WWE NXT on USA: Results, Highlights, and Grades for Oct. 2

Johnny Gargano vs. Shane Thorne

I’m still a little shocked that Gargano hadn’t appeared on an episode of WWE NXT on USA before tonight. After all, he’s the biggest cheerleader for the brand and has been since (his) day one. Putting him in the ring with a guy like Shane Thorne may seem like an odd pairing, but I like it – Thorne could use someone to work off him to prove himself as a singles competitor.

And the two have decent chemistry, going back to the tag team circuit. DIY and TM-61 may not have had a whole lot of matches together, but the few there were I seem to remember being pretty good. Why wouldn’t the singles version also be good?

https://twitter.com/WWEUniverse/status/1179562474699280385

Again, though, the part of the match that people really would have needed to see was in the picture-in-picture. If this match was to show how good Thorne is on his own, no one could actually see it. Thankfully, there was a nice stretch post-ad break where Thorne also dominated. But it’s still frustrating that something so relatively simple seems to elude WWE production sometimes.

Why was it so essential for Thorne to look dominant? Because everyone watching WWE NXT (or Dynamite, let’s be real) knew that Gargano was going to win. John Cena wouldn’t have lost his first match on a new version of RAW, right? He’s the face of the brand! Johnny Wrestling had to win, so it was hugely important for Thorne to get everything in while he could.

Winner: Johnny Gargano

Rating: 2.25 out of 5 Stars

I like Gargano using the poisonrana, like Candice LeRae, but maaaaaaan, it looked like Thorne took that one rough. The superkick afterwards didn’t help, someone may want to talk to Shane Thorne about not letting his opponents murder him on a regular basis.