WWE NXT: Examining How Johnny Gargano Slowly Found The Darkness

via wwe.com

Anger Leads to Hate & Hate Leads to Johnny’s Suffering

Johnny Gargano would showcase this newly reawakened beast within him in the closing moments of his Street Fight with Ciampa. After Ciampa pulled off Gargano’s wedding band, spitting on it and chucking it across the arena, Gargano slammed Ciampa through the table beneath them in a moment of desperation; a moment that echoed Ciampa’s own “moment” from TakeOver: Chicago a whole year prior.

As Gargano watched his ex-partner carried out on a stretcher with a dazed look in his eye – again, another mirror image from last year – Gargano’s eyes went black upon realizing his wedding band was missing. In a moment of pure unapologetic rage, Gargano proceeded to beat the unholy hell out of Ciampa, as well as anybody who got in his way. Without an end to his chaos in sight, Gargano left himself wide open for a draping middle rope DDT that afforded Ciampa a win.

If that finish was anything to go off of, Gargano was slowly turning into the very thing that he had hated. Or, rather, the very man who he hated. Obsessive, twisted, delusional, psychotic … all new adjectives that can be applied to Johnny Gargano. The next few weeks would see Gargano slip further and further into the darkness.

Weeks after the fact, Gargano would display a much more aggressive wrestling style in a match with EC3, which Gargano would win with an ironic draping middle rope DDT. Fast forward to a few episodes of NXT later when Tommaso Ciampa challenged Aleister Black for his NXT Championship. Gargano’s obsession with Ciampa would get the best of him when he tried to cost Ciampa the match, but he inadvertently cost it for Black. Gargano’s emotions got the better of him yet again, but this time, it put NXT’s top prize in the hands of his worst enemy.