On Wednesday night, the tournament to crown an interim NXT Cruiserweight Champion was completed, with El Hijo del Fantasma defeating Drake Maverick in an emotional roller coaster of a night to become Cruiserweight Champion. Fantasma will now carry the championship while the reigning NXT Cruiserweight Champion Jordan Devlin is back home in Ireland and unable to travel due to travel restrictions due to COVID-19. Once air travel can resume as previously, Devlin will face the winner at that time to unify one Cruiserweight Champion.
The @WWENXT Cruiserweight Championship tournament was about representing a division.
Athleticism, heart, grit, determination, upset, heartbreak, and hope. And now this division has a new measuring stick…Congrats to the NEW #WWENXT Cruiserweight Champion @hijodelfantasma! pic.twitter.com/Udsc6KRUOb
— Triple H (@TripleH) June 4, 2020
It marks El Hijo del Fantasma’s first taste of gold in the WWE Universe since arriving last summer to the WWE Performance Center. Under his real name, he began working NXT Live Events this past February, before returning to his masked luchador persona for his inclusion in the NXT Cruiserweight tournament. Fantasma defeated Jack Gallagher and Akira Tozawa to win his B Block for the tournament (losing to Isaiah “Swerve” Scott) to face Maverick in the final. Fantasma came to NXT with a storied career in Mexican lucha libre with both AAA Lucha Libre and Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL), where he’s a former AAA Latin America Champion, AAA World Cruiserweight Champion, CMLL World Middleweight Champion, and 2x CMLL World Trios Champion with La Mascara and current WWE Superstar Angel Garza. He was also a regular with Lucha Underground, where he competed as King Cuerno, capturing the Gift of the Gods Championship.
While the victory saw El Hijo del Fantasma collect new gold, it also seemingly saw the end of Drake Maverick’s career in WWE. Maverick was one of the first names mentioned during WWE’s Black Wednesday, that saw over 20 WWE Superstars get their release from the company. Maverick, who had previously been announced for the Cruiserweight tournament, was allowed to work the remainder of the tournament. But following a hard-fought victory last week that saw him win the A Block against KUSHIDA and Jake Atlas in a triple threat for the shot in the finals and then just fall shy of winning the Cruiserweight Championship, NXT’s Triple H came out and rewarded Maverick’s work the past few weeks with a brand new contract with NXT, so it would seem that Maverick is going to be sticking around the Yellow and Black brand for the future.
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