The story of Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa from NXT was one for the ages. In an arc that spanned years, the two men began as partners before a shocking and brutal betrayal by the Ciampa. In a series of emotional matches, Johnny became corrupted in his pursuit of righteous vengeance. And just when it looked like Johnny was finally going to settle the feud once and for all and win the title…
…Vince McMahon pulled a desperation move that ruined everything. Facing record low ratings, McMahon called up four of NXT’s top stars, including Gargano and Ciampa, to spice things up.
And, because he neither watched nor cared about NXT, he made the two arch-rivals a tag team. Now the NXT announcers had to explain why Gargano and Ciampa were good friends on Smackdown but mortal enemies on NXT, which taped its shows weeks in advance.
When Ciampa went down with an injury, it was almost a relief that the feud ended before it could get any more convoluted. Gargano won the vacant NXT title, Ciampa congratulated his old friend, and everyone moved on.
Fast forward a year, however, and the former DIY partners began feuding again, this time with Gargano as the heel. If NXT wanted one final Ciampa-Gargano match at their big WrestleMania weekend TakeOver, they couldn’t have picked a better time to re-ignite their feud than February 16th, 2020.
They also couldn’t have picked a worse time, as Covid would be declared a pandemic four weeks later. There would be no TakeOver on WrestleMania weekend, and the big blow-off match would be contested in an empty arena.
It would also be one of the worst matches in NXT history.
Apparently, someone felt the interminable Randy Orton-Edge match from WrestleMania needed to be longer and duller.
Thus was born the self-important One Final Beat, which was allotted the entire second hour of NXT’s weekly cable show.
With ominous background music playing faintly, Candice LeRae dropped her husband off at the building…
…and handed him what looked like a potato. In fact, it was something in a brown paper bag (possibly still a potato).
Johnny arrived to find Tommaso already in the ring—no wait, that was Triple H.
But Ciampa, the Little Petey Pump to his Scott Steiner, was there as well.
As the boss of NXT, Triple H told the two men they had to settle it tonight; they could do whatever they wanted, but they had to end up in the ring, and they had to end their feud.
He then tossed a chair to the canvas and pissed off. They don’t call him the Cerebral Assassin for nothing; just watch this match and tell me Hunter wasn’t the smartest man in wrestling for skipping out on the whole thing.
As far as weapons went, Tommaso wasn’t having it, kicking the chair out of the ring before Johnny can get hold of it. This fight was too personal for weapons or, as we’d soon learn, wrestling moves.
Ciampa’s stand sparked an argument for the ages, which boiled down to:
-Nuh uh!
If only there were some way to settle that question…
This dialogue set the tone for the rest of One Final Beat, where neither man—especially not Johnny—would shut up.
They say wrestlers tell a story with their bodies, but the commentators play an equally important role with their words. And if you don’t believe me, hear what happened when there were no announcers at all, forcing Johnny to keep a running log of his thoughts. Gargano spoke off and on for four minutes saying,
Gee Tommaso, you sure have a lot of injured body parts! Now I’m going to injure them some more!
After a few pokes with a chair, the referee scolded Johnny for going too far. Johnny concurred:
“I’m starting to feel bad, but don’t worry”, said Johnny while setting up a chair in the corner. “It’s not gonna last much longer”. It lasted 30 minutes longer.
Imagine if the fight scene in They Live took up half the movie.
Finally, Ciampa shut Johnny up with a witty comeback. “Torn ACL son-of-a-bitch!” yelled Tommaso while kneeing a trash can lid into Johnny’s face.
Ciampa then used a steel chair and a crutch on Gargano, but his real secret weapon was LORE.
See, he’d done these same spots in previous matches with Johnny…
…but in One Final Beat he got to do them in complete silence.
“Remember this, Johnny?” said Ciampa, who really, really could have used Mauro Ranallo to make this point.
The Blackheart even started cutting up the ring, which prompted the official to make his second plea of “It’s too far” of the evening. I think he meant, “Enough already with the callbacks”, as there’s no way planks of wood were more dangerous than the concrete floor they’d been fighting on.
Drake Wuertz continued playing therapist, like any good wrestling referee. “How long have you guys known each other?”, he asked. This was rhetorical, of course, since Johnny and Tommaso refuse to let anyone forget they’d known each other for years (but hated each other!)
When Johnny walked out the door, Tommaso protested that the match had to end in the ring. But Ciampa couldn’t resist playing real life Here Comes the Pain, so he climbed on top of a semi and dared Johnny to join him.
For no reason at all, the referee followed them up onto the dangerous tractor trailer as well. There, the two sworn enemies traded kicks…
…always making sure to slap their own thighs.
They may have hated each other to their very souls, but that was no excuse not to make sound effects.
This was another fundamental problem with One Final Beat. It was supposed to be a bare-bones affair: No frills, no commentary, no fancy moves (or any moves, really), just pure unbridled hatred. Yet neither man threw very convincing strikes.
Johnny Gargano later needed a literal crutch just to get to his feet, yet still had the will to do his own foley work.
He then delivered yet another diatribe, this time about Ciampa being a failure as a father, prompting Drake Wuertz to once again tell him that he’d gone too far.
Hearing Johnny invoke his daughter, Ciampa snapped, unleashing more callbacks.
Unfortunately, Gargano poked the ref in the eye, causing Wuertz to perform the loudest, most agonized selling of the entire match.
This meant there was no one to count Ciampa’s pin, which created an opening for Johnny.
An opening to hold Tommaso’s hand, that is. Though he was just a little bit curious, a teary-eyed Ciampa ultimately pulled away.
Both men whacked each other with pieces of lore, sending them to the mat.
With the wrestlers lying on the mat exhausted, Candice LeRae walked in. Rather than being annoyed that they still weren’t finished yet, Candice was instead anguished at the brutality.
Both men pawed at each other weakly while a tearful Candice screeched at them. “Are you happy?” she asked Ciampa. “I hate my husband!” And she didn’t even have to watch One Final Beat—imagine how the rest of use felt about him!
She then kicked her own husband in the nuts and left the two men to their shame.
Tommaso sat there for a good two minutes, contemplating what would drive a woman to kick her own husband in the nuts, and whether that means he himself had gone too far.
Gargano’s pain was every man’s pain—the pain of getting kicked in the nuts—leading Tommaso to try to reconcile.
Out of nowhere, Candice popped up and kicked Ciampa in the nuts as well.
That’s when, in a dramatic final twist, Johnny reached down his pants and pulled out a cup, which he waved in Ciampa’s face. This ruse would explain not only why Candice had handed Johnny something before the match, but also why her acting was so godawful.
“You lose!” said Gargano repeatedly, settling the men’s original argument.
After performing Ciampa’s own finisher onto the double-padded part of the ring, Johnny got the 1-2-3.
A grin on his face, Johnny held his pee-pee triumphantly…
…while Ciampa clutched his testes in defeat.