NXT: Aleister Black Tells An Entire Story With Just One Line

We all knew that Aleister Black’s match with Johnny Gargano at NXT TakeOver: WarGames was going to be good. But let’s be real: none of us expected it to be as utterly transcendent as it was.

An easy contender for Match of the Year, Aleister Black and Johnny Gargano pulled out all of the stops at NXT TakeOver: WarGames 2, showcasing the very best of their considerable talents: Black’s incredible agility and striking prowess and Gargano’s superb comic-book character work and technical ability. It was pitch-perfect pacing building an already wire-taut tension to a fever pitch.

But in among this embarrassment of riches is something far more subtle: Aleister Black’s one-liners.

Black has a unique ability to tell an entire story in a single sentence. A man with abundant charisma and mystique, it’s fitting that he should also be a man of few words, and better yet that those words should be imbued with so much power.

“Enjoy infamy, Velveteen Dream”. The epilogue to an absolutely epic clash between young upstart Velveteen Dream, hungry for Aleister Black’s attention and respect, and Black, dismissive of the Dream as a preening, arrogant irritation; a waste of his time.

More from NXT

• Trish Stratus on WWE NXT would help elevate that women’s division
• WWE NXT DeadLine 2023 Predictions: Trick Williams Will NOT Become Iron Survivor
• The End of Trick and Melo Gang Will Break NXT Fans’ Hearts
• Dominick Dijakovic is doing his best work in WWE NXT
• Quick predictions for NXT Halloween Havoc Night Two

The Dream pulled out all the stops to prove himself worthy, earning himself a spot in the hearts of the NXT audience in the process. And it was Black’s single line of dialogue which put the full stop on this most compelling of stories.

It was the perfect postscript, gifting the Dream a small but significant victory in the face of defeat, and achieving closure in the most satisfying of ways. All this in one sentence.

In the face of a brazen, trash-talking Johnny Wrestling, Black’s silence feels entirely appropriate. Gargano’s manufactured antihero persona has been built brick by brick, word by word, an armour he has constructed to disguise the bitter transformation his obsession with Ciampa has wrought upon him. Black doesn’t need that. He already is the antihero Gargano dreams of being. In a black and white world, he is truly neutral.

And as with Velveteen Dream, with just one line, Aleister Black puts to bed the entire feud on his own terms. It’s an immense amount of power for one person to hold. It’s also incredibly cool. Picture it: he’s delivered a stinging Black Mass, knocking Gargano insensible. He could end it there – he has vanquished his opponent, he has won this war of attrition. But that’s not the point. He holds Gargano upright, and tells him: “I absolve you of your sins.”

And that, right there, is the point. It was never about being better than Gargano. It was about delivering him from his own descent into hatred. Even after all Gargano has done – his cowardly attack on Black, costing him his shot at the title and putting him on the bench – Black would have every right to hate him, and to choose to destroy him.

But Black does not destroy him. He chooses not to lose himself in hate, the way Gargano has, but to absolve him. To restore to him something of the Johnny Gargano that was lost when Ciampa destroyed him. No man is ever truly evil, after all, and Aleister lives true to this credo: he is rage and vengeance, but he is also calm and forgiveness. He did what Gargano could not do with Ciampa: he let his anger go. And this, at every step, has been Gargano’s undoing.

Aleister Black does not need monologues. He does not need to bicker and taunt. Give him a ring, and a match, and a single line, quietly spoken, and he will tell you an entire story in the space of a sentence.