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#2 MSK vs Legado Del Fantasma for the NXT Tag Team Titles - NXT June 1st, 2021
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MSK have been fantastic as NXT Tag Team Champions. The company didn't even give them a chance to catch their breath before they were already on the run to the gold. They won the NXT Dusty Cup this year and at TakeOver: Stand & Deliver, defeated Legado Del Fantasma and the Grizzled Young Veterans to capture the titles.
After that, MSK feuded with Legado for several months, leading to NXT TakeOver: In Your House, where they teamed up with Bronson Reed to beat all of Legado in a six-man tag for all the gold. Before that, though, we got a phenomenal tag match between MSK, Joaquin Wilde, and Raul Mendoza.
On June 1st, Legado challenged MSK for the belts. These teams were blindingly fast, never giving fans a chance to settle down. MSK's strikes were lethal and on point, while Legado had the edge on tag team maneuvers. For example, they hit a top rope rana/powerbomb combination on Lee that would've put lesser opponents away.
The action was non-stop, though part of that had to do with the interference of Grizzled Young Veterans, Santos Escobar, Tommaso Ciampa, and Timothy Thatcher. While the Vets, Ciampa, and Thatcher brawled to the back, Santos got his own punishment courtesy of the NXT North American Champion.
Seriously, that might be one of the greatest GIFs from NXT this year.
This main event had just about everything you could want. However, with all of the interference, it dropped just shy of the number one pick.
#1 Grizzled Young Veterans vs Tommaso Ciampa and Timothy Thatcher NXT in the Dusty Cup semi-finals - NXT February 10th, 2021
Looking back, it was hard not to put this one at number one. Tommaso Ciampa and Timothy Thatcher are a dangerous team, and one of those thrown-together duos WWE gives us that rarely work. Their opponents, The Grizzled Young Veterans, were basically just Thatcher and Ciampa with a few more years as a team under their belts.
Seriously, the styles of these four men are incredibly similar. Not that everyone is the kind of technician ol' Toothless Timmy is, but every single one of them the is smash your mouth and in your face type.
If Zack Gibson and James Drake were Grizzled Young Veterans, their opponents would be grizzled, well, veterans. As exciting as the Tornado Tag was that they had this month, there's something about the way GYV works, the rules of a regular match that make this feel special.
It's almost like, even in a two-on-two situation, they've always got the numbers advantage. They always had a game plan for Thatcher and Ciampa who were, at this point, fresh off a hellacious feud. The story in itself was the main reason to rank this so high.
Ciampa and Thatcher worked so well together despite barely even being on the same page. With some kinks in the gameplan, they barely lost to one of the elite teams in all of WWE. That's why the tornado tag match meant so much. They'd worked out the issues and become a well-oiled machine. However, we wouldn't get there without starting with this point.
Ciampa and Thatcher, individually, were better than Gibson and Drake, individually. But GYV were greater than the sum of their parts, and were always able to save one another when it seemed like they were done for. Near the end of the match, Ciampa had Drake set up for Willow's Bell. Gibson held onto his legs, forcing Ciampa to slam into the canvas by himself.
That one mistake by Ciampa and one brilliant move by GYV allowed the latter to advance to the finals, and that was pretty much the whole match. The psychology was great, and it's definitely one that will be talked about for NXT's year end awards.
