to Raquel on the entrance ramp and Shotzi Blackheart returning to throw poor Dakota Kai through the In Your house plants. **3/4
5. Fatal 5-Way Match – NXT Title: Karrion Kross [c] w/ Scarlett vs. Kyle O’Reilly vs. Adam Cole vs. Johnny Gargano vs. Pete Dunne
This reminded me of the Halftime Heat 6-man NXT did a few years ago, the fellas just doing all of it for half an hour. They never really lost their mojo either even if any NXT match will absolutely have five moments that have you questioning just who is in charge here. Everybody went at it with a TakeOver-level motivation if not atmosphere, spots delivered with a reckless abandon but also flowing from one to the next as if they came from a well-oiled — maybe even automated — machine. It was a fun if not forgettable TakeOver main event, which has kind of been the thing for a while. ***1/2
Happy Thoughts: The opener and main event are fun, but this was another miss from USA Network NXT. None of the matches were explicitly bad, but William Regal’s apparent resignation at the end of the show was by far the most interesting thing that happened. 2.0 / 5.0
