NXT Gold Rush 2025 Week 1 Review

Linus O'Howell
2 days ago
5 min read

AAA Mixed Tag Team Championships: Ethan Page and Chelsea Green VS Joe Hendry and Thea Hail

Week 1 of NXT Gold Rush 2025, live from the theatre at Madison Square Garden, kicked off in style as Joe Hendry and Thea Hail looked to dethrone Ethan Page and Chelsea Green of the AAA Mixed Tag Team Championships! The crowd was hot to start things off, really getting behind Joe and Thea whilst also reacting massively for Chelsea Green! Honestly, the partnership between Chelsea and Ethan Page has been one of the biggest success stories of 2025; they should keep this going for a long time to come, but as far as a first impression as a full-time WWE Superstar goes, I thought Hendry stood out well! Towards the end of the match, Thea Hail had Chelsea Green screaming in agony when she locked in the Kimura Lock, but Page was able to push Hendry onto Hail, breaking up the submission hold, before Ms Green floored Thea with the Unprettiher to get the win and successfully retain the Triple A Mixed Tag Team Titles! A fun start to the show!

Grade: B

NXT Women’s North American Championship: Blake Monroe VS Sol Ruca

Lola Vice and Jordynne Grace were talking crap about Kelani Jordan, before the TNA Knockouts World Champion walked in and said that she’ll finish her story with Grace for good next week! Ava then announced that John Cena will be selecting the competitors for the Iron Survivor Challenge next week, before an excited Tavion Heights got attacked by Josh Briggs! After Zaria made sure that Sol Ruca is okay to go, the former Double Champion headed down to the ring to go one-on-one with Blake Monroe for the NXT Women’s North American Championship! The whole way that this storyline was done has been incredibly odd; I’m really not sure why WWE made the decision to do a “fake injury” story with Sol Ruca, rather than her just losing clean to Blake Monroe, but there you go! The match itself was alright, it focused very heavily on the injured knee of Sol, with Blake targeting the knee brace many times! Eventually, Monroe was able to lock in a pretty nasty-looking calf crusher, but despite that, Ruca refused to tap! However, Sol didn’t have much of a say in the finish as Zaria threw in the towel, meaning Monroe remains North American Champion! Once again, Sol Ruca didn’t lose clean, but everything is clearly being done to further build the eventual split of ZaRuca, so I guess in that sense, this was effective!

Grade: B-

Ricky Saints and Oba Femi Come Face-to-Face

After Fatal Influence got excited over the idea of all three of them leaving New York City with gold, Ricky Saints and Oba Femi both arrived for a Face-to-Face confrontation! Ricky spoke first about how he has been carrying NXT whilst Oba decided to run back to Nigeria, and Femi explained that the reason he went away is because everything that’s happened over the past two months (NXT VS TNA, Ricky VS Trick) is beneath him! The Ruler then continued to cut an incredibly fiery promo, saying that “Daddy’s Home”, and Saints then followed it up by agreeing to have a rematch at NXT Deadline! However, this is when Trick Williams arrived for another large pop, with Trick still stating that he’s not leaving until he recaptures his NXT Championship (you have got to be kidding me), but thankfully for all of us, Myles Borne then smashed Williams in the back with a steel chair! A measure of revenge for Myles, who then made it clear to Ricky and Oba that he’ll see one of them at New Year’s Evil after he wins the Iron Survivor Challenge!

Grade: B

NXT Tag Team Championships: DarkState VS Leon Slater and Je’Von Evans

Ava wasn’t very happy with Myles Borne, but she still gave him his match with Trick Williams anyway, before Josh Briggs and Tavion Heights were seen to still be brawling backstage, with Briggs finally ending it after putting Heights through a table! Leon Slater and Je’Von Evans were then looking to make history as they challenged DarkState for the NXT Tag Team Championships! Leon and Je’Von are a joy to behold, a real pleasure to watch, and the scariest (but also most amazing) thing to think about is neither guy is close to their prime/peak performance yet, which is absolutely ridiculous! Dion Lennox continues to be the only person keeping DarkState relevant (as much as I do like The Shugarman), but the group as a whole is still so uninteresting! However, a lot of people thought that wasn’t going to matter at the end of the night, with Slater and Evans walking out with the gold, except that’s not what happened! See, after Je’Von accidentally landed a Frog Splash on Leon (after Lennox smartly got out of the way), DS delivered their finishing manoeuvre onto the TNA X-Division Champion to pick up a “somewhat surprising” victory!

Grade: B-

NXT Women’s Championship: Tatum Paxley VS Jacy Jayne

After Wren Sinclair fired up Kendal Grey, Jackson Drake and Sean Legacy got a video package ahead of their Evolve Championship match next week, and more dissension appeared between ZaRuca, it was Main Event time of Week 1 of NXT Gold Rush 2025 as Jacy Jayne looked to prove that Halloween Havoc was a fluke by recapturing her NXT Women’s Championship off of Tatum Paxley! These two had a really strong bout at Halloween Havoc, and I have to say that I quite enjoyed this one too! It probably wasn’t quite as good as their original encounter (original as in in this feud), but it still had a good story beat to it! The near-fall after Jacy delivered her Rolling Encore was great; I genuinely didn’t expect Paxley to kick out, and Izzi Dame kept being a nuisance on the outside by throwing both a steel chair and the NXT Women’s Title into the ring (on separate occasions)! Jayne tried to take advantage of this by using the belt as a weapon, but the referee caught her before Paxley nearly stole one with a roll-up! However, after being dumped to the outside, Tatum’s attempt to get back into the ring was blocked by Shawn Spears and Niko Vance, with Izzi Dame then smashing Pax in the face with a massive boot to clearly kick her out of The Culling! This then opened the door for Jacy Jayne to nail Tatum Paxley with a second Rolling Encore to secure the win, meaning The Rockstar now joins an illustrious list of 2-time NXT Women’s Champions! Honestly, I think this was one of the most impactful short Title reigns in a long time, like it actually makes sense, and we’ll get a proper big feud between Tatum and Izzi out of this! Also, I’m very happy for Jacy Jayne; she really has been excellent this year, and being a 2-time NXT Women’s Champ (alongside being a 2-time NXT Women’s Tag Team Champion) is pretty damn insane!