WWE NXT Review - June 1, 2021

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Kyle O'Reilly vs. Pete Dunne vs. Johnny Gargano in an NXT Championship No. 1 Contender's Triple Threat Match Ended in a No Contest

I hate, hate, hate when number one contender's matches end in a no contest and it leads to some sort of a multi-man match (we saw it recently on Raw and even in AEW), but I honestly didn't mind it too much in this case. First of all, this was a tremendous Triple Threat with all involved having stellar showings. The outcome was unpredictable, as was Adam Cole coming in to crash the party. We haven't seen him in person on the show since TakeOver: Stand & Deliver, so this packed a punch, especially with how intense his attacks on everyone were. This was a hot way to open the show and leave people wondering what the NXT Championship match at TakeOver: In Your House would be.

NXT Women's Champion Raquel Gonzalez and Dakota Kai Attacked Ember Moon

I loved how Moon came out to call out Gonzalez just when Cole was being escorted to the back. It created this awesome sense of uncontrollable chaos that is often missing from NXT. Moon wanted revenge for what Gonazlez and Kai did to her partner Shotzi Blackheart last week but ended up getting laid out herself. This was a well-done angle to likely set up Gonzalez vs. Moon for the NXT Women's Championship at TakeOver. Moon won't win, but she can be a credible challenger and another person for Gonzalez to run through.

Jake Atlas def. LA Knight

Atlas beat Cameron Grimes in a significant upset a few weeks ago and I assumed at the time it was just a one-off for Atlas so they could tell the story of Grimes not being focused. NXT could still end up doing nothing with Atlas, but a second win over someone the caliber of Knight is encouraging. They had a good, competitive match where Knight was too distracted with Grimes at ringside and trying to win over Ted DiBiase. It ultimately cost him the victory and now Knight vs. Grimes is official for TakeOver. I'm hoping this storyline will lead to the reintroduction of the Million Dollar Championship for either Grimes or Knight and Grimes officially turning face.

NXT Champion Karrion Kross Confronted Adam Cole; NXT General Manager William Regal Announced an NXT Championship Fatal 5-Way Match for TakeOver: In Your House

Holy hell, this segment was fire. I've never seen Kross or Cole this motivated on the mic, or at least in a long time in Cole's case. A main roster call-up for Cole is long overdue, but if he's going to stay put in NXT for the foreseeable future, he needed that extra edge. Both him and Kross had some great lines in this exchange, but I think Cole got the better of it. Kross came across like an idiot for agreeing to defend his title against everyone at TakeOver, but it should make for a phenomenal Fatal 5-Way, if nothing else. 

NXT Cruiserweight Champion Kushida def. Carmelo Hayes

Hayes is the former Christian Casanova and this marked his NXT debut. I've been following his career for the last five years on the northeast independent circuit (I even had the chance to interview him after a show in 2016), and in case you couldn't already tell, he's a future star. He showed plenty of promise here and he couldn't have had a better first opponent than Kushida, who is killing it in his current role. This was a very entertaining affair. I'm really digging the near-regular open challenges for the Cruiserweight Championship. This is the most important it's felt since becoming property of NXT.

NXT Women's Tag Team Champions The Way (Candice LeRae and Indi Hartwell) def. Zayda Ramier and Zoey Stark (Non-Title)

Hartwell is still bummed that she told Dexter Lumis off a few weeks now that she knows he loves her back, or something like that. I thought that would factor into the finish somehow and they'd lose to the newcomers (Stark and Ramier have found ways to win since debuting in NXT), but I'm glad they didn't go that route. It was a perfectly solid match that seemed to solely exist to give The Way a win. The women's tag team division in NXT isn't very deep, so I wouldn't mind Stark and Ramier sticking together as a tandem.

NXT Tag Team Champions MSK def. Legado del Fantasma (Raul Mendoza and Joaquin Wilde)

It continues to amaze me that IMPACT had MSK for as long as they did and did nothing with them, yet they've been in NXT for less than six months and already feel like top talent in the tag team division. These teams are no strangers to each other, so this was unsurprisingly a top-notch, fast-paced main event. You had to know Bronson Reed would show up at some point with Santos Escobar being in Legado del Fantasma's corner and that's exactly what happened. It was cool to see the tag titles spotlighted in the main event for a change, and my guess is that we get Reed vs. Escobar either in two weeks or at TakeOver itself.

Overall Show

I've enjoyed NXT on the whole since its move to Tuesdays two months ago, but this edition had a hotter energy to it than usual, specifically in the first half hour between the Triple Threat opener and its fallout. The rest of the show featured quality in-ring action, successful storyline development and, most important, several match announcements for TakeOver, which was necessary with the event coming up next Sunday. Cole's return was the most notable thing on the show and is worth going out of your way to see, specifically his verbal exchange with Kross.