Powell’s NXT Hit List: Thoughts on whether NXT delivered a strong follow-up to Heatwave, Kelani Jordan’s first promo since winning the NXT Women’s Title, and pouring one out for the Speed titles

By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)

NXT Hits

Robert Stone declares the WWE Speed Championship is defunct: Zaria had to choose between keeping the NXT Women’s North American Championship or the WWE Women’s Speed Championship after winning a unification match at Heatwave. Because her character isn’t a freaking moron, she chose the NXT Women’s North American Championship. This led to Robert Stone informing Lexis King that because Zaria gave up the WWE Women’s Speed Championship, King’s WWE Men’s Speed Championship is now defunct. Did this make any sense? Absolutely not. Do I care? Hell no. They could have claimed that Vecna showed up and took the title belts to the Upside Down as part of his plan to merge Earth with Dimension X, and I would have nodded along. Whatever it took to get rid of those worthless title belts and the silly Speed match was fine by me.

Kelani Jordan’s first promo since winning the NXT Women’s Championship: A good gloating promo from the new champ. She did a nice job of acknowledging that Kendal Grey had a great match on Sunday, yet focused more on what’s far more important: she won the match. While I liked the promo and remain sky-high on Jordan, I came away feeling like less is more with her mic work. Jordan is a good talker, but she doesn’t change the inflection of her voice very often. The steady approach works in small doses, but if she goes past a certain point, she risks it coming off like she’s droning on regardless of how good the verbiage is.

Grayson Waller confronted by several potential challengers: I don’t mind the occasional parade of challengers approach, but NXT has really run it into the ground. I don’t know what they are going for with Keanu Carver messing with Robert Stone, but it’s good that Carver is getting TV time, and I liked that he suggested next week’s six-man tag match, with the winning team advancing to a Triple Threat to become No. 1 contender to the NXT Championship. It didn’t make Stone look bad. Rather, it made him look like a good leader for knowing a good idea when he hears one and not being so egotistical that he won’t use ideas that he can’t take credit for.

Zilla Fatu vs. Tristan Angels: It didn’t feel television main event worthy, but it was a nice showcase of Fatu. There’s a lot to like about the 23-year-old Angels, especially after seeing his recent match with Shiloh Hill. I hope we get more of the grittiness Angels showed in that match and less of the cliché British snob persona. In this match, Angels did his job of shining up Fatu, who continues to be really over with the NXT fans. I think so little about BirthRight that it was a facepalm moment when they offered Fatu a spot in the group, because it was so obvious and yet it never even crossed my mind. Fatu made it clear that he’s not interested, and I wonder if the idea is to tie him up with matches against BirthRight, especially since he’s not in the matches that will determine the new No. 1 contender for the NXT Championship. It was good to hear more from Charlie Dempsey than usual.

The Creeds attack after Noam Dar and Romeo Moreno vs. Sean Legacy and Dorian Van Dux: A soft Hit for a high-energy match with some crowd-pleasing high spots. The bigger story was Julius Creed and Brutus Creed showing up afterward and attacking both teams. It’s good to see the Creeds back in NXT. In hindsight, they were called up to the main roster prematurely, and they didn’t get much love from the creative team. The Creeds are young and talented wrestlers who need reps and are better off being big fish in a small pond at this stage of their development. They came off like heels by beating up two babyface tag teams, but it would seemingly make more sense to position the Creeds as babyfaces for an eventual title chase run with Brad Baylor and Ricky Smokes for the NXT Tag Team Titles.

Mason Rook vs. Kam Hendrix: A soft Hit. Typically, feuds involving wrestlers who both need wins don’t work well because they end up trading wins and neither comes out of the program any more over than they went in. And even if one wrestler decisively wins the program, that wrestler only gains so much from beating the other. But so far, so good with the Rook and Hendrix feud. The difference in their situation is that they are both new to NXT. They both need wins, but they didn’t enter it with the baggage of fans seeing them lose a bunch of matches before they started feuding. Rook showed good fire throughout this match, and Hendrix was protected via the exposed turnbuckle spots. It will be interesting to see if creative uses this finish to move on from the feud or if it was meant to create the need for a rematch.

Naraku vs. Shiloh Hill: More of an in-the-middle than a Hit or a Miss. I mentioned during my live review that I like when pro wrestling companies are consistent with the idea that referees can only call what they see. But it’s really pushing it when a referee sees green mist all over one wrestler’s mouth and on the opponent’s face. That said, I’m guardedly optimistic about this pairing. The creative forces seem to have pulled back a bit on some of the things that made Hill’s character a turnoff at times. There’s a lot to like about Hill’s upside when they go light on the quirkiness, and working with a veteran in Naraku should be a good learning experience for him.

NXT Misses

NXT Heatwave follow-up: Heatwave was a terrific show. It was newsworthy with so many title changes, and the last two matches were especially strong. The follow-up show failed to make Heatwave feel any different from any of the brand’s other premium live events. I also thought this episode should have been built more around the new champions. It was a big Miss that Vanity Project received so little time despite winning the NXT North American Championship and the NXT Tag Team Titles on Sunday. This is one of those shows where the Hit List isn’t a great barometer. The matches were fine and don’t belong in the Miss section individually, but collectively they helped make this feel like an underwhelming episode.

Evolve Women’s Champion Nikkita Lyons vs. Thea Hail in a non-title match: The match was solid, and I generally enjoy the work of both wrestlers. I’m just not a fan of bringing Evolve storylines to the NXT television show. They’re in a tough spot because I understand the desire to give Evolve some exposure to the bigger audience, but NXT has more than enough storylines to follow. The last thing they need is to ask viewers to care about storylines they only get to see part of on NXT TV. By all means, plug the weekly Evolve show with recap videos and/or episode previews, but don’t ask the viewers to care about storylines that most only hear about from the NXT broadcast team.

(Jason Powell, founder and editor of ProWrestling.net, has covered pro wrestling full-time since 1997. He hosts the weekly podcast, Pro Wrestling Boom, and also appears regularly on the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast. Reach him via email at [email protected] and on social media via @prowrestlingnet.bsky.social or x.com/prowrestlingnet. For his full bio and information on this website, click here.)