NXT needs to avoid adding shenanigans to next week’s cage match

Since moving to Tuesdays this past April, NXT has gotten back to doing the things that made the brand so critically acclaimed, particularly them advertising matches weeks in advance on the television show (it is funny that the NXT creative team has done this more in the last month than they did during the roughly year and a half that they went head-to-head with All Elite Wrestling: Dynamite, but that’s another story).

Fans saw this rejuvenated strategy in action again this past Tuesday, as the company announced two matches for next week’s show AND a pair of bouts for the May 25 episode. One of those matches is a steel cage match between Johnny Gargano and Bronson Reed for the NXT North American Championship.

Generally speaking, booking a big match with a cage match stipulation should feel like a big deal, but WWE has rendered these matches pointless thanks to years of misusing the gimmick. As such, it’s going to require a lot of work to rebuild fans’ faith in this type of match. Reed vs. Gargano would be a good place to start.

NXT needs to avoid WWE’s usual cage match tropes in the Bronson Reed vs. Johnny Gargano contest.

To be fair to the NXT crew, they built to this match the exact way a promotion should when implementing a cage match stipulation. For weeks, the writers have centered this feud around Gargano doing whatever he can to get out of defending his North American Title against Reed. When negotiating with NXT general manager William Regal failed to work, he and Austin Theory attacked Reed in Reed’s locker room on this past Tuesday’s NXT in an attempt to ensure Reed wasn’t healthy enough to compete on May 18.

Later in the show, an incensed Reed cut a promo saying that he went to Regal and requested a cage match stip for his title shot.

For most promotions, this makes all the sense in the world. With the cage in place, Theory — not to mention Candice LeRae and Indi Hartwell — won’t have many avenues to interfere on Gargano’s behalf and Gargano will have no place to run away from Reed.

However, this is WWE, where every stipulation match is a challenge to see how they can make the babyface look like a goober. Cage matches are no exception to this rule. Whether it’s scripting a contrivance to get the cage door open to allow other wrestlers to enter the cage, having wrestlers slam cage doors on babyfaces before the babyfaces exit the cage, or weak photo finishes, WWE has defanged a historically brutal feud-ender to the point where announcing it has the opposite effect of the intention.

NXT isn’t immune to this either, as the Io Shirai vs. Shayna Baszler and Tegan Nox vs. Dakota Kai cage matches have proved in the past.

WWE goes to this dry, poisonous well time and time again because their proclivity to schedule the same matches over and over requires them to add a gimmick to spice things up, but doesn’t want the heel to lose so they book something that gives them the win without “hurting” the babyface.

And sure, that can work in rare instances — provided the company has protected the stip for years, if not decades — but when these conclusions become the standard, the heat goes on the promotion instead of the heel, the babyfaces look dumb for continuing to ask for the match, and fans become less interested in the gimmick the next time it’s announced.

Because of this, the upcoming Gargano vs. Reed match has to end with a clean finish and a win for the challenger. No, it won’t change the fans’ perception of WWE cage matches overnight, but it would be a good first start to rebuilding the audience’s faith in these matches ending with a satisfying final act.

And if NXT is the alternative to the main roster, they should be the ones to take that first step.