Leon Ruff is a great wrestler with a lot of potential. His victory over Johnny Gargano was the biggest upset in NXT’s history, but was Leon Ruff beating Gargano the right call?
Not an Elevation
When an upset like this happens, it needs to be an elevation for the winner and unfortunately that was not the case for Leon Ruff.
Ruff’s win felt more like a comedy act than an actual elevation.There’s great examples of upsets done right and horribly wrong. Okada coming back from his excursion and beating Tanahashi for the IWGP Heavyweight championship was a great elevation for Okada and down the line it paid off big time for NJPW.
On the other side of the coin, you have Maven defeating Undertaker. This match was overbooked and was terrible and failed on elevating Maven, what was the whole objective of the match.
Unfortunately for Leon Ruff, this feels like a comedy moment than this being his huge moment for him to having a good run with the championship.
Playing Hot Potato with a Championship
One of the things I hate the most in wrestling is when wrestlers hot potato championship wins with each other. This makes the championship mean nothing and is just a prop.
Tonight, Leon Ruff will face Johnny Gargano again on a rematch for the North American championship. This feels like Leon Ruff will lose the match and drop the tile to Gargano again, unless Damian Priest does an interference in this match.
Gargano taking the title back, it looks like NXT is playing hot potato with one of their championships and no ends up winning.
What’s Next for Ruff?
If I was the booker, I would give Ruff a good run with the the title and see what Ruff can do on TV taken seriously and not as a comedy champion.
The most likely scenario is for Gargano to win the title back from Ruff and move on to his feud with Damian Priest.
Like I mentioned before, Leon Ruff is a talented wrestler and with a lot of potential and maybe NXT will do the unexpected and keep the belt on Ruff a little longer and booking him to have a good run with it.
