{"id":99069,"date":"2021-08-22T21:06:19","date_gmt":"2021-08-23T01:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=99069"},"modified":"2021-08-22T21:06:19","modified_gmt":"2021-08-23T01:06:19","slug":"kay-lee-ray-nxt-takeover-36","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2021\/08\/22\/kay-lee-ray-nxt-takeover-36\/","title":{"rendered":"Kay Lee Ray Appears at NXT TakeOver 36, Confronts NXT Women&#8217;s Champion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the opening match of <strong><em>NXT TakeOver 36<\/em><\/strong>, <strong>Raquel Gonz\u00e1lez<\/strong> successfully defended the NXT Women&#8217;s Championship against <strong>Dakota Kai<\/strong>. This was the culmination of a feud stemming from Kai&#8217;s attack on her longtime ally and friend. Kai went on to challenge Gonz\u00e1lez earlier this evening, only to fall short in her encounter. With that said, Gonz\u00e1lez was unable to celebrate her victory for long. Suddenly, <strong>NXT UK<\/strong> Superstar <strong>Kay Lee Ray<\/strong> made her entrance to the surprise of the NXT Universe, staring down the NXT Women&#8217;s Champion and posing on the ramp. It would seem that Kay Lee Ray, at <em>TakeOver 36<\/em>, unofficially challenged Gonz\u00e1lez for the NXT Women&#8217;s title.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">.@Kay_Lee_Ray has arrived.<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/NXTTakeOver?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#NXTTakeOver<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/NXTWomensTitle?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#NXTWomensTitle<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/FvzXGNM5on\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/FvzXGNM5on<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; WWE (@WWE) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WWE\/status\/1429608566785298434?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">August 23, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Kay Lee Ray Arrives at NXT TakeOver 36<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Longtime NXT fans will know that this isn&#8217;t Kay Lee Ray&#8217;s first appearance on the black-and-gold brand. In late 2019, the former NXT UK Women&#8217;s Champion competed at <strong><em>NXT TakeOver: WarGames<\/em><\/strong> in the Women&#8217;s WarGames Match. She was part of <strong>Shayna Baszler<\/strong>&#8216;s team, which also consisted of <strong>Io Shirai<\/strong> and <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2021\/08\/21\/becky-lynch-returns-summerslam-womens-championship\/\" target=\"_self\">former SmackDown Women&#8217;s Champion <strong>Bianca Belair<\/strong><\/a>. Despite their best efforts, they fell to the team of <strong>Rhea Ripley<\/strong>, <strong>Candice LeRae<\/strong>, <strong>Tegan Nox<\/strong>, and <strong>Dakota Kai<\/strong>, the latter of whom turned on her team. This would be the extent of her televised NXT appearances, outside of a TV match in January; the COVID pandemic that began in 2020 kept her relegated overseas to NXT UK.<\/p>\n<p>From there, Kay Lee Ray remained a dominant NXT UK Women&#8217;s Champion, successfully defending the title against such names as <strong>Jinny<\/strong> and <strong>Piper Niven<\/strong>, currently known as <strong>Doudrop<\/strong>. However, this past June, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2021\/06\/10\/meiko-satomura-wins-nxt-uk-womens-championship\/\" target=\"_self\">Ray lost the title to <strong>Meiko Satomura<\/strong><\/a>. This match would mark Ray&#8217;s final NXT UK match, as of this writing. Earlier this summer, reports circulated that Ray was seen at the WWE Performance Center in Florida, giving rise to rumors that she would be making her way to NXT on a full-time basis.<\/p>\n<p><em>Stay tuned to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/\" target=\"_self\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a>\u00a0for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. You can check out an almost unlimited array of WWE content on the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/watch.wwe.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">WWE Network<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.peacocktv.com\/watch\/home\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Peacock<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the opening match of NXT TakeOver 36, Raquel Gonz\u00e1lez successfully defended the NXT Women&#8217;s Championship against Dakota Kai. This was the culmination of a feud stemming from Kai&#8217;s attack on her longtime ally and friend. Kai went on to challenge Gonz\u00e1lez earlier this evening, only to fall short in her encounter. With that said, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3354,"featured_media":99071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2192,317,5,3,320],"tags":[1139,6991],"class_list":["post-99069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-wrestling","category-women","category-nxt","category-wwe-universe","category-wwe-women","tag-kay-lee-ray","tag-raquel-gonzalez"],"modified_by":"Robbie Sutter","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}