The Gargano/Ciampa feud has been one of WWE’s most memorable in recent years. You’ll be hard pressed to find a better heel than Tommaso Ciampa in just about any promotion, and Gargano’s transition from beloved, benighted babyface to a man corrupted by his desire for revenge has been handled masterfully, leaving the former golden boy of NXT teetering on the precipice of his own heel turn.
With the addition of Aleister Black to the mix, the story seemed to be heading in a very interesting direction. But an unfortunate accident at a recent house show has left Black out of contention. It’s a shame, not just for Black – whose recent title run felt somewhat lacklustre, overshadowed as it was by the Gargano/Ciampa juggernaut – but for Gargano and Ciampa too.
Their story has been compelling viewing, told through so many mediums that it has become almost a piece of art: not just in the beautiful brutality of their in-ring encounters, but in the pantomime brilliance of Tommaso Ciampa striding to the ring through a sea of boos – so much so that he has foregone entrance music, choosing instead to incorporate the vitriol of the crowd into his performance.
Far from just another bit-part player, Black’s presence has been vital. Until recently, it’s been easy to sympathise with Gargano: a man betrayed, struggling to come to terms with the loss of both his best friend and his sense of self. Gargano’s extended absence was a touch of brilliance: total radio silence, in which the only certainty was that Gargano was hurting.
Into that absence stepped Tommaso Ciampa. Not so much a heel as a black hole, absorbing the crowd’s hatred. Ciampa’s glowering silence and the deafening fury of the crowd became iconic, and rightly so.
As Thomas Broome-Jones of Cultured Vultures puts it:
"“With very few words, he managed to get over as one of the most hated villains in the entire wrestling industry. Through taking advantage of the symbiotic relationship between performer and spectator, very little needed to be done to sell people on despising the bad guy.”"
When Gargano returned, the energy fans had previously poured into despising Ciampa was transformed. The already-popular Johnny Wrestling went from ‘loved’ to ‘adored’. The crowd responded to his quest for retribution with such fervour that you’d be forgiven for thinking it had become personal. A classic Good versus Evil narrative performed to perfection, in which Gargano emerged an almost messianic character, and Ciampa, well – I refer you here to the man in the NXT crowd who yelled ‘you’re the devil, Ciampa!’, who presumably speaks for all.
So, how do you knock a consummate babyface off a pedestal? How do you express, to an audience convinced of his righteousness, that his behaviour has crossed the line? Enter Aleister Black. What was meant to be a standard title challenge saw him caught in the crossfire, and his title loss came at the hands of a Gargano interference. For the first time, Gargano was depicted as being unambiguously in the wrong.
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It seemed unthinkable that the well of goodwill would ever run dry for Gargano. And yet the story continued to evolve. The quest for retribution became unhealthily obsessive. And while it’s easy to forgive him his hatred of Ciampa, it’s trickier to forgive his inability to control that hatred – especially when it costs Black – a crowd favourite in his own right – the NXT Championship he worked so hard to obtain.
This is where Black earns his place as the third man in a story that has been built on the notion of duality. And it’s fitting that Black, whose ethos is best explained in his entrance theme – no man is ever truly good/no man is ever truly evil – has turned this story from a hero/villain dichotomy to an exploration of how revenge consumes and destroys.
We’ve seen this foreshadowed by Candice LeRae, who has (thankfully) moved on from her role as ‘Johnny Gargano’s Concerned Wife’, but it is Aleister Black whose quantifiable loss truly illuminates the blurred lines between Everyone’s Hero Johnny Wrestling and the increasingly bitter, insular Gargano.
Black’s removal from the TakeOver match due to injury is unfortunate. It’s not world-ending: at this point I think it’s impossible for Gargano and Ciampa to have a bad match, or even an average one, and they will tear it up in Brooklyn with or without him. But the story suffers in his absence.
Black’s justifiable anger at Gargano is an important factor, and without Black as a largely neutral participant in a highly polarised match, it becomes harder to depict Gargano’s downfall. We have already seen him brutalise Ciampa, and we have collectively agreed that this is justified. Layer it too thick and there’s a risk that Ciampa might actually emerge the more sympathetic character – it’s too early for that kind of development, not least because Ciampa hasn’t actually earned it.
But Black has no real dog in this fight. He is motivated by one thing: the unfair loss of his title. For this, both Ciampa and Gargano bear responsibility. To see both men portrayed as in the wrong – Gargano arguably moreso – lends an extra dimension to proceedings, and Black’s physical presence as intermediary opens a world of possibilities, and the potential for a greater depth of storytelling and character development than Gargano and Ciampa alone.
Don’t get me wrong – with or without Black, it’ll be an incredible match. But unless creative cobble together a solution, there’s a risk that what should be a further exploration of Johnny Gargano losing his way will become just another clash of good vs evil, in which the only thing at stake is the NXT Championship. And this story, with all its twists and turns and increasing depth, deserves better than something so comparatively ordinary.