10 Best NXT Champions Of The Black And Gold Era
6. Shayna Baszler
Looking at Baszler’s pitiful main roster run is painful. For the most part, she’s been another cog in the machine. In NXT, she basically was the machine.
Charlotte Flair and Shayna Baszler, at the time of writing, are the only women to hold the NXT Women’s Championship more than once. However, the Queen of Spades’ grip was something else entirely. Between her two reigns, Baszler has 548 days - making her the woman who, if you were to tune into any given episode of NXT, you’d be most likely to see hold the gold.
But it wasn’t just that she did it, it was how. Baszler was a legitimate MMA powerhouse and she was presented as such. She was also a passionate wrestling fan. She might’ve been a tad greener than some of the indie stars that NXT was starting to fill up with but Baszler was committed to learning and she got better and better, and also nastier and nastier.
Putting down babyface heroes with the Kirifuda Clutch; Ember Moon, Candie LaRae, Dakota Kai and more fell to her ability to always overpower and shut down her opponents' offence. Dropping the belt to Kairi Sane for a paltry 70 days in the middle of her run doesn’t stop her from being the final boss of the women’s division for almost two years.