6 Ups & 1 Down From Last Night's WWE NXT (Aug 3)

Who will challenge The Revival?

Revival Gargano Ciampa
WWE.com

In less than three weeks, NXT will hit Brooklyn's Barclays Center for its grandest event of the entire year, and two huge title matches have already been signed. In the main event, Samoa Joe will defend the NXT Championship against "The King of Strong Style" Shinsuke Nakamura. In a rematch from NXT TakeOver: Dallas, Women's Champion Asuka will defend the title against the former champ, Bayley.

Still, there's one set of titles unspoken for, and those are the NXT Tag Team Championships. The Revival won the belts back from American Alpha at TakeOver: The End, then defended them against the former champs in a two-out-of-three falls classic just a few weeks ago. What's next for Dash and Dawson, though? Who will they defend their belts against at TakeOver: Back to Brooklyn?

That question was all but answered on this week's NXT, but that wasn't all - the show also played host to a very important return and an equally-important debut. Both of the superstars who arrived will surely fill in some of the new gaps in the NXT roster, and they'll undoubtedly be major players on the brand for months to come.

Here are 6 ups and 1 down from August 3's episode of NXT:

7. Up - Welcome Back

Revival Gargano Ciampa
WWE.com

The opening match of the episode saw the return of Hideo Itami, and to call it long-awaited would be an understatement. Itami, who joined NXT in 2014, suffered a severe shoulder injury in May of last year, and only returned to action this past June. This bout represented his return match for television.

Itami took on Sean Maluta, a competitor from the Cruiserweight Classic who came up short in the first round. The bout was, admittedly, short and nothing special. Itami didn't get to show how well he's coping with ring rust or how his shoulder is holding up - he just won with the running knee in a few minutes.

Still, the important thing is that Itami is back. He's a fantastic wrestler who's destined for big things in both NXT and WWE, and this is the first step toward those things. At this point, I don't expect Shinsuke Nakamura to beat Samoa Joe for the NXT Title (that way, Nakamura can jump up to the main roster after SummerSlam), so maybe Joe's next feud will be with Itami - complete with the revelation that Joe was the man who injured him in the first place.

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Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried. *Best Crowd of the Year, 2013