Adam Cole's NXT Championship Defences Ranked From Worst To Best

2. Matt Riddle (NXT TV, 2nd October 2019)

Rocket-fuelled for a ratings battle the brand ultimately lost, Adam Cole showed his mettle in a chaotic sprint against Matt Riddle that violently ripped the storytelling shackles from two contemporary all-rounders.

'The Original Bro' looked custom-built for this style of encounter. An exchange engineered to stop people changing channels was so rapid and deadly that even blinking was a risk. The story called for Cole to repeatedly try and fail to put the blockers on Riddle's relentless assaults, with every passing Bro-based move or hold looking to mark the end of a golden prophecy The Undisputed Era had only just fulfilled.

For a show positioned entirely to try and beat the brand new wrestling show on TNT, NXT rather fittingly produced a stick of dynamite. The plan blew up in their faces, but the match brought every bit of the explosiveness, wrecking the curve for the brand's TV quality gauge in the process.