NXT Takeover: RESPECT Thread

[Dark One]

Originally Posted by Smelly Meatball Probably could have cut down on the score a bit but was going to be hard to top the last match story and emotional wise regardless what was picked for this one. Closest this match came was Sasha taunting Izzy and the ending of Bayley getting desperate to not have the match stopped in a tie with those kicks to Sasha's head.

Yeah, I mean, it's an important match to have for a variety of reasons. The Ironman stip also definitely makes sense from a storyline perspective and to underscore how talented the women are.

So, it's great from every perspective for the lead up, but the ironman stipulation has SO many downsides. It's a great stip for building up a match and a storyline, but the match itself just suffers from so many inherent drawbacks, especially now that the match has happened often enough for most of the "tricks" to be pretty commonly known. You lose all of drama of "IS THIS THE END?" because you have a timer, and the only way to get around that is by going to overtime, and that in turn makes the first 30, 60, whatever minutes feel irrelevant. This is compounded by having one of the competitors clearly being "promoted" off the show. It's just one of those stipulations that's an uphill slog.

I love the stipulation for what it means in a historical/event context and how it worked for the story, but I hate the stipulation for the match itself.

That said, they did the best they could do with the stip, and I'm happy they got the chance and that I got to see it.