WWE Week in Review: Braun Strowman impresses, Battle Royal controversy

WWE NXT

We kick off the show with a Triple Threat Match to crown a new number one contender for the women’s title with Peyton Royce, Ember Moon and Liv Morgan. This was a decent match but I was a little confused that Billie Kay didn’t get involved what with this being no disqualification but Peyton was able to get things done on her own anyway. Liv Morgan still needs a lot of work but was okay here and took a lot of the punishment in the match. Ember Moon spent a good portion of the match on the floor but had a few nice spots towards the end but Royce was the star here. She’s a great heel and picked up the win with a fisherman’s suplex on Liv to earn a title shot at Asuka, a match that we’ll actually get next week. Decent opener.

Following a few video packages, we’re all set for the NXT debut of the breakout star of the UK Tournament, Pete Dunne, who’s taking on one of his opponents from that weekend, Mark Andrews. These two had a fantastic match at the tourney and put on another great show on Wednesday night. Dunne is going to be a huge star at some point but Andrews stayed with him all the way and these two had a great back-and-forth match with Dunne getting the victory after about 10 minutes with the Bitter End. Very solid affair and these UK tourney guys are going to bring a lot to NXT moving forward. Good stuff.

We get a Tye Dillinger interview in which he discusses how No Way Jose and Roderick Strong had his back against Sanity and he’ll have theirs as well. This could be a really fun program leading into TakeOver. Patrick Clark is also set to debut next week and we’re also getting a second title match next week when #DIY takes on The Authors of Pain.

We’re all set for the main event with a non-title match with Bobby Roode taking on Jose and this went about as expected. Jose got his spots in but the point here was to get Roode back on TV and show how much of a heel he is. Roode hit the DDT for the win and attacked Jose following the bout, which led to Kassius Ohno making the save. He says that the crowd knows who he is and he’s not somebody you want to mess with. Roode fired back perfectly with a hilarious shot at the new name and teased a title match, even calling a ref down to the ring but that never comes as the two have a quick tussle, including Ohno throwing a shoe at the champ as the show comes to a close.

This was a pretty solid episode to build on. We’ve got two title matches set for next week and the NXT Championship program has started as well. It will be interesting to see where Nakamura plays into all of this upon his return. Dunne and Andrews stole the show and I hope they keep this momentum building towards TakeOver with a possible rematch with Dunne and Tyler Bate.

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