Hi, and welcome back to NXT after a week off, because who wants to watch two hours of just promos (RAW)? This week, we are back, catching up on where we were meant to be last week with two qualifiers for the NXT Women’s Championship Number One Contender’s Ladder Match, Adam Cole celebrating becoming the longest reigning NXT Champion and Austin Theory taking on Tyler Breeze. Off the top, I wanted to say that I think the decision taken to split the matches of NXT TakeOver: Tampa Bay over April is a good one, especially because it means I can be out of here before Cole vs Dream. No one in their right minds should be complaining that TakeOver isn’t happening because frankly, stopping the spread of disease is more important than wrestling. The fact that we’re probably not getting Broserweights vs Grizzled Young Veterans vs Undisputed Era with half that match stuck on our side of the pond is also fine with me. Anyway, let’s get into it…

The Undercard

Killian Dain def. Tehuti Miles // Pinfall (Vader Bomb) SQUASH. Miles was rocking those TK Cooper dungarees

Cameron Grimes def. Tony Nese // Pinfall (Cave-In running double foot stomp) SQUASH! I guess Nese is a good guy again?

NXT Women’s Championship Number One Contender’s Ladder Match: Io Shirai def. Aliyah // Pinfall (Moonsault) SQUASH!! This was meant to be Aliyah vs Xia Li but Li was attacked backstage so Shirai was a surprise replacement. It’s good to have her back but even a 1m30s Aliyah match turns out to be not good.

Danny Burch & Oney Lorcan def. Shane Thorne & Brendan Vink // Submission (Burch with a Half Crab on Vink)  SQUASH!!! I could have done with more time on this one, Thorne and Vink have a fun dynamic and Burch/Lorcan are always a good time.

NXT Women’s Championship Number One Contender’s Ladder Match: Candice LeRae def. Kayden Carter // Submission (Crossface) SQUASH!!!! This was meant to be LeRae vs Mercedes Martinez but then it wasn’t because reasons. Hope you’re OK, Mercedes. This could have been quite good but it didn’t get nearly enough time to get going.

Promos & Packages

Keith Lee came out to apologise to Dominik Dijakovic for Spirit Bombing him a few weeks ago. He was confused and thought he was Damian Priest. Dijakovic came out and said that he doesn’t want an apology, he wants another title shot. Then out came Damian Priest to say he doesn’t want the title because of what it is but because it means he can kidnap more women. A brawl broke out and Dijakovic ended it standing tall off a springboard Swanton bomb.

Adam Cole celebrated being the longest NXT Champion by sitting by the pool and filming his promo from a safe distance. He talked about how great he is, why Velveteen Dream isn’t worthy of a title shot and then said Bobby Fish wants to kick the Dream next week.

Triple H finished off the show by dragging out Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano and telling them off for breaking the lovely Performance Center facilities with their silly fight a fortnight ago and that for attacking a referee, he would be fining Gargano. Of course, because Ciampa is meant to be the good guy now, he faces no charges. He told Ciampa not to get physical with Johnny and that frankly they were only still there because of Triple H, William Regal wanted to fire them. This was a good way of getting some babyface rub on Regal. Gargano came out but refused to get in the ring because he’s not an idiot. He protested being the only one fined after Ciampa broke windows and mirrors and sh*t. Triple H told them that they deserve the Grandest Stage Of Them All to wrap up this feud, completely ignoring that the Grandest Stage of the year is the very same ring he was stood in at the moment. They said no, just give them a ring anywhere and a referee and they will sort this, but in two weeks because Johnny wants to heal up. Triple H said fine but this will be the last time they fight in NXT. Believe it when I see it.

The show ended with a surprise reveal that those spooky videos that everyone’s been saying are building to the debut of Killer Kross were in fact, building to the debut of Killer Kross.

Austin Theory vs Tyler Breeze

I don’t really have much to say about this, it was pretty much a standard TV match with Theory playing the over-confident young dickhead and Breeze doing some fine work from underneath, getting something of a fluke win off Theory’s hubris. The problem with putting Theory on the same episode, bookended with a Roderick Strong match is that they both have that same generic US Indie styling, it’s just that Strong is much better at pacing and generating emotion than Theory who is still something of a blank slate upon which we can all apply our particular dislikes about Generation Z. At least he did his gambowling missile dropkick, it is nice. Theory was messing about recording a message for Breeze on his mobile phone which gave Breeze the opening to hit a Supermodel Kick and a Beauty Shot spinning capoeira kick for the pin. Moving on…

Winner: Tyler Breeze

Matt Riddle vs Roderick Strong

Despite what I said about Roderick Strong moments ago, this wasn’t much better. I think at 12 minutes, this was the right length for a TV main event match, it gave time to string together some decent sequences but never outstayed its welcome. The problem was that Strong, after having been literally tossed aside so that Velveteen Dream could move on to Adam Cole feels a little directionless. It could be that this is a long game and we see Dream win the title, get challenged by both Cole and Strong leading to a blow-up within the Undisputed Era which, yeah, sure but for now he’s just kind of another body. That said, the middle section of this match did contain some good, fast-paced Roderick Strong-Style wrestling, reminding me why I used to look forward to his matches. Hopefully, we can get the middle of this match Strong back soon and not the opening or closing stretches Strong. Riddle won with a Bro to Sleep fireman’s carry drop knee strike.

After the match: Riddle was attacked by Rinku Singh and Saurav Gurjar, accompanied by their manager Malcolm Bivens, fka Stokely Hathaway aka the king of Catchpoint. He declared that with Dunne half-way across the ocean, it was a great time to introduce Matt Riddle to the future of the NXT Tag-Team division. I am very happy to finally have Big Stoke on NXT TV. Also as he’s a legit 6″7, either its forced perspective or Singh and Gurjar must be well over 7 foot.

Winner: Matt Riddle

This was an OK show but at a time when really, NXT needed to come back firing on all cylinders, it was merely there. Thank you, next…

Next Week:

Velveteen Dream vs Bobby Fish

NXT Women’s Championship Number One Contender’s Ladder Match Last Chance Losers’ Qualifier Gauntlet: Shotzi Blackheart vs Dakota Kai vs Deonna Purrazzo vs Xia Li vs Aliyah vs Kayden Carter

NXT North American Championship: Damian Priest vs Dominik Dijakovic vs Keith Lee (c)

All images courtesy of WWE.com