NXT: 5 Possible Opponents For Johnny Gargano

Roderick Strong

On the April 24 episode of NXT, we got an appetizer of what a Johnny Gargano vs. Roderick Strong NXT Championship match would look like: a cornucopia of smooth chain wrestling, strike exchanges, and counters.

Unfortunately, their encounter merely existed as a condiment to the main course that was the ongoing issues amongst the Undisputed Era. Where exactly that storyline is headed remains up in the air, but the fallout from the group’s infighting could result in another meeting between these two.

Granted, Strong’s loss to Gargano in the aforementioned television main event complicates Strong’s path to a championship match, but he was protected in the sense that an inadvertent kick from stablemate Adam Cole led to him succumbing to Gargano’s Slingshot DDT and surrendering the deciding fall, so Strong could argue that he could’ve won if not for Cole.

Even with that defeat in the record books, Strong could get on a mini-roll and win some sort of number one contender’s match to earn another shot at Gargano. If that’s indeed the plan, we could be in for another mat classic featuring NXT’s version of post-2002 Shawn Michaels.

On the other hand, that match-closing angle could also set the stage for…