[2018-04-07-WWE-NXT Takeover: New Orleans] Adam Cole vs The Velveteen Dream vs Lars Sullivan vs EC3 vs Ricochet vs Killian Dain (Ladder)

[cactus]

Ricochet predictably shone in this environment. This being his first big WWE match, he hopefully left a lasting impression. That shooting star plancha looked organic and not at all contrived and that's something you rarely see when people attempt big dives to the outside in the 'E nowadays. Adam Cole shown more personality here than any other NXT match I've seen of his. Velveteen Dream has one of the most beautiful elbow drops in all of wrestling right now and I'm thankful we got to see it as many times as we did in this match.

 

The match's 31 minute run time might of been excessive as there was a couple of moments in between the big spots that felt plodding and some of the spots weren't exactly ground-breaking, but the crowd reaction and commentary made the less impressive ladder bumps feel like a huge deal and overall this was just a perfect way to start the show.

 

★★★¾

[SmartMark15]

Great stuff. Everyone gets a chance to shine in some organized chaos that pretty much played to everyone's strengths. No one was exposed, everyone looked good, and it was fun as all hell all the way through. The triple ladder set up was miserable but outside of that, I thought they set things up pretty well and organically. One of the better crash matches recently.

 

****1/4

[ShittyLittleBoots]

Not quite as high on this as most other fellas are - honestly, just not getting the "best ladder match ever" -talk. It was a very good match with everybody getting time to shine, very well structured in that regard, and Ricochet is an absolute madman. It did drag quite a bit by the end though; I am actually surprised that the official time for it was "just" 30 mins, because that sure felt like an hour. ***

[Richeyedwards]

These big spotfest carcrash matches are just not doing it for me anymore. It was a collection of very setup spots where each guy got one or two big spots and then disappeared for 5-10 minutes. It also went forever.

 

On the takeover thread i saw people saying that they had to look away at times, but what does that say when despite all those massive spots that the best spot of the match was lars and dain throwing ricochet around without diving off of something or getting thrown through something. **3/4 i guess it was decent but for people who enjoy this kind of match would love it.

[El-P]

Garbage. It's ridiculous these kind of stuntfest with no purpose whatsoever and awkward set-ups and overscripted internal sequence still pass for good work in 2018. I enjoy a good garbage clusterfuck if there's a sense of chaos. This had a sense of carefully planned super dangerous spots to pop a crowd of wankers who were chanting "this is awesome" even before the match started. This is an awful way to display Ricochet in his very first match because he's now the guy who gets tossed around on ladders. This was also overlong, overthought, overproduced. One of the worst, most boring, uselessly dangerous match of the entire week-end.