Posted in: Sports, TV, WWE | Tagged: covid-19, NXT, wrestling, wwe

NXT Isn't Making Promises About Next Week's Episode

Published Fri, 19 Mar 2021 12:35:45 -0500

As we've all heard, NXT and the WWE Performance Center suffered another COVID-19 outbreak last week and it had ramifications on this past Wednesday's episode of NXT on the USA Network. A promoted match between Swerve and Leon Ruff didn't take place and wasn't mentioned, while certain wrestlers who had featured heavily in programming as of late, such as Toni Storm, Xia Li, Kayden Carter, Kacy Catanzaro, Cameron Grimes, members of The Way, and others were absent this week. With so many performers in quarantine and the uncertainty of what could happen going forward, it appears NXT is apprehensive about promoting almost anything for next week's show.

The official logo for NXT, courtesy of WWE.

The last several episodes of NXT have built towards the following week, promising big title matches and grudge matches to entice viewers to return the next week. But this week's episode was noticeably light on this, with two exceptions.

The ever-escalating feud between former Undisputed Era stablemates and best friends Adam Cole and Kyle O'Reilly came to a violent head on Wednesday, when O'Reilly ran Cole's car off the road and assaulted him, leading to both men being arrested and promising vengeance on the other. NXT Commissioner William Regal was irate at this escalation and demanded both men appear on next week's show so that they can figure out how to settle this (gee I wonder if it's a match at NXT Takeover: Stand and Deliver???).

We also saw NXT Women's Champion Io Shirai continue to challenge Raquel Gonzalez to a title match, even throwing the contract for the said match at her. But Gonzalez's tag-team partner Dakota Kai seems to have other ideas in mind, as she convinced Gonzalez not to worry about the title right now and that she set up a big tag match for them next week against Shirai and Zoey Stark. So that's one match that has been officially announced for next week!

Now all of this isn't to say NXT didn't advance storylines or feuds this past week. They certainly did! But they also appear a bit gun-shy about setting up a card that is very much subject to change, depending on the health situation with their talents. We'll keep an eye on this and when NXT does release their preview for the next episode, we'll see what they have in store for us.

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