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NXT was fantastic in 2018. We had one of the best feuds of the year with Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa. We had some wonderful tag team wrestling with Undisputed Era, Mustache Mountain and Lorcan/Burch. We had great rookie years for Richochet, War Machine and Matt Riddle.
All four major title divisions produced high-quality matches throughout the entire year. The five NXT Takeovers themselves were all highly entertaining and should make any list of the best pay-per-views of the year.
As we look an amazing 2018 in the yellow brand, I present the five best matches of NXT. It was really hard to limit this list to just five best matches.
#5 Aleister Black vs Johnny Gargano (NXT Takeover: Wargames II)
I would expect to see Johnny Gargano on this list a lot.
Johnny Gargano was among the best babyface wrestlers in all of 2018. His underdog quest for the NXT Championship for one of the best stories of the year. That is why it was all the more shocking when he turned heel with an attack on Aleister Black before Wargames II. They used Black’s real-life injury to see up the summer-long mystery of who attacked him and cost him an NXT Championship match.
No one would have expected the underdog good guy who fought so hard for the title would be the culprit. Could Johnny Gargano sell his heel persona on the big Takeover stage? I would say so.
The match itself is among the most brutal of the year. I will always remember the perfectly timed Gargano suicide dive to the outside right into a Black knee to the face. It looked vicious. The match was a fast-paced encounter with so many strikes and stiff kicks that I lost count.
Besides the pacing what sold it was the story they were telling. Gargano played the cowardly heel perfectly looking for any advantage or opportunity to cheat. It sold the personal nature of the feud well. NXT was lucky to have both of them in 2018.
#4 Johnny Gargano vs Tommaso Ciampa (NXT Takeover: Chicago II)
I will always remember the finish. When Ciampa did a DDT onto the exposed wood of the ring and got the pinfall, the crowd in Chicago went silent. This brutal Street fight was a worthy follow-up to their amazing previous Takeover match. It was nearly thirty-six minutes of very personal and brutal moments throughout the match. I mean Ciampa took Gargano’s wedding ring, spit on it and threw it away. It doesn’t get more personal than that.
The match itself had a brutal finishing sequence with Gargano “turning to the dark side” when he decided to drive Ciampa through a table with a nasty looking Celtic Cross style move. This caused an angle of Ciampa being put in a neck brace and attempting to cart him away. It set up the storyline with Gargano being unwilling to let Ciampa go and leading to his eventual loss via DDT.
#3 Andrade “Cien” Almas vs Johnny Gargano (NXT Takeover: Philadelphia)
I remember seeing this match in January and thinking there was no way it would ever be topped for match of the year. In terms of pure technical wrestling, it might not have been all year. The fact it ended up in third on this list is proof how amazing 2018 truly was in NXT.
The match lasted 31 minutes and has some of the best pure wrestling you will see all year. It told a fantastic story. Johnny Gargano was the underdog who dreamed of winning the NXT Championship against the cocky Almas. It didn’t matter how much Vega got involved. It didn’t matter how many times Almas attacked Gargano’s head.
It didn’t matter how many near falls Almas got on Gargano, he always seemed to be coming back. I was still shocked when Johnny’s head hit a post before Almas got the final top rope DDT to win. The storyline was told perfectly and both competitors looked like stars going forward. I just wish Almas had this level of success on the main roster.
#2 North American Championship Six Man Ladder Match (NXT Takeover: New Orleans)
I wondered if Ricochet would live up to the unbelievable hype in his first NXT match. I would say once he did that flip off the ladder as it was falling the answer was quite clear. Ricochet simply isn’t human.
This might be my favourite ladder matches ever. It was unreal in terms of the punishment and creativity that the six competitors in this match were able to pull off. Take the example of EC3. I don’t know how he was standing after all the stiff ladder punishment he took.
You could have a laundry list of amazing spots that occurred in New Orleans. The Velveteen Dream doing an elbow drop from the top of a ladder. Lars Sullivan and Killian Dain destroying the other four through multiple ladders. Ricochet turning a fall off a ladder into a moonsault mid-way.
Adam Cole may have won the NXT North American Championship but the way all six stole the night, this would have been the match of the year in most years. But, this wasn’t most years.
#1 Johnny Gargano vs Tommaso Ciampa (NXT Takeover: New Orleans)
This is the best match in NXT History with the best feud in NXT history. Just looking at the hype package today and I still get excited. I have never seen a year-long feud so perfectly booked and didn’t know how they would live up to the immense hype. I was happy to say it exceeded its high expectations.
Ciampa played the heel perfectly. The foul language and boos rained down on him before the match were quite impressive and rare in modern wrestling. The match itself was fantastic. It was a textbook example of how to be violent without needing blood. It had many painful looking spots and believable near falls. But it was the emotion throughout the match that truly sold it.
The ending was about as perfect as can be. It ended with Gargano having second thoughts about taking out his friend with the crutch. Gargano clearly gave Ciampa one chance to do the right thing. Ciampa naturally did not and was quickly defeated with a submission.
Gargano has overcome his nemesis in the best match of the year. You will have a hard time finding a better face and heel feud in the WWE in the last decade. NXT is the place for amazing wrestling.
