News

Updated WWE NXT Takeover New Orleans Lineup for Apr. 7, Triple H Comments on Ciampa vs. Gargano Feud

TJR Wrestling

Here’s the updated lineup for the WWE NXT Takeover: New Orleans event on Saturday, April 7 at the Smoothie King Center.

NXT Championship: Andrade “Cien” Almas (c) vs. Aleister Black

NXT Women’s Championship: Ember Moon (c) vs. Shayna Baszler

Unsanctioned Match: Johnny Gargano vs. Tommaso Ciampa (If Gargano wins, he is reinstated; if Ciampa wins, Gargano is banished forever)

NXT North American Championship Six-Man Ladder Match: EC3 vs. Adam Cole vs. Ricochet vs. Velveteen Dream vs. Lars Sullivan vs. Killian Dain

NXT Tag Team Championship Match: The Undisputed ERA (c) vs. Winners of the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic

Here’s a tweet from Triple H putting over NXT Takeover.

Triple H also did an interview with NBC Sports where he talked more about the Gargano vs. Ciampa feud.

Here’s Triple H on how the feud has picked up after Tommaso Ciampa missed the second half of 2017 due to a torn ACL knee injury.

“We had the emotional intensity for this story line between the two of them, but then the injury happened and we needed to reboot. I think it’s played out pretty well.

The tough part about it was trying to play out the story line of Johnny Gargano on television with the idea of knowing where you want to go, but not knowing Tommaso was going to be exactly ready to go. So you’re playing, ‘Where’s he at now?’ I certainly don’t want to rush his return until he’s 100 percent and I want to make sure he’s healthy and can capitalize on the opportunity, but at the same point in time, I’m glued to the updates on his health so I can begin to tell the story in a direction that gets us to match the timing of his return.

So far it’s all worked out great and I’m excited where that story line is. To your point from an emotional story standpoint, I don’t think you can compare it to the emotion of say Daniel Bryan’s return at WrestleMania, but as an angle between two talents it has the most emotional feel to it heading into the weekend.”

Here’s Triple H explaining why Tommaso Ciampa attacked Johnny Gargano during the NXT Title match on TV rather than at the Takeover during Royal Rumble weekend.

“TakeOver is a moment that is going to have the most eyeballs on it. If you do that on a TV taping and 80 percent of the world hears about it on social media, but they don’t see it live, so they don’t get the full impact of the moment and then have to wait three weeks to watch it play out. It’s a different feel and the excitement level is different.

The difference between the two is, at TakeOver, Ciampa was cleared to do what he did and then we had to buy some time to get to where he would be cleared to a little bit more than he was doing.”

Check out Triple’s H’s full interview with NBC Sports here.