10 Ups & 2 Downs From Last Night's WWE NXT (Dec 18)
Rhea Ripley finally turns the tide, but will this explosive NXT break the Wednesday deadlock?
Every edition of this weekly article shouldn't start with ratings reflections from the prior week, but December 18th's edition of NXT was so nakedly designed to try and end the year on a televisual high that it simply couldn't survive without mention.
The 778,000 viewer tie from the December 11th shows was remarkable - a 1.5m cumulative total was welcome of course, but it served as a reminder to both brands of how precious any kind of early lead in this war really is.
The shows this week were a way to bid fans a fond farewell into holiday breaks - the last looks at their favourite wrestler before a momentum-sapping sabbatical. NXT front-loaded it with TakeOver-ready title matches dropped into Full Sail in yet another potentially fatalistic attempt to secure an elusive landslide.
With stakes so high though, booking a card like this was the easy bit. The harder job was ensuring it delivered the quality it had tacitly promised...