TakeOver NYC!

Aleister Black & Ricochet vs. War Raiders

A super generic 50/50 indy workrate tag match. Not interesting in the slightest, and went on for way too long too. *

Matt Riddle vs. The Velveteen Dream

BY FAR the best thing on the show. Two awesome wrestlers & personalities clashing - loved the storytelling with Riddle straight up destroying Dream for majority of the match, but Dream used his small openings to the maximum & in the end caught Riddle by a surprise, as he countered Bromission into a pin. Terrific performances by both; Riddle with his killer work on the offense & Dream with his strong selling & really good hope spots. Loved pretty much everything bell-to-bell, but the moment that made me pop the biggest was Riddle no-selling Dream's German Suplex hope spot. Dream should've been watching his indy tapes, because if he did, he would've known that them Germans don't work on Riddle, BRO. ****

Pete Dunne vs. WALTER

This was very frustrating. There obviously were plenty of solid bits with them brutalizing each other, but overall I wasn't a fan of how it went; I really don't want to see WALTER wrestle these 50/50 overly long generic NXT "epics". I kind of understand it, as Dunne is a big star & has been a very dominant champion for a looong time, so they didn't want his reign end "unceremoniously", but something like WALTER vs. Devlin part 1 would've been much preferred. This was just bleh. **

Bianca Belair vs. Io Shirai vs. Kairi Sane vs. Shayna Baszler

A very forgettable multi-person match - some solid stuff with Kairi & Io teaming + briefly going against one another, but overall there just wasn't much to the thing. Io & Kairi playing BASEBALL was fun & the double Psycho Driver by Belair was awesome though. **

Adam Cole vs. Johnny Gargano

The first fall was literally... nothing? Like absolutely nothing of note happened there, and honestly, the same could be said about the 2nd fall. Then in the final fall they go all out & have an epic w/ million nearfalls & Gargano looking like a superman, surviving everything Cole had to offer & more w/ Kyle, Fish & Roddy interfering. It was pretty ridiculous how many nearfalls they did w/ Gargano kicking out of literally everything Cole had in store. The Fairytale Ending on the announcer table by Cole to Gargano was a perfect example of the forced storytelling I've come to expect from big Gargano matches these days, too. OH WELL. At least the post-match w/ Gargano celebrating with his family, Candice, the crowd & Ciampa was legitimately pretty touching, but this wasn't a good match at all. One of the most hollow feeling TakeOver matches I can recall. *