NXT Review: 03/03
- Linus O'Howell
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
Myles Borne Starts the Show, Myles Borne VS Ethan Page: NXT North American Championship
This week’s edition of NXT kicked off with our brand-new NXT North American Champion, Myles Borne, who brought back the old-school NA Title look! Myles said that he wasn’t interested in being like everyone else who thanks everyone for pushing him forward whilst also going over their hardships to get here, as he’d already done that! Instead, Borne wanted to thank Ethan Page for awakening a killer instinct inside of him, before Ethan interrupted to demand a rematch for his North American Title! This brought out Mr. Stone, who wanted to save this match until both guys were in their wrestling gear, but these two didn’t care as they started this week how they ended last week! The funniest part about all of this was that both men were in pretty smart suits, and as we’ve seen with Piper Niven and Alba Fyre on SmackDown, they’re not fun clothes to wrestle in! Because of this, both men destroyed each other’s clothes, leading to a clever near-fall after Page nailed Borne with his belt! However, it was once again Myles who showed off his new killer instinct, nailing All Ego with a Borne Again, following a shoe strike, to get the win! Let’s not do this again!
Grade: C+
Blake Monroe Calls Out Jaida Parker, Nikkita Lyons VS Wren Sinclair: NXT Women’s Speed Championship Tournament (Semi-Finals), Izzi Dame and Tatum Paxley Come Face-to-Face
Zaria seemed pretty offended by Sarah Scheriber’s rather stupid question, whilst Mr. Stone told DarkState that they need to take out Tony D’Angelo inside the arena, not in the NXT Parking Lot (this guy is insane)! Blake Monroe was then out next to talk about how great she is in comparison to Jaida Parker, with Blake stating that people love to hate her far more than they love Miss Parker! This brought out Jaida, who called out Monroe for hiding behind all of her insecurities, but that’s going to change this Saturday at NXT Vengeance Day! I guess this was fine, but at least the ending, which saw Parker wipe out Monroe with a Hipnotic, played into something a little later on!
Grade: C+
Ricky Saints was trying his best to cheer Ethan Page up backstage, but this may have been a mistake given the face that Ethan pulled once Ricky brought up the NXT Championship! Jasper Troy then just decided to challenge both Eli Knight and Sean Legacy to a Triple Threat Match (after plenty of trash-talking, even from Josh Briggs), before Wren Sinclair went one-on-one with Nikkita Lyons in the second Semi-Final of the latest NXT Women’s Speed Championship Tournament! With this being three minutes long, I suppose it was harmless! You can definitely see that Nikkita Lyons has improved in the ring since the 2.0 days, but it’s also not like you get much of a read on her when her matches are always so short! Anyway, as expected, Wren Sinclair scored the win here, but I did quite like the finish as Wren locked in a submission, forcing Lyons to tap out with about 4 seconds left on the clock! Sinclair will move on to face Thea Hail in the Finals next week!
Grade: C+
Joe Hendry and Myles Borne were playing around backstage before Kelani Jordan got some help training ahead of her NXT Underground Match against Lola Vice by none other than Shanya Baszler! No matter what, Shanya on NXT will always be cool! We then switched gears as Izzi Dame and Tatum Paxley “reunited” inside of The Culling’s little dark room (I don’t have a clue what else to call it)! Tatum kept playing with dolls as Izzi ridiculed her former Tag Team partner, calling Paxley pathetic as she brought up a bunch of different reasons as to why everyone has abandoned her over the years! This was smart from Dame, considering that if Paxley attacked her, the match this Saturday would be called off! However, Tatum didn’t fall for it, with Pax saying that, as great a moment as winning the NXT Women’s Championship was, dethroning Izzi Dame for the NXT Women’s North American Championship will be a whole lot more satisfying for her! This was shot quite well, but I am surprised that we’re not saving this match until Stand and Deliver!
