{"id":99225,"date":"2021-08-25T13:00:31","date_gmt":"2021-08-25T17:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=99225"},"modified":"2021-08-25T16:34:25","modified_gmt":"2021-08-25T20:34:25","slug":"samoa-joes-challengers-align-nxt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2021\/08\/25\/samoa-joes-challengers-align-nxt\/","title":{"rendered":"Samoa Joe’s Challengers Align on NXT"},"content":{"rendered":"

Samoa Joe <\/b>made <\/span>NXT <\/span><\/i>history on August 22\u2019s <\/span>NXT TakeOver 36 <\/span><\/i>event. By defeating <\/span>Karrion Kross, <\/b>Joe became the brand\u2019s first three-time champion<\/a>. Their rivalry seems to have ended there, with Kross departing the black and gold brand to permanently join the <\/span>Monday Night Raw <\/span><\/i>roster. Samoa Joe\u2019s other most likely challenger for the NXT championship, <\/span>Adam Cole<\/b>\u2019s future<\/a> with NXT is currently uncertain. Despite the absence of Cole and Cross,\u00a0 the current crop of challengers for the NXT championship revealed themselves on August 24\u2019s NXT.<\/span><\/p>\n

Samoa Joe strode to the ring to address the crowd at the Capitol Wrestling Center, declaring that there was no time to celebrate his win in the \u201cland of savages\u201d that is NXT.<\/span><\/p>\n

His instincts proved correct, as <\/span>Pete Dunne<\/b> quickly entered the scene to confront Joe, and demand a match for the NXT Championship. With the return of <\/span>Ridge Holland<\/b>, Dunne\u2019s stable is feuding in earnest with <\/span>Timothy Thatcher <\/b>and <\/span>Tomasso Ciampa. <\/b>Earlier in the broadcast, Holland defeated Thatcher. When Ciampa confronted Holland, Dunne attacked Ciampa in Holland\u2019s defense, leading to a brawl between the two respective camps: Dunne, Holland, and <\/span>Danny Burch<\/b> on one side, Thatcher and Ciampa on the other. Dunne and his stable are perpetually seeking dominance, and the NXT championship would be a crowning touch. Dunne last sought the NXT title in a fatal five-way against then-champion Kross, also featuring Cole, Dunne, <\/span>Johnny Gargano,<\/b> and <\/span>Kyle O\u2019Reilly,\u00a0<\/b>at\u00a0<\/a>NXT Takeover: In Your House<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dunne was interrupted in turn by a new addition to the championship race, <\/span>LA Knight.<\/b> Knight recently lost the Million Dollar Championship to <\/span>Cameron Grimes<\/b>, but his confidence was far from dimmed by the loss. With his typical verbosity, Knight sought to prove why he deserved a title shot. O\u2019Reilly then entered, making the claim that his own decisive win against Adam Cole in their Takeover 36 match entitled him to a title shot. He was, however, attacked abruptly by Ridge Holland. Holland was quickly followed by Thatcher and Ciampa, and the chaos that had followed the earlier Thatcher v. Holland match broke out amongst the rivals, challengers, and champions. With the subtractions of Karrion Kross and Adam Cole, the field for the NXT championship race is slightly altered, but with August 24\u2019s installment, the game has been set for who Samoa Joe\u2019s challengers will be.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Stay tuned to the\u00a0Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a> for 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.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Samoa Joe made NXT history on August 22\u2019s NXT TakeOver 36 event. By defeating Karrion Kross, Joe became the brand\u2019s first three-time champion. Their rivalry seems to have ended there, with Kross departing the black and gold brand to permanently join the Monday Night Raw roster. Samoa Joe\u2019s other most likely challenger for the NXT […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3715,"featured_media":89951,"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":[5,3],"tags":[84,5397,2696,68,6340,343,7482,536,5868,214,529],"class_list":["post-99225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nxt","category-wwe-universe","tag-adam-cole","tag-cameron-grimes","tag-danny-burch","tag-johnny-gargano","tag-karrion-kross","tag-kyle-oreilly","tag-la-knight","tag-pete-dunne","tag-ridge-holland","tag-samoa-joe","tag-tomasso-ciampa"],"modified_by":"Niklas George","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99225","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\/3715"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}