A rather chaotic end to last week’s NXT episode saw the return of Aleister Black, Nikki Cross telling the secret, and Johnny Gargano revealing himself as the assailant from the months long “Who attacked Aleister?” story line. It made sense. These two men have some unfinished business to attend to. With Aleister initially costing Johnny the NXT title, Johnny is electing to go down that grievous rabbit hole to get revenge.
How do you match the darkness of Aleister? Johnny is fully embraced that bad said that was hinted at in his war with Tomasso Ciampa. It cost him, but it might be the very thing that gets him over the hump. Ciampa certainly approved.
On The Warpath: Nikki Cross opened the show against Mercedes Martinez, a two-time Mae Young Classic entrant and a two-time Shimmer champion. They worked good together. Mercedes utilized her strength to ground Nikki. Nikki would flurry, hit a big cross body off the top rope, and counter her picking up the win. Post-match, Nikki mouthed “that was fun,” so you never know. There might be another installment between these two.
The story continued post-match. Candice LeRae comes down completely dressed in black, even to the lipstick. Yelling at Nikki, saying what she did wasn’t funny. Aleister confronts Candice and the audio was not there for a reason. I see a Nikki/Candice collision coming down the line as an extension to Gargano vs. Black.
Street Profits Get The Win: The Street Profits versus The Mighty on this episode was the link to their match a month ago. The Mighty targeted Montez Ford’s leg and picked up the roll up win. There was a nice little call back to that here. NXT is really deep with tag team depth and this match is a testament to that. Ford was able to show his athleticism where Angelo Dawkins served more as the offset with hot tags. The Mighty have really settled in as a good heel tag team.
Recently, The Street Profits won the Evolve tag team titles, so that occupies them for a bit. Perhaps when the War Raiders win the tag team titles eventually, you can have The Mighty be the challengers to give them a nice little quick feud.
The Bro Arrives To Full Sail: Much anticipated since his signing back in August, Matt Riddle made his debut in NXT versus Luke Menzies. The crowd is clearly behind him. This match was more of a small showcase of his style that integrates MMA strikes and submission holds. It’s going to be fun seeing him get into his first feud against “The Knockout Artist”, Kassius Ohno  with a possible match at Takeover: War Games.
An All Out Brawl: The tag match between the War Raiders and Adam Cole/Bobby Fish didn’t even happen as planned. It erupted into a huge fight from the backstage area to the ring. Adding Ricochet and Pete Dunne into the fray. Only natural that this would be the War Games match this year. There’s brief history between Ricochet and Pete Dunne, but UE have been a collective thorn in their sides. That’s the common thread here.
War Raiders have been poised to take the tag titles from Roderick Strong/Kyle O’Reilly. This is going to be a good war games match that prolongs any title changes until the Wrestlemania Takeover. The Undisputed Era has always found a way to get the upper hand (with the exception of Adam Cole losing the North American title). They have to start getting their comeuppance at some point and War Games might be where the collective forces might be too much for them.
Everything In Between:
So, there are some War Game matches already set by Commissioner Regal. Velveteen Dream vs. Tomasso Ciampa for the NXT Championship. Lars Sullivan isn’t too happy about it as he seeks to inject himself in that title match somehow. I feel that Lars is ready to move up to the main roster, so a sendoff with Dream beating him to go on to challenge the title would suffice.
There’s a brief segment that showed Shayna Baszler post-match at Evolution celebrating with her Four Horsewomen friends winning the NXT Women’s title for the second time. She’s the only woman that has done so; for that, I think it’s the right move. Ever since she has come to NXT, she’s been the consummate bully. Before she moves on, you really want to solidify that.
A beaten, but resolved Kairi Sane interrupts distraught from losing the title. Kairi didn’t tap and it took a bit of interference for her to even lose to Shayna. Every time that Kairi has been Shayna, it’s been clean. However, Kairi needs some backup for their eventual rubber match within this current feud. I think that Mia Yim and Io Shirai are just the friends to do that.
Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch fought Raul Mendoza & Humberto Carrillo in a tag match. We already know what Lorcan and Burch can do as a tag team, but this match really made me want to see more of Mendoza and Carrillo together. They briefly got to show what they could do and if 205 Live had a tag title element to it, they would be prime for that spot.
Mostly all of the NXT tag teams are power oriented. This was a really good change of pace to see even though Lorcan and Burch eventually got the win.