Grade: B-
The Vanity Project VS Shiloh Hill, and Hank and Tank, Dion Lennox Calls Out Tony D’Angelo, Jacy Jayne VS Zaria: NXT Women’s Championship
The next match saw the odd team up of Shiloh Hill and Hank and Tank taking on The Vanity Project in 6-Man Tag Team action! I guess that Shiloh Hill’s wacky style gelled quite well with Hank and Tank, with The Vanity Project being a good group of guys to bump for them! The Vanity Project were also undefeated on NXT television in 2026 coming into this match, so they had a lot to play for, whilst the good guys were trying to win to earn future Championship opportunities! This match was also set up last week due to Hill destroying Brad Baylor’s car, but nothing seems to have come of that, so that’s a bit odd! Anyway, despite some smart Heel tactics, it wasn’t enough for The Vanity Project as Shiloh Hill was able to beat Jackson Drake, meaning a future Evolve Championship opportunity might just be around the corner for the former LFG Season 2 Winner!
Grade: B-
As soon as that match was over, Blake Monroe appeared dishevelled on the announce table, challenging Jaida Parker to a Street Fight at Vengeance Day! Jaida Parker swiftly followed, resulting in Hank and Tank having to hold these two women back before DarkState went mad at Mr. Stone after Osiris Griffin was found laid out on the concrete backstage! Despite good advice from the doctors, Lola Vice made it clear that she has to face Kelani Jordan in NXT Underground this Saturday, before Dion Lennox stormed down to the ring to call out Tony D’Angelo! Tony quickly responded, appearing in the crowd as he told Dion that he’s the final piece of the DarkState puzzle that he needs to vanquish! This led to a match being agreed for Vengeance Day, with D’Angelo stating that when he wins, Part 1 of his NXT return comeback plan will be complete! I have to assume that Dion Lennox is going to win that match, as I’d be surprised if we didn’t see these two go at it again on NXT’s biggest stage!
Grade: C+
Jacy Jayne seemed incredibly confident of her chances of retaining her NXT Women’s Championship over Zaria, before we got a nice interaction between the old No Quarter Catch Crew (minus Wren, sadly)! Lexis King and his goon squad then walked over as they still haven’t given up on recruiting Charlie Dempsey into their faction, before it was finally time for the Main Event match of the night as Jacy Jayne once again put her NXT Women’s Championship on the line, this time against Zaria! I quite liked how both women were just waiting for Sol Ruca to show up; it does sort of beg the question why Zaria asked for this match in the first place, but it also felt quite unique (which is why I liked it)! Jacy had no worries about retaining here because she knew that she had “backup” in the form of both Ruca and Fatal Influence, whilst I think Zaria was counting on Sol’s presence to ultimately gift her the victory (in a similar way to how Tommaso Ciampa won the NXT Championship back in 2018)! Unfortunately for Zaria, that didn’t happen, as Sol Ruca took out both Fallon Henley and Lainey Reid before the former Double Champion nailed both Jacy and Zaria with a duelling Sol Snatcher to end the match as a disqualification! Given Mr. Stone’s comments about all of this after the match, I would assume that this is going to be leading to a Triple Threat Match at Stand and Deliver, and to be honest, I’m not against that (especially if Zaria wins)!
Grade: B-
Ricky Saints: An Absolute Experience
The final go-home segment ahead of this Saturday’s NXT Vengeance Day saw us get an absolute treat with “Ricky Saints: An Absolute Experience”! Ricky had the most outrageous outfit I think I have ever seen (Seth Rollins and Becky Lynch would be proud), and when I say we were treated, I mean really treated! This was absolutely awful, which made it one of the best segments of the entire year so far! Ricky’s singing was awful; he consistently stopped to ask for better microphone placements and guitars, but what he was saying was genuinely funny! You could never do this on the Main Roster, at least with anyone other than The Rock, but on NXT, you can totally get away with things like this! Booker T singing along was also perfect, whilst Saints starting his performance by singing “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter was gold! Eventually, Ricky Saints’ request for a new guitar resulted in him being beaten up by Joe Hendry, and despite help from The Vanity Project, a successful save by Myles Borne resulted in the Babyface Champions standing tall! No notes: this was wonderful, and this left me wondering where Ethan Page was?!
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