Johnny Gargano

[Dylan Waco]

Discuss Here.

[InYourCase]

His Open the Freedom Gate run rivals any ROH World Title run besides Danielson's and maybe Joe's. The YAMATO match, the two Tozawa matches, his stuff with Chuck Taylor, the Hero match, and the Shingo match -- it's all great. He's adopted into modern EVOLVE really well, also. He'll be a game time decision. If he finds his way onto my ballot, it'll be at 95-100.

[Jetlag]

Really? I've never heard many positive words for him even from DG/Evolve fans. In fact the general opinion on him seemed to be that he was "Gabe's project" and not good enough to be poster boy. He has also worked several indies and never really set the world ablaze.

[NotJayTabb]

The first time I ever saw Gargano was in a leisure centre 5 mins from my house, where he and Ciampa unleashed my least favourite strike exchange ever. 45 seconds of no-sold blows as Gargano would hit a superkick, then Ciampa would hit a knee to the face. Superkick-knee-superkick-knee, whilst I sat there in horror. I've seen him since then, and he's fine, but what a terrible first impression.

[El Dragon]

I am dumping this one up because of the absolutely fascinating rise and fall of Gargano in the last 5 years. His evolution from tag team ace in the best tag team feud the WWE ever produced, to Sami Zayn level NXT pure babyface, his outstanding match with Andrade, his huge first match with Ciampa had many singing his praises. He felt unarguable. And then he completely, imo, fell off a cliff since then. The Ciampa feud fell off the rails, he got absorbed in the seeming Hunter/HBK style of mindless epics that fall flat, and how he’s just kind of the king of the midcard guy. I have never had a wrestler go from one of my favorites to least favorites so horrifically quickly based just on in ring work.

 

He has the highs to make the case but I just don’t see it as present.

[Matt D]

My argument about Michaels in 2016 was that he was very likely an excellent director, a great stuntman, but a terrible actor. If he ever had the chance to direct wrestlers, I thought he'd excel.

Boy was I wrong.

[Kadaveri]

On 2/23/2016 at 4:24 PM, NotJayTabb said:

The first time I ever saw Gargano was in a leisure centre 5 mins from my house, where he and Ciampa unleashed my least favourite strike exchange ever. 45 seconds of no-sold blows as Gargano would hit a superkick, then Ciampa would hit a knee to the face. Superkick-knee-superkick-knee, whilst I sat there in horror. I've seen him since then, and he's fine, but what a terrible first impression.

You really saw a horrible vision of the future here.

Unless he digs himself out of this hole pretty quickly I can't vote for Gargano. My usual way of thinking for this is every wrestler I'm considering for this has a timespan where they make their case, and at some point I draw a line. I'll give them a bit of a bonus if they continue having some great performances after they're old, but I won't penalise them for not being very good when they're past their prime.

With Gargano though, as far as I'm concerned this still is his prime, he's just filling it with terrible matches. I'm gonna have to take that into account as much as I disqualify Triple H for having so many bad matches in the 00s even if there were some great ones in there too. It's a shame because the Takeover: Toronto match with the Revival and the Andrade match in Philadelphia are two of my favourite WWE matches ever. I don't take those away from him. They're just dragged down by all the horrible matches since where he seems to have learned all the wrong lessons. He's been the centrepiece of NXT's change of style which killed the show for me, a show I used to watch every week in 2014-17.

[Clayton Jones]

It's crazy to go back and watch the CWC match they had and see just how good it is. I agree that Gargano felt undeniable at one point even though I personally was not a fan.

[WingedEagle]

His matches with Andrade, Shingo, Ciampa (the first couple), Cole and The Revival are among the best I saw in this country over the last decade.  No matter what's happened since the first Ciampa feud jumped the shark, being a vital part of that many classics locks you into my list.  I've only seen bits and pieces of his work in EVOLVE and PWG so need to look at more there before I have any idea where he'll rank.

[Boss Rock]

I haven't watched NXT full-time since the Ciampa feud, but I'm also largely in the camp of thinking Gargano was fantastic for 2 years and then fell into really bad habits. But I am interested in checking out his more recent Takeover matches to see how they hold up.

[Jmare007]

Not like we can know this type of thing but finding out how convinced he is with the melodramatic self conscious epic "formula" that Michaels (and HHH? maybe?) as better type of match as the ones he was having before.

Like, was Gargano more into the stuff he did as DIY and those first big singles matches or the ones he's had before? Are all of those just agents telling him how to work and him complying and it all depends on is his agent?

I don't know, but it's such a big difference between matches that it's incredibly interesting to me. Specially with the way NXT is run.

[strobogo]

I haven't enjoyed his heel work at all, in either run, and I think a large part of it is they continued to have him be a dude who it basically takes a building falling on to keep him down for a 3 count, which can work as an underdog face finally conquering the heel, but is real eye rolling when he's such an undersized heel. Another part is the dude should have been out of NXT at least a year ago, if not nearly two years ago now. Same for Cole and Ciampa. Dudes have just been spinning their wheels for ages with everything they've done feeling forced because presumably HHH/HBK don't want to let them go get lost in the shuffle on the main roster. I would say Gargano is such an over the top cartoon heel that he comes off very silly.

He was probably the best babyface in the business for a year run there, and it really feels like he just has nothing to do in NXT so they have him as a heel because he can't keep doing the face thing at the top of the card forever. Which is usually the point where okay it's time to move to Raw or Smackdown, but they just won't let him go.